Counterinsurgency strategies (?)

[Duke of Ybrik]

Here's a good question:
What are the popular counterinsurgency strategies for Civ III?

I have had some problems in the past holding on to conquered cities. I can think of two recent examples:

(1) Made a naval landing and took Veii (size 18), stuck enough troops in it to choke a horse (8 mech infantry, 9 modern armor, 4 marines, 4 artillery, 1 army of modern armor), and reduced the production labor to shrink the city size and increase entertainers. Even occupied it with an army. Never could reduce resisting citizens fast enough before I was overthrown (within 5 turns). Lost everything.

(2) The bully next door (Germany) started a war with me when my civ had just discovered nationalism. I was by far the world's cultural leader, with the lion's share of the wonders and cities stuffed with happy-making improvements. I struck their captial (their largest city with their only wonder, the Great Wall) with everything I had, hoping to bring an early end to the war (I was playing Babylon and trying for cultural dominance). Nailed Berlin (size 14) right across my border with a slew of horsemen and longbowmen, with catapults and riflemen in support. Then occupied the city with 7 longbowmen, 2 horsemen and 6 riflemen. Resistors dropped from 7 to 1 immediately. I then cut back production and resistance ended. I build a temple, then a library, then a coloseum, all while fending off attacks and pillagers. I was in the midst of building a cathedral when insurgents tossed out my governor and all my troops went up in smoke.

Personally, an iron fist on a conquered city going into insurgency should at least be preceded by rioting, not just a surprise "oops, you lost that one!"

I prefer to take cities whole, if possible. The economic advantages are immediate and obvious. The only consistent, successful strategy I have used is to pillage and pound the cities with artillery until they are attrited, then go in. What you are left with, though, is a village and not a city since the pop size drops right after you pull into town.
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(A) Anybody run into this much trouble? If so, what did you do?

(B) Couldn't the game simply expell the troops from the city after an insugency, perhaps reducing their number by half or something (i.e., kill half of them off in the riots)?

(C) What pacification strategies work the best?

 

[Beamup]

Option 1: Raze.

Option 2: Keep your troops outside of the city to take it back again instead of inside where you lose them.

 

[tao]

The capability to suppress resistors only requires the units to have attack capability. Thus a good method is to stuck in strong defense (say an army of mech infantry) and A LOT of any outdated units (warriors, swords, spears, pikes, etc.).

And you may use the (regrettably PC-based; do you have Virtual PC?) flip calculator to learn how many units you need to ensure that the city does not flip.

And the flip risk is highly dependent on the number of the 21 "city tiles" under foreign control. Thus by disbanding units for hurrying temple and cathedral if you are religious (or library, university if scientific) you can build "cheap" culture even while there are resistors and thus greatly decrease the flip risk.

 

[AlanH]

Using a big garrison for flip prevention is, in my opinion, a waste of resources. I've seen CRpMapStat give estimates of 50 units needed to prevent a flip. If you have that many obsoloete units the you are costing yourself big unit maintenance just to keep them alive. You may also need transportation capacity to move them if you are operating overseas.

I favour Beamup's second option. Razing is OK, but damages your rep. Focus your resources on killing off the civ, then worry about making the city productive. Each time it flips and you recapture it, the city's pop will go down one. Consider a flip an asset, not a liability.

Meanwhile, starve it by making them all specialists. But make the citizens into taxmen, not entertainers, then you get money from the city ( you have to reassign them each turn, as the computer rearranges them after starvaton to produce food). And build workers while it's in resistance. If the resistance lasts 10 turns you've got yourself a free slave and one fewer foreigners in your captured city. Once you've defeated the civ, pile in troops to subdue the resistance and then you can make it productive. I have a general policy of reducing foreign population to one before building it up again, even if I've defeated the foreigner's civ, because foreigners will get upset far faster during war weariness than your native citizens.

 

[RABicle]

What difficulty are you playing on? I've never lost an occupied city to resisters. Not even a capital and I've never stationed as many troops as you.

But yeah I prefer to use nuclear weapons and raze...

 

[AlanH]

Emperor-deity here, and I rarely reach teh Industrial, let alone modern age and nukes. If I'm focused on fast military victory I tend to neglect culture. When I come up against a cultural giant I'll lose one or two captured cities to flips if the war goes on for more than a few turns, it comes with the territory.

But, as I say, I'm relaxed about it. I'd rather keep the cities and the protected territory that comes with them than destroy them. That's probably more to do with style than hard facts, but you can see a current discussion of razing vs. capturing in the second spoiler thread for GOTM 38 if you're interested, and qualified to read it.

 

[Duke of Ybrik]

What difficulty are you playing on? I've never lost an occupied city to resisters. Not even a capital and I've never stationed as many troops as you.

But yeah I prefer to use nuclear weapons and raze...

Both instances occured while playing on monarch level in vanilla civ iii mac

 

[Duke of Ybrik]

Emperor-deity here, and I rarely reach teh Industrial, let alone modern age and nukes. If I'm focused on fast military victory I tend to neglect culture. When I come up against a cultural giant I'll lose one or two captured cities to flips if the war goes on for more than a few turns, it comes with the territory.

But, as I say, I'm relaxed about it. I'd rather keep the cities and the protected territory that comes with them than destroy them. That's probably more to do with style than hard facts, but you can see a current discussion of razing vs. capturing in the second spoiler thread for GOTM 38 if you're interested, and qualified to read it.

Thanks for the feedback. Where do you download the latest GOTM? Hunting through the forum thread is not an obvious way of finding it. Thought about taking it for a spin. Thanks.

 

[williamiv]

I've generally had success with a few troops (after significantly reducing or eliminating resistance) and rushing library and temple, possibly others. I also tend to have cultural strength (Greeks) and wait until the later stages of the game for relatively quick victories in war. If I can't wipe an enemy out, I try to at least get the neighborhood if it's spread on different islands/continents.

In my first successful emperor level game (the level I am still at) I spent a lot of effort in rushing settlers out of Persian cities until the Persians had been defeated, then I repopulated. I didn't lose any cities, but I don't know if I wasted my time, too.

Questions: If you sugar off the immediate occupier's population, leaving only citizens of a previously wiped out civilization, will the city have much of any chance flipping (compared to one with all of the immediate civ)? In other words, taking a once French city from the Babylonians, removing the Babylonian population, will the city have the same flip chance as an original Babylonian city?

If the French are still around, is it more likely to flip to France than to Babylon?

 

[AlanH]

The flip probability calculations I've seen only count the number of foreign citizens. They don't distinguish between different foreign races.