cultists not flipping city even when loyalty should drop below zero

[King Rad]

I sent six cultist to surround a city adjacent to my empire. the city was producing about 15 loyalty per turn and was at 100 when I started. I figured -60 +15 would be a net drop of 45 after the first round of recruiting, which it was; so 55 total. next 60 did not reduce loyalty to zero, and I thought maybe it didn't happen until the end of the turn. So next turn shows something like +10 (or maybe +15, don't remember for sure) loyalty. did third round of recruiting followers, which should have taken the city to -45. Even waiting until end of turn should have only come back up to -30. but the city never flipped - never became a free city. If I remember correctly the other time I used voidsingers, the city flipped as soon as total loyalty dropped to zero [and I learned to move my cultists which had not been used out if they since the free city could kill them with its military). This was several turns ago, but I'll attach my oldest save.

 

[fimiki]

I'm not sure this is exclusive to cultist-induced loyalty loss, as I had the same thing happen with a rockband-spy combo. An AI civ's city was at -85 loyalty through a combination of natural loyalty loss and an indie-promoted rock band concert from a different AI civ. My spy successfully performed a 'foment unrest mission' which brought the loyalty down to 0, and I expected to see the city flip the next turn. It did not.

One thing worth noting is that between the start and end of the foment unrest mission, the target city's per-turn loyalty changed from negative to positive. Could it be that with the new October patch, cities only flip if their per-turn loyalty changes are negative?

 

[HiRezAudio]

I'm not sure this is exclusive to cultist-induced loyalty loss, as I had the same thing happen with a rockband-spy combo. An AI civ's city was at -85 loyalty through a combination of natural loyalty loss and an indie-promoted rock band concert from a different AI civ. My spy successfully performed a 'foment unrest mission' which brought the loyalty down to 0, and I expected to see the city flip the next turn. It did not.

One thing worth noting is that between the start and end of the foment unrest mission, the target city's per-turn loyalty changed from negative to positive. Could it be that with the new October patch, cities only flip if their per-turn loyalty changes are negative?

That makes sense - I have seen similar things happen, and if the city still has positive loyalty input it stays loyal (usually caused by a very large nearby city)

 

[benj_a_D]

I'm not sure this is exclusive to cultist-induced loyalty loss, as I had the same thing happen with a rockband-spy combo. An AI civ's city was at -85 loyalty through a combination of natural loyalty loss and an indie-promoted rock band concert from a different AI civ. My spy successfully performed a 'foment unrest mission' which brought the loyalty down to 0, and I expected to see the city flip the next turn. It did not.

One thing worth noting is that between the start and end of the foment unrest mission, the target city's per-turn loyalty changed from negative to positive. Could it be that with the new October patch, cities only flip if their per-turn loyalty changes are negative?

Hi all. Did we ever get clarity on this one. Just did an Eleanor/void game. Yup, lost lots of relics along the way (fun). But the worst was the cultists inability to flip a city. I tried to flip cities in 3 different civs. In each case, you can only reduce the loyalty to zero, then when processing next turn loyalty pressure gets applied and the city is back to 7/100 loyalty. This was with 6 -30 loyalty cultists swarming the city.

Many videos show this working before, where the cultists were able to flip a city with positive loyalty pressure. If this is the intended behavior, what is the point of cultists. The only thing they do is make a failing city fail faster. If you are fortunate enough to find one floundering.

Also, this would explain why the AI can't use cultists. No need to throw cultists at a city with positive loyalty pressure if it is not possible to flip it. So the use case for the cultist is extremely rare.

 

[King Rad]

I've heard nothing yet. I definitely was able to flip cities before; but couldn't last time and haven't tried them since.

 

[Pietato]

This is still happening.