Culture after taking cities is driving me nuts

[murph1822001]

I typically like to play on crowded maps, my favorite is using a mod that lets me have 40 civs on huge map. I am a war monger and when I take a city later in the game the neihbor civs have so much culture that my city has no tiles to work and gets flipped culturely to its neihbor. Is there a mod that will help with this?

 

[Joecoolyo]

Without a mod, the best advice to give you is just rush theatres either through Universal Suffrage or Slavery, theaters once built will give a massive amount of culture to the city really fast, guarantee border pop within the next ten turns with it. Anyways, I don't really think there is a mod out there that affects culture. Maybe Influence Driven War mod... but I just started using it and I'm not sure of the mechanics.

Oh yeah, Welcome to the Forums murph1822001

 

[murph1822001]

I usually slave a theater, but find with so much existing culture on crowded maps its not enough. Will try that influence driven war mod a try, thank you for very much 8)

 

[Dr_Gonzo]

When you start a new game, you have the option to turn off city flipping from culture. This is how I've done my warmonger campaigns. In this case, you have to deal with a lot revolts (and the city will stop growing/producing for a few turns) but it beats having to retake it, or to declare war on another civ.

Universal Suffrage definitely helps though, by the time you have it, it should be easy to afford to rush Theatre, University, etc quickly. IMHO, slavery is not as useful in this case, as often times your pop is too small to even whip after conquest.

A final option (and this really works!) is the Culture Bomb aka Great Artist -- get a city specialized to make great people with an emphasis on artists. This takes a bit of planning as it takes a while to get Great People, but one well placed culture bomb can really make a difference.

 

[murph1822001]

Thanks for the tips Dr Gonzo 8)

 

[The_King]

Turning off city flipping is too cheeky in my book.

If culture flipping is a problem, then just take out the cities that are being difficult. Especially if you are warmongering anway.

 

[Tatran]

If culture flipping is a problem, then just take out the cities that are being difficult. Especially if you are warmongering anway.

Taking out the responsible civ is a much better plan.

Btw, I've noticed being a master of a friendly vassal I didn't suffer any
cultural pressure from their cities.

 

[6K Man]

Unfortunately the only easy solution is to just keep on taking cities and raze the ones that look to be in danger of flipping (or repeatedly revolting, if they are culturally threatened by their former owner).

If you capture a mature city that's surrounded by other mature cities, the terrain will be saturated with thousands of culture points from the neighbouring cities, plus the accumulated thousands of points from its former owner. Rushing theaters doesn't help much. Neither will broadcast towers (the instant ones from Eiffel) plus 2 Artists - that's only a dozen points a turn or so. You're just too far behind culturally.

 

[murph1822001]

Tatran, I was using vassals, because I thought I could use their culture to my advantage, by keeping their culture borders from my culturely mature neibors and be able to work my fat cross inside their borders. That didnt work well though my cities were constantly revolting, and when a freshly conquered Rome flipped to my vassal Gilgamesh, I got upset and quit the game. Does it change if they are friendly? cause Gilgamesh was annoyed when this happened.

6K, you summed up my problem well. I think I will go back to my last game and delay my war a bit until I can really rampage the map, taking city after city and raze the ones on borders when my army cant push any farther.


Thanks a lot for all the advice 8)

 

[UWHabs]

Taking out the responsible civ is a much better plan.

Btw, I've noticed being a master of a friendly vassal I didn't suffer any
cultural pressure from their cities.

Any square from your vassals in one of your cities BFC becomes yours. Leads to interesting borders sometimes.

 

[murph1822001]

I can always work my fat cross with vassals, but I suffer cultural pressure, in the form of revolts and city flips. Doe their attitude towards me matter? friendly vs annoyed?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Turning off city flipping is too cheeky in my book.

If culture flipping is a problem, then just take out the cities that are being difficult. Especially if you are warmongering anway.

Um..............

The DEFAULT rule is that conquered cities CANNOT culture flip to their previous owner. A 3rd party civ will be able to flip it though, and the city will still revolt under heavy culture pressure from the previous owner and become useless frequently. As you say, the nicest way to deal with these issues is just to keep taking the offending cities until it's not an issue anymore.

There's a 2nd way though. First of all, if a civ is your vassal, you can work a city's BFC regardless of your vassal's culture in captured cities. To prevent the revolts requires a large military garrison. It's definitely not 100% that the military garrison is worth it, but for some cities or situations it might be worth stationing units just to block revolts or flips to 3rd party AIs, especially if your troops are going to become obsolete soon or you can cheaply produce some garbage to throw in there.

 

[Camikaze]

After they're available, I pretty much always build a theatre as a city's first building, and follow it up with a library (multi-purpose) or temple if that city is near any borders. Also, if you get a great artist, if you don't have a specific task for it, like settling for a cultural victory, keep it on hand to be used to give yourself a cultural shot in the arm when needed.

 

[Flyboy1972]

Try seizing 2 or 3 neighboring cities on the same turn - it means splitting your forces, but with 2 or 3 cities coming out of revolt within a turn or two of other, you'll reduce the cultural pressure on each (because they won't be pressuring each other). Rush monuments (early) or theatres (late) in all three and watch the borders push out in a stable fashion.

I'm unconvinced by the Great Artist culture bomb: I've tried it, and seen the borders pushed out one turn, only to contract the next.

 

[uXs]

I just had the same happen to me in a game. I conquer a city from Gilgamesh, and there's a city owned by Hammurabi rather close to it. I can keep it for a 20 or 30 turns, and then it culture flips.

Fairly annoying, but it doesn't bother me too much because I'm way stronger than Hammurabi and I plan on destroying him in short order. I'm only hesitating a little bit because our empires share a long border and I'm not sure how to defend it, or even if I should. It may be easier to just not bother and try to steamroll through his empire, and just retake any cities he may take from me.

 

[bestbrian]

I'm about a week late on this, but if the city is fairly populous run Caste Artists instead of slaving a Theatre. Even if they start starving off, you'll get more mileage towards your border pops out of them than you will by whipping.

 

[murph1822001]

makes sense thanks for advice bestbrian

 

[bestbrian]

makes sense thanks for advice bestbrian

No charge. Happy Civing.

 

[IAM]

Culture slider helps.

 

[SirDrake]

Um..............
The DEFAULT rule is that conquered cities CANNOT culture flip to their previous owner. A 3rd party civ will be able to flip it though, and the city will still revolt under heavy culture pressure from the previous owner and become useless frequently.

Sokay... If that's the "default", then do I understand correctly that you would check "City Flipping after Conquest" to enable the non-default option?

'Cause once upon a time I had a conquered city culture-flip back to its original owner while I was still fighting the same war in which I'd taken it. Boy, was that frustrating. I had almost certainly checked the "City Flipping after Conquest" option, paying more attention to the mouseover help ("allows cities to peacefully revert to a previous owner", or somesuch) and assuming that I needed this option in order to properly 'liberate' a city (i.e., return to my ally instead of conquering it for my own).

*sees the light*

-J