Culture, and it's effect on war

[Twilight]

I'm playing a game on Prince difficulty that is going fairly well. I early rid my continent of two civs, leaving only me and the Greeks left. We were good friends for a long time, until we ran short of space. I "ate" a couple of his tiny cities due to my excel in culture, but after that, his cities were too far within his land to be influenced (our borders met each other - no neutral land left).

So I decided to declare yet another war (after all, that is some of the fun ), stacking up huge amount of units within my own borders before initiating the strike. I easily captured some of his cities along his east coast (he had the entire south). BUT, only after a mather of turns, they converted right back to the Greeks, due to, quote, "...their so called culture". The same thing happened over and over again, but I eventually managed to get control as I conquered more cities than I lost, before I eventuelly sued for peace and rushed some temples to counter their culture.

Anyone else found this to be a real pain when going to war? Any good strategies when it comes to this? One thing I've been thinking of is to bombard their closest cities before conquering the others, to hopefully rid them of some cultural improvements... Any thoughts at all?

 

[Dearmad]

Yeah, it IS a real pain- I LOVE it! Makes me not able to just rush thrugh another civ without making sure I'm installing temples and other things along the way- pulling people off production and into "worthless" professions like entertainer (that's where SID would fall, BTW ) and sometimes razing...

Sounds like you mastered most of it- just make sure you leave no unhappy people behind.

 

[Sailsa]

Whenever I run into trouble with lots of cities converting back I go for a couple big ones in the middle and raze them. This creates a gap in my opponents culture, and then I pop my own new cities in their place and fill them with culture stuff to counter the rest.

 

[DanPMN]

Razing cities gets your opponents extremely mad at you! I don't know how you can raze their cities and then manage to build cities in their place without getting completely destroyed! On a side note...It helps when trying to quell resistance if you place military units in the city. Just don't place too many or if the city DOES revolt, you will lose all of your units.

 

[Suvorov]

Burn, burn, then burn again. Scorched earth is what works for me. Sure, they get permanently pissed off at you, but after you've destroyed a third of their civilization they kinda become less dangerous. If they declare war again, you just burn, burn and burn again. Settle the recently *cough* vacated territory and make sure you have lots of defensive units and you'll pull through.
Also, capturing your own continent helps alot. Then just make sure you have a strong navy to prevent invasion and go raid everyone else. Just land and burn, retreat, repeat. Everyone will hate you but there won't be a cussed thing they can do about it.

Just don't do it to everyone similtaneously. Having ABSOLUTELY everyone pissed off at you can be difficult.