Culture Flipping Behaviour

[glider1]

A discussion thread on the behaviour of the Revolutions code under conditions where a city would likely flip over ownership in standard BTS because of culture and nationality, but does not in Revolutions. Is there any room to change the culture flipping behaviour? Is it needed?

Symptom:
"However, there is one thing that bothers me a bit about it. In vanilla Civ or with ROM turning off Revolutions I can culturally conquer a city. With this mod of course this is not possible. Is there a way to get a compromise between teh two extremes? Once my culture has reached a certain level such as 70% or 80%, conditions should be changed to allow the city to flip to me. Below that level it should introduce unhappiness so that a revolution or revolt occurs.

The city seems to constantly have a revolt. The revolts will last for 6 to 8 turns. There will be a period of 5 to 10 turns where the city is fine and then another revolt. Periodically, the city will have a revolution. However, the rebels have no chance of conquering the city - the defenders are too advanced and strong. I have had some cities where I have 95 to 98% ownership of the city and it still won't flip. In these cases I have the city completely surrounded on all sides by my tiles, still no flipping."

 

[konradcabral]

I, to tell the truth, miss a little the city culture flipping. Can we think a way to bring it back?

 

[MechatronicJazz]

I agree. Culture is one of my stongest points in Civ, and I admit that it is cool to gain new cities without a fight on occasion.

 

[jdog5000]

Alright, we can certainly bring it back ... there are a couple ways. First is simple AI, the other player should be willing to give up a city they've held for a while but is now basically worthless and a source of instability. They're obviously getting revolt popups regularly and one option is to let the city join you. At some point they should just give up.

One of the human/AI imbalances in the current setup is that an AI player in this situation is asked whether they want to declare war on the owner of the city ... this doesn't reinstate the "take a city without firing a shot" goal behavior, but it is something I'm addressing. The rebels who spawn will come asking for help and you can opt to fund them in a proxy war or just declare war yourself and have them join you. Also, they will more reliably choose to join you if they win.

On top of those things, I can make it so that the city will flip using the old mechanics if it gets to 80% yours or so and has had several revolts ... it's certainly fun to flip a city, but it always seemed a little artificial to me. There were never any real consequences when it seems like the classic "fire starter" if you will.

 

[glider1]

...The rebels who spawn will come asking for help and you can opt to fund them in a proxy war or just declare war yourself and have them join you...On top of those things!

Oooh the days when things were simple before Revolutions came along! A threshold test and a count of the number of revolts might be enough good idea. It's nice to grab a city without any bloodshed occasionally...have to agree. It is a big question about the "realness" of culture flipping. What real life scenario could be imagined where such ownership would flip without bloodshed and nothing given in return and under no diplomatic pressure?

If the government of the foreign cultured city realises that the city is of no use any longer under their control, they could decide simply hand it over to a neighbour they don't despise and let them deal with the costs. Some leaders will be resistant and would prefer for the city to fall into chaos, rather than give it up. It could be viewed as a government level decision, but in the game we want culture flipping still....

An idea is to make it so that if a leader were willing to trade the city away to you (as could be detected in the diplomacy window) but too stubborn to actually effect a deal in reality, and the culture of the city is so foreign, you could then allow the chance for culture flipping to occur so that the leader doesn't even get the option to effect a trade for the city! If the leader won't even consider this in his thoughts (behind closed doors), culture flipping cannot occur and revolt is the only option. However how does Revolutions know the players thoughts even if it could work out the AI's thoughts? Scrap the idea.

Other possibilities could be to trigger culture flipping probability based on the revolutions variables:
City with chance to flip = good national stability index, low local rebellion threat, very high foreign culture, good national relations with the foreign culture. Any of those not applying, and revolt is the only option?
Cheers.

 

[Duneflower]

I like that idea, though I also like what happened in my recent game: City rebelled due to having a huge majority of my culture, gained independence, got themselves set up, then a little later decided to join me. Kind of a nice middle ground, I think.

 

[MechatronicJazz]

The city flipping shouldn't become a common thing, just on occasion. But these are definately some good ideas.

 

[phungus420]

This is how I think City flipping should be handled:

If the City would flip:

Start: Give owning civ option to grant independence

-if accpeted: City is given to Civ that flipped it, ie it is handled the same as Vanilla BtS in terms of flipping a city with one acception. Diplomatically the +1 diplo modifier is added for "You freed our city" or whatever it is called.

--if Rejected
-Give Civ that flipped city the following options:
1)Start Border war for city indpendence, this is a free war declaration, and does not incure diplo penalties for "You declared war on us, or You declared war on our friend", It is annonced as "A border Dispute breaks out between Empire X, and Empire Y over the City of A" --Not the Civ X declares war on Civ Y announcement
2)Fund Rebels as proxy: costs X money and/or Y Espionage -Rebels are gifted a sizable boost to their troops and Rebel civs gain a +5 diplo bonus to funding civ
3)Ignore: Revolt happens as normal for rebel city

 

[StormLord-711-]

I like that idea, though I also like what happened in my recent game: City rebelled due to having a huge majority of my culture, gained independence, got themselves set up, then a little later decided to join me. Kind of a nice middle ground, I think.

I really think that this is the ideal for what should happen with city flipping. It's realistic (like Texas declaring independence from Mexico and later joining the USA, which then sparked a war), and the option could also be allowed for the civ with majority culture in the city to declare war on the city owner (like what's been happening between Russia and Georgia). At the same time though, there should be a likely option for the city's owner to peacefully let it change hands, causing essentially the exact same thing as the city flips in vanilla Civ.

The only problem is that I've noticed areas have a lot of trouble declaring independence from empires with large militaries. Usually the strongest empire or two in my games has no trouble holding their empire together, and that bothers me (even when it includes myself). I can't make revolutions more likely either, or the weaker empires would fall to pieces.