"1. USe artillery to bombard the population down... you can't seriously expect to take a 15+ population city and expect the population to be loyal to the invaders....!? In this day and age all wars around cities involve the use of shelling, look at Chechnya for an example! "
This has zero effect in the game at all. Reread the rules. A big force can remove even 8 resistors in one turn, and I've never seen more than that. The fact remains that a size 1 city with a single happy citizen, 8 of your units, and no conection at all to the civ you took it from can flip. The reason is the "cultural memory effect" - if the city had several thousand culture already generated, NOTHING you do can overcome this penalty. While it may only be the third most significant factor, it is the one factor that you can do absolutely nothing about, and can be absolutely enormous by the 1500's. Reducing the city to a size 1 still doesn't change the fact that the city had 5 to 10K culture before you took it, and rush building every single cultural improvement available will still result in the old culture being higher than the new culture for the next 250+ turns. The only way to avoid it is to capture the cities before they can generate the culture, meaning conquest before the industrial age, or genocide of captured cities.
"3. Make sure your culture is higher or at least comparable to the culture of the enemy city, then the foreign resistors might actually want to join you. IF your culture is lower then just raze the cities instead.
Again since my culture is always a top priority i have never had a flipping city. Combine this with a serious bombardment first... = no problems"
I've seen dozens of cities flip to inferior overall cultures, even when I owned by 3:1.
"4. Don't bother with huge garrisons. As stated by Firaxis, military presence is the worst factor involved in quelling resistance. One or 2 units should suffice. "
Again, the exact opposite of reality and logic. Nothing keeps an occupied city from rebelling like the threat of military reprisal.
"Can I ask of the most vocal (or actually literary) complainents what they do for a job? And how they would feel if the general public started rubbishing every business decision they make? "
I'm a chemist by profession, and have programmed in the past, but I also write wargames as a hobby and side business, including a commercially available fantasy miniatures game "Armies of Arcana", and a half dozen other games in varying stages of release and testing. I deal with these same kinds of issues on a weekly basis, as people make suggestions or criticisize and I argue, consider and sometimes defend what I have done. I have NEVER copped out of an argument with the "well, you're no game writer, how dare you criticize me" defense. I've valued almost every bit of feedback I've recieved, and the very few griefer insulting people I've dealt with are easily recognized and ignored.
The best way to deal with criticism is to address it. The only reason you see increasingly hostile posts about aspects of this game are because Firaxis has stonewalled on those issues (orbeen very slow to respond to them, if you are in a more charitable mood), increasing aggrevation and allowing the fanboys more time to insult those who'd dare point out flaws. If you treat your customers with respect, even those who criticize you, you almost always get respect back. If you ignore or call your customers whiners with selective memories or unimportant opinions, you get what you deserve.
"However, if I was a Firaxian, I would think twice about posting these sorts of things in the future. Why? Because there is the element that can't help but criticise them in every post thread they make. "
This kind of post is the only reason I have given Firaxis another chance. The last GOTM was going to be my last game, because playing rapid conquest gets old real quick. This has renewed my hope that they may do something about it, and has definately recovered some lost respect merely by their willingness to comunicate openly. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
The people making honest criticisms and suggestions are not the people who hijack threads. It is the people who for some reason think they must defend firaxis by attacking those who post criticisms that hijack threads. If you disagree with what those of us who are critical are saying, then by all means, argue. Discussion is what makes games better. Insulting people like we have no right to express our opinions to firaxis, or we are stupid for thinking our ideas could be better than firaxis's, is what degenerates a thread.
"Oh, and Rhandom! I wouldn't say bad programming, but definitely bad game design in this specific instance, in that it makes no sense and makes the game experience less rewarding. "
Well, I'm not sure which it is. It could just be that the weighting of this factor is far higher that it is supposed to be, like a decimal is in the wrong place, or something is multiplied two or more times causing an exponential effect for the "memory" feature. I would think the numbers being generated should be easily checked during testing though, and so in that regard, to me it is bad programming. I do think it is bad design in any case, because the memory effect is really quite strange and utterly indefensible threat.
Rhandom!
What a farce.
