Culture Flipping: you may not like it but here are some historical examples....

[Bill_in_PDX]

Originally posted by Commander


The US is a poor example as well. This was a revolution, the British fought hard to maintain control, and they lost. How is this represented though culture flipping in Civ3? It isn't. Where are the revolutionaries that my soldiers have to fight off? No, culture flipping in Civ3 is just a bloodless change of control of a city. Your army mysteriously vanishes into the twilight zone, leaving the game player wondering what happened.

Maybe it wasn't so bloodless. You lose the military garrison that is there, just because there isn't an animation doesn't mean they didn't die

I agree in principle though that in real life, new cultures and civs will spring up. But in the game that isn't practical, as you will just sweep back in and re-assimilate the rebels, or just as likely, another civ will.

Perhaps down the road the developers can further refine it, and I hope they will. But for me now, I like the culture aspects in the game. Changes it from "drive for Calvary and Tanks as soon as possible so I can crush the world" to more of a civ building game with more options to win.

 

[Zouave]

No one said to remove all aspects of Culture and its influence. The argument is about Culture FLIPPING borders and cities, and vanishing garrisons.


Borders do NOT in reality flip on someone's tiles with mines, roads, and even garrisoned fortresses. I've had it happen. And the victim of this does not (in the real world) get blamed for the war if he fights for his improvements. In Civ III he gets blamed forever even by civs he won't encounter for another 500 years! But in the game logic is reversed.

Cities do NOT defect with large garrisons in them. Only on the rarest occasions can a city of civilians rebel successfully against a military garrison. It did not happen once anywhere in WW I or WW II. Cities that tried to rebel against their occupiers were crused - such as Warsaw.

A city of 12 that has been Roman for 5,000 years (Actium, in this case) does not just decide to become part of a nearby civ with a different culture. I had Actium defect to me (as the Iroquois) and I thought it idiotic.

Culture has its place, certainly. But as implemented in Civ III it is pure fantasy - and a crock.

 

[Kryten]

Originally posted by Zouave
I had Actium defect to me (as the Iroquois) and I thought it idiotic.

I hope you gave it back!

Seriously though, you have made some very good points. Let's see if I can refute them.

First of all we should talk about time scales. Let us, JUST for the sake of argument, assume that the culture flipping of cities and territorial 'land grabbing' does happen in reality, but is rare, and only happens about once or twice per century on average. This would explain why there are many more examples in the ancient and medieval periods than there are in the more modern times. Assuming this, can I find any examples in the last two centuries?

*The USA in the 19th century (please forgive a Brit for talking about American history):

In 1830 there was a land dispute between the State of Maine and the Canadian Province of New Brundswick. Both Canadian and Maine lumbermen sought control of the present-day Aroostook County. This so called 'Aroostook War' was settled by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. The land changed hands without a full scale war (the Canadians COULD have gone to war over the matter, but quite sensibly decided not to).

Oregon Country: after much dispute and the joint Canadian and United States occupation from 1818 to 1845, the whole of Oregon was ceded to the US in 1846, WITHOUT a war.

Red River Colony: ceded to the US from Canada in 1818.

The Texas Revolution: the revolution broke out in autumn 1835, and following the victory at the battle of San Jacinto in April 1836 Texas temporarily became an independant nation. Nine years later in 1845 Texas joined the United States and actively participated in the following Mexican War (in civ3 terms she 'culture flipped' to the USA, in spite of the Mexican garrison, which was destoyed in the revolt).

As for the World Wars....WW1 lasted for some three civ3 game turns and WW2 for only four turns. But looking at the whole period between 1914 and 1945 (some 16 civ turns) we have:
The Saar Region - a League of Nations mandate under French rule from 1919 untill returned to Germany by plebiscite in 1935.
Schleswig - divided between Germany and Denmark by plebiscite in 1920.
The Ruhr - controled by France in 1923, and Germany in 1936.
The Sudetenland - annexed by Hitler in 1938, following the Munich agreement.
(and all these changes were WITHOUT a major war)

This post is becoming far too long, so I haven't time to talk about China and Hong Kong.

 

[Zachriel]

Oregon Country
Red River Colony
The Saar Region
The Ruhr
The Sudetenland
Hong Kong

Excellent examples, Kryten. Quaint and arcane.

How about Oklahoma, "given" to the Indians for as long as the grass was green, and the sky was blue. Of course, after the railroad, the grass and sky were brown, so the U.S. just annexed it. Then they made the musical version.

 

[Kryten]

Ha! Ha! Just a minute....I like that song!

Here's some more examples that I had forgot:
1918 - Bessarabia united with Romania (but annexed by the USSR in 1940).
1982 - the Israelis withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, captured in the 1967 Six-day War.
1990 - East Germany reunited with West Germany (now THERE'S a culture flip!).
1997 - British Hong Kong handed back to China.
1999 - Portuguese Macao or Macau ceded to China.

But I do have a confession. Like Zouave I DO think that culture flipping needs to be changed. While researching for all these examples I found hundreds of cases of conquered nations regaining their independence as well as many cities and regions changing control between existing nations. As I said before, why dosen't the end game of civ look like the real world? It's because the real world is covered by a patchwork of small nations and NOT just a handful of vast empires. To make civ more 'realistic' and look more like the real world we need to have CONQUERED NATIONS CULTURE FLIPPING BACK INTO EXISTENCE!

Here is my suggestion....keep the existing culture flipping, but in addition....

1) Democratic governments 'Liberate' instead of 'conquer' (this is someone else's idea, but I can't remember who). Example: a democracy captures a German city. If all the citizens are German, then fine, they keep it. But if there is one French citizen in the city, then it is 'Liberated' and given back to the French. And if the French are not currently in the game, then this city becomes the new French capital (think of the Allies in WW2).

2) Only Despotic governments (like the Mongols and Nazi Germany under Hitler) can raze cities. After all, although Communist governments kill a lot of their own citizens, I can't find any examples of them razing whole cities.

3) Make it inevitable that one day a city of a conquered civilization will 'culture flip' that civilization back into the game, along with a substantial modern army, in spite of any garrison (see my example on page 3 of this thread for how many times Greece was conquered and yet still came back to be conquered again).

These ideas will make all empires decline and fall eventually, and lead to lots of small nations (but only the nations that the game started with, NOT hundreds!). It would also be more of a challenge: imagine the 'fun' of trying to hold the Roman Empire together when conquered cities keep rebelling and have to be recaptured. It explains all those civil wars Rome had....usually one every 20 to 30 years! That is the real skill of 'Building an Empire to Stand the Test of Time', the ability to hold one together!

And to all those people who do not like these ideas (and there will be many!), answer me this:-
After 6,000 years of human history, how come countries like England/France/Germany/Greece/Egypt/China/and so on still exist? All of them have been conquered at one time or another, some of them several times. But, in the 21st century, they are still here. Ask yourself "why?".

 

[siredgar]

Hong Kong did not "flip" back to China.

The British lease on the surrounding territory was about to expire. There was an agreement to return this land to China. Without it, it would be difficult to maintain Hong Kong because the British essentially only control the island not the territory surrounding it. Realizing this, Thatcher signed an agreement re-affirming the handing over of all of Hong Kong in 1979.

Anyhow, this is NOT culture-flipping. It is the result of the conclusion of an agreement and the reality of its consequences.

 

[Kryten]

You are quite right siredgar;

I was only using Hong Kong as an example of a non-violent political change of control without a war or revolution. In fact, a closer examination of ALL my examples shows that the change of control was in almost all cases due to reasons not strictly covered by the people 'culture flipping'.

It is a question of CAUSE and EFFECT. I have been guilty before of ignoring the CAUSE; I admit that I'm only interested in the EFFECT. If a city or region in history changed political control from one country to another (and we now have many examples that they did), then 'culture flipping' can SIMULATE this. The CAUSE may not be totally correct in a purist sense, but the EFFECT is. In history there are many, many CAUSES of why cities/regions change control from one nation to another, but in the game they all have the same EFFECT. After all, we can't expect a game like civ3 to be able to accurately reflect all the thousands of different reasons can we....

....or can we? I notice that Windwalker has started an interesting new thread with an elegant solution. Essentially his idea is to change the name of 'culture flipping' to 'popularity'. No, it still wouldn't cover situations like Hong Kong, but it would be a better name for non-violent changes of political control.