Culture Flips and the Poor Enlisted Man

[cfacosta]

First off, I would like to apologize if someone has already mentioned this. I have only recently begun posting, so there is a great deal I am likely to have missed.

With that said, my gripe is fairly simple. We have all run into this scenario. Our triumphant soldiers march through the streets of an enemy city, laughing at the citizenry as they go. We then pile our forces into the city in order to give them defense and a place to rest while we plan the next phase of "Operation Ghandi-Kabob". Two turns later, though, those citizens we were laughing at find a way to beat down our entire force and return to the culturally sound ways of their sire. Get real. Those citizens must be packing a hell of a lot of weaponry in their homes and running militia drills in their spare time. I guess if you spend all your money buying guns and all your free time training you might be pretty tough......

Seriously, though. Perhaps in later ages when cities are very large this may be realistic. But I have had cities with 50,000 people destroy almost a dozen defending legionaries. I can only assume that a legionary unit would represent 6000 soldiers (hsitorically semi-accurate). You do the math. In civ 4, I recomend one of two methods for culture flipping an occupied city. First, just simply kick the occupying units outside and give the new owner several conscript defenders. Second, have a percent chance for occupying units to escape the wrath of the people. In this case they would get kicked out, probably injured, and the new owner would again receive consript defenders. Not a huge change, but one that would make me very happy. I am damn near positive those 60,000 legionaries could have beaten the peasants...

 

[dh_epic]

Not if your soldiers can't get a loaf of bread because nobody will accomodate them. Not if they're demoralized by the resistors, who can strike at them from anywhere in the city with stealth, quickness, and precision. Not if going AWOL seems like a better idea than fighting someone else's poorly planned war.

Although you're right, this does happen more often in the modern age, when they're trying to find a more ethical way to fight wars. In the ancient age, they'd simply raze it. But you can do that in Civ 3.

Perhaps you need more choices than simply "take the city / raze the city". There IS a terrifying option in between.

 

[cfacosta]

I would argue that the army has the odds in its favor. Forces occupying a small city do not encamp in the town park. They build quarters on the border of the city. This especially true concerning Roman Legionaries. As for bigger cities, then yes, I totally agree with you. A huge mob of people can present a bit of a roadblock for bringing in supplies!
Your idea about offering a different option is a good one. One suggestion is that you get the option to subdue the populace. As a tradeoff for a greatly reduced chance to flip, the city loses size and maybe some of its improvements. I, for one, would use this option quite liberally.

 

[dh_epic]

I've played the game galactic civilizations lately... and it gives you some choices in combat. They're technological choices, though, and have different costs. But the differences are trading a military advantage for greater amounts of destruction to the battleground (destroying improvements and even lowering the quality of land).

To me, this is a neat inspiration for choices in Civ, even if the choices are much different. The essential tradeoffs would be the improvements you destroy and the people you kill, versus the military advantage you might get. But people would have to be worth more in Civ 4 for it to matter. Reputation would be cool too, if it actually counted for anything.

 

[JanSobieski]

I think one good option would be to take some of the population away as workers. Perhaps you decide how much of the population you want to take away, like go from size 21 to size 1, but you get 10 workers out of 20 citizens because some resist and get killed. I'd do that and then move the foreign workers to my captial to sell to other civs to raise more money for the war effort.
That'd probably piss off the conquered cities and make them more likely to resist though. I think people's opinions of you should determine how likely they'll resist too.

 

[777]

I have a vision how culture flip should work:

Like in Civ II, when you conquered city few/several guerrilla units was flipped to outside of town/city. So when culture flip happens, it would kind of simulate that your own troops would change side. And those troops would take their positions outside of town/city. You could boost happening and force of gurrillas by sending propaganda. Wouldn't it be good idea?

I find it pretty much ridigulous, that you loose every unit in city just when citizens decide to flip Oh for christ sake, get for real! If there's troops in garrison it's not most likely that citizens can overrun whole city. And beside usually army gets it support from own cities than enemy cities what's just occupied.

 

[cfacosta]

I had actually forgotten how civ II did it. Now that I think about it, it wasn't a bad system. Your armies would not suddenly get destroyed by the revolting populace and it would be more believable as far as equipment the civilians get. It seems very odd to me that when a city revolts the population magically forms the most advanced defender available (correct me if this is wrong). In the middle ages, having a city that I just beat down revolt and be defended by a musketman is very frustrating. I KNOW the population didn't have those muskets just lying around. I didn't even have gunpowder...so they didn't steal them from me either! So just generating a bunch of the designated "guerilla" unit for the age when the city is captured would be ok. Maybe allowing the city to "revolt" once in a while thereafter by producing more guerillas outside the city. As fas as your losing troops who traitor to the other side. I don't think this occurs currently in civIII and I, personally, don't really like the idea. You would have to be in pretty bad shape for a whole division of your troops to flip sides.

 

[Dreadnought]

In Rome: Total War, you have three options for conquered cities: 1) Occupy settlement 2) Enslave it 3) Exterminate. So, in Civ4, you could either leave it as it is, enslave some of the people (to make workers) or kill about half of it. Then, if you have a culture flip, then if you reconquer the city, you just exterminate the people in the city (to teach them a lesson). Then, the people might flip so easily (or riot).

It isn't fair how you loose all the units. cfacosta, you have a good idea about this. Maybe Sid will see this post...

 

[777]

I must say I had best idea, realistic and not so hard to accomplish Sid should pick this!

 

[777]

But all in one, I don't get it why they ripped out all of good ideas from Civ2? And instead putted some stupid new ideas. What I would like to see is kind of cross of Civ2 and 3. Oh bubble trumps...

 

[Lockesdonkey]

It isn't fair how you loose all the units. cfacosta, you have a good idea about this. Maybe Sid will see this post...

Let's hope he sees everything. But I know that SOME Firaxians are here...when I posted this, Soren Johnson was cruising through the threads.