[C3C] culture flips

[patinthedesert]

Is there a way to detect if a culture flip could be coming for a city? And then what way to combat it? Rushing an improvement or 2 to add culture, like temple, library etc.? Move in more military?

 

[tjs282]

Is there a way to detect if a culture flip could be coming for a city?

Not really: it's random, but weighted according to multiple factors, as listed in this thread:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/culture-flipping-exposed.14337/

Note, however, that a newly-captured town will never flip on the first interturn. So you are safe to move all your troops in (to quell as much resistance as possible; foreign resistors also significantly increase flip-risk) on the turn you capture it.

But even if that town is fully pacified next turn, you would still be well-advised to evacuate every last unit, otherwise you risk losing them in the event that it flips — either moving them onwards to attack the next target-town, or fortifying/sentrying them outside the newly captured town (ideally towards your new border, so that enemy fast-units can't reach the town directly) to recapture it.

And then what way to combat it? Rushing an improvement or 2 to add culture, like temple, library etc.? Move in more military?

Rush-building Cultural buildings in a flip-risky towns has very little effect on its own, apart from that it pushes the town's borders outwards (after a couple of turns), which potentially reduces the number of FatCross-tiles under foreign control.

Only potentially though, because once you're carving into an opponent's heartland, especially in the mid- to late-game, their 'local' per-town Culture will be much stronger than yours, so your gold/shield-investments might not actually gain you as many of the BFC-tiles as you'd like (i.e. all 20 of them!).

Heavily garrisoning a town can reduce the risk of a flip, but the huge number of troops you would usually need to get that risk to zero, could likely be better employed by taking the next town(s) towards the enemy capital, thus reducing the number of tiles under foreign control via territorial, rather than Cultural, gain.

The most effective way to eliminate all flip-risk, though, is to eliminate that opponent.

 

[justanick]

The most effective way to eliminate all flip-risk, though, is to eliminate that opponent.

Very true.

But even if that town is fully pacified next turn, you would still be well-advised to evacuate every last unit, otherwise you risk losing them in the event that it flips

Leaving one or 2 cheap defenders can be acceptable. Losing a city to attacking military is really bad fpor war weariness.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/how-does-war-weariness-work.61628/

Move in more military?

This can work and this article tells you how to calculate the needed amount of military police.

G_needed = (F+T)*Cc*H*(Cte/Cty)

This number does of course need to be rounded up. Also you need to calculate in the risk, than disorder will occur and H will thus be 2.

Say H will be 1 because you can avoid disorder. Say Cte/Cty will be 1 because you are on par with global culture. Say Cc is two because enemy culture is still stronger locally. Say T is 9 because there are 9 foreign culture tiles in the potential fat cross. Say there are 11 Foreigners in the town all of which you have managed to convert into not resisting. All those assumptions are quite optimistic. Still you would need 40 units of military police to counter the possibility of a flip. Practically speaking this is way too expensive.

It is only sensible if your global culture is at least thrice that of your enemy. In other words: It is expected to never be sensible. If you concentrate 40+ units in one town you can kept that one town from flipping, but the price is too high.

Rushing an improvement or 2 to add culture, like temple, library etc.?

You can rush settlers. This reduces population by 2 and thus probably foreign population. The settler will be foreign and thus cost no unit support. Another popular tactic is to starve the population. This can be combined with risking towns to flip and retake them, thus reduce population further.

I prefer to abstain from starving. One settler via disbanding say 3 MedInfs from the first interturn seems sensible, but this is more nice to have and not something one should force.

The best approach is to simple take out the enemy all together. Use your military in an offensive manner and once the enemy does no longer exist no flipping can occur.

 

[CKS]

Is there a way to detect if a culture flip could be coming for a city? And then what way to combat it? Rushing an improvement or 2 to add culture, like temple, library etc.? Move in more military?

Both CRp MapStat and CivAssist II will tell you flip chances if you don't want to calculate them yourself.

Are we talking about recently captured towns, or your own native towns? If it is captured, then tjs282 and justanick pretty much covered things. If it is your own town, then building culture to get the first expansion is a good idea. If your opponent still owns tiles in your BFC, then there is some risk. Because the town is yours, the number of military units required to prevent flips may not be ridiculous, so moving in a unit or two may suffice. If your own town flips with a low flip risk, you can also hope for it to flip back, as the flip risk for the AI may be significant. (Your citizens don't change nationality in a flip; they do change nationality if you gift a town, so gifted towns are unlikely to flip.)

Getting into a culture-building war to gain control over all the BFC tiles is not worth it except in special circumstances, and you will fail miserably on higher levels. It is occasionally worth it to gain access to a resource.

 

[patinthedesert]

Both CRp MapStat and CivAssist II will tell you flip chances if you don't want to calculate them yourself.

Are we talking about recently captured towns, or your own native towns?

I was talking about recently captured towns. Interesting is one strategy to pull troops out to an adjacent tile once resistence is gone.
I don't know anything about those assistance tools. I'm not running any mods at this point. Re-visiting the basic game (in Civ 3 Complete) is keeping me entertained at this point.

I laughed at the answer to use the brutalist approach of eliminate the enemy to avoid the problem. Yeah that certainly will work.

 

[CKS]

Older units are best for pacifying resistance. A conscript warrior is just as good at pacifying resistance as an elite modern army, but nobody cries if they lose a warrior in a flip. Put one or two cheap units in the town, then leave some better units outside of town to retake it if it flips.

Neither CRp MapStat nor CivAssist II are mods. They are standalone programs that read the saves and give you non-spoiler information in an easy-to-find format with built in calculators for stuff like flip risks. For example, MapStat lists what each leader (who will talk to you) has available to trade each turn, so you don't have to individually click on each portrait each turn (which is even more tedious when there are more than 7 of them). CivAssist II gives you more information (like which tiles have forests you've already chopped); MapStat runs more reliably on Windows 10.

 

[justanick]

A long term strategy that does not require to eliminate the foreign home civilization, is to assimilate all citizens into your culture. In despotism the probability for a citizen to be assimilated is 1 % per turn. In republic, monarchy and fascism it is 2%, in feudalism 3% and in democracy and communism it is 4%. So after 20 turns only 44.2%(communisn), 54.4% (feudalism) or 66.8%(republic) of foreigners are expected to still be foreigners. So if you want to preserve say a scientific civilization that is possible.

Chances of a flip tend to decrease over time. The question when to make peace under such conditions is unclear. Once at peace you cannot undo a flip by retaking the city, at least not without breaking the peace treaty. Simply eliminating the enemy is way easier.

If you have no way to eliminate the enemy or at least the risk of flipping, then simply razing the taken city can make sense. But genocide will effect your relations to all civs who find out about it.

 

[justanick]

Normally I quite enjoy using bombers to cut off all my enemy's strategic and luxury resources, this time I might have taken it a bit too far.



TIL that you can still harvest some resources from cratered terrain.

Another approach regarding flips would be to force starvation before you take a city, be it by excessive use of carpet bombing or blocking all food producing tiles. All those approaches against culture flips have in common that they are possible, but highly uneconomical. Only eliminating the enemy is a convincing approach.

 

[Fergei]

A long term strategy that does not require to eliminate the foreign home civilization, is to assimilate all citizens into your culture. In despotism the probability for a citizen to be assimilated is 1 % per turn. In republic, monarchy and fascism it is 2%, in feudalism 3% and in democracy and communism it is 4%. So after 20 turns only 44.2%(communisn), 54.4% (feudalism) or 66.8%(republic) of foreigners are expected to still be foreigners. So if you want to preserve say a scientific civilization that is possible.

I really hope you didn't just arrive at that 44.2% figure out of a mental calculation or I will feel inadequate! This is really useful as I hadn't really grasped how this setting was implemented. I love the potential of a culture flip, but really it is far too common given situations where your army has dominated enemy territory and has total military superiority over a civilian population.

Successfully nibbling away at neighbouring empires with successive military campaigns sandwiched between peacetime just isnt a viable option unless you go down the razing route. Without razing you realistically have to commit to complete extinction of the enemy Civ the moment you capture their first city anywhere near their capital.

I think I will tweak the assimilation rates, possibly doubling them for each government type and see what sort of effect that has on captured cities flipping back to their original Civ.