Dealing with 'border crush' after a war

Byrath

Peacenik
Joined
Oct 14, 2005
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St Louis, MO, USA
I couldn't find an article in the War Academy that looked like it would deal with this issue so I'm asking here...
Here's a screenshot of my situation to ease making a description.

I'm playing the Ancient Meditteranean mod.

Ok, I finished conquering the Romans about 15 turns ago, and as you can see I am having serious border issues. Cumae was taken 20, maybe 25 turns ago, and I popped a great artist there immediately, so its doing ok. Pisae and Albanopali though, are having major problems.. Pisae, prior to going into revolt had 2 or 3 water tiles only, and Albanopoli is also being pressed hard. I also recently took an Illyrian city just off-screen, northwest of Pylos, that is going to have troubles after coming out of revolt.

So .. how can I make this better? I do have a couple more great artists, but they are, of course, a limited commodity and would like to save them for later if possible. I know that a good tactic is to take a civ's core cities and raze the border towns, giving the core room to breathe.... but this map is very cramped, most civs only have 4-6 cities, which means I'd need to raze half or more of the cities I capture.
 
as soon as you capture a city you get border crush and usually population plummets

I try to whip a theatre after a few turns as possible - that sometimes stabilises population (at a lower level)

make sure you have workers following behind your troops to rebuild farms if they have been pillaged

I always find new cities awkward, - all this we want to rejoin the motherland stuff - so once they are producing hammers I often put globe in a capture capital (no unhappiness)

if it gets desperate turn up the culture slider

otherwise - I'm stuck too
 
In that screenshot, the first thing that comes to mind is definitely to capture Thebai. Great artists honestly won't get you all that far in expanding borders in a place where Thebai's culture has been sitting since almost the beginning of the game.

If you were fighting that war over again, it would be worth considering razing those last two cities, especially if you want peace with Agamemnon.

If you are running slavery (a good idea during almost any war) then it can make sense to whip a theater, except that it's also helpful to get as much out of that soon-to-starve population by whipping something expensive like a courthouse.

In your current situation, if you are unable to put up a strong fight against Agamemnon to take thebes, you probably have the option of giving those cities to agamemnon, which will make him happier with you.
 
You can whip twice or more in one turn as well as soon as a city comes out of revolt. I normally whip a courthouse and theatre until the angry faces go away and the city isn't starving. If it's still starving or unhappy whip a temple if poss, barracks and then a longbow or other defender. I don't like seeing people starve because I didn't whip them enough, that would be cruel ;)

You can then reorder your builds without losing them so they come out in the desired order (this is a bit stupid though because you can only add buildings to the top of the queue so you need to pick them in reverse order that you want them built).

Once a theatre is online run an artist or 2 to get the first border pop ASAP. You don't really need a theatre if you have caste system but then you can't whip :( I tend to run slavery during a war for this reason.

Anyway, you need to take that holy city.

EDIT: I see the city is only pop 5 though, you'll only be able to whip a theatre anyway. If you don't really need the city you can always give it back in a peace settlement, or bribe another AI with it.
 
I usually continue fighting wars until the other civ vassalizes. The other option is to take the cities closest to my border, and raze the cities that are close enough to cause trouble for my new border towns.
 
Assuming a strong Navy/Army, raze Thebai ASAP. WHy? Only 2 Civs are Jewish, so you'll be fine diplomatically. Plus, it'll save the GAs for lator.
 
A shame there is no real quick fix for this, but some very good advice, thank you guys. This is my first real shot at warmongering, gotta say I'm finding it tedious and a bit frustrating.. yet amusing and rewarding at the same time. :crazyeye: :crazyeye:

Agamemnon won't talk to me ever since I stopped trading with him at Hattie's request (I'm such a sucker...) so gifting him the cities is unfortunately out. Looks like its war then! :crazyeye:
 
I suggest trying it on a harder difficulty, you seem to be steamrolling everyone with score.
 
all the other advice is good, even the "keep going on with wars" part that i'm so scared of! i'll just add some info about culture revolts in the cities. all of this assumes that mod follows normal game culture rules with default settings (culture flips allowed), i haven't played it so i don't know.

if you don't want to lose those cities, park spare troops in them to prevent culture-flip revolts after the we-just-got-conquered revolt is over. the more the merrier, and quality counts too; maces have a higher value than warriors, etc (or whatever troops are in the mod). hover over the nationality(?) bar in the city screen and it'll tell you the chance to revolt, if there is any. culture spread is weird over the water and albanopoli might not actually be in danger of flippage, i dunno. pisae's getting pushed from both sides, ewwwww.

under normal rules, those cities wouldn't be allowed to flip back to rome after conquest, yay. but that's not the problem we're facing here. they are allowed to flip to Aggie (or whoever the brown civ is).

religion is a factor in the "fight for culture in a city" formula. if the 2 battling cities (thebai vs. pisae) have aggie's SR and not your own, which they do, he gets a bonus after the other factors are added up, i think the chance is doubled. so you may need to make a call on stationing a lot of troops or taking your chances and maybe calling it a loss. checking the chance to revolt with the troops you already have in place will give you an idea.

This is my first real shot at warmongering, gotta say I'm finding it tedious and a bit frustrating.. yet amusing and rewarding at the same time. :crazyeye: :crazyeye:

well i'd say for a first shot you look like you're doing great! i've taken i dunno, 80 gazillion shots at it? and it still doesn't come naturally to me, all that violence *giggle*. good luck and have fun :)

edit: i re-read, you finished the romans 15 turns ago, but pisae recently went into revolt. so this is a culture revolt already, not the initial conquer revolt? if so, then if that mod follows normal game rules, the next culture revolt in there is an instant city flip to him, whether he's speaking to you or not. if that happens, you won't lose any troops in there, altho without OB they'll be ejected and they may be sent somewhere funky. if the brown civ is Decebal, you have OB with him and you'd be able to get 'em with boats. but i've seen some awfully weird ejects *giggle*.
 
Actually, if you conquered the city, it will not culture flip unless you've turned ON that option in a custom game. I once held one of Zara's cities via. conquest through ~ four-five revolts without adding troops.

However, that city couldn't really work its own tiles. Go and capture/raze that holy city to get the pressure off the capture cities, or they'll revolt every 5-20 turns for a good amount of turns. Save the GAs for later.
 
Actually, if you conquered the city, it will not culture flip unless you've turned ON that option in a custom game.

it can't culture flip to the guy you conquered it from. it can flip to somebody else due to culture. the guy the OP conquered it from is dead ;).

i had it correct here:
under normal rules, those cities wouldn't be allowed to flip back to rome after conquest, yay. but that's not the problem we're facing here. they are allowed to flip to Aggie (or whoever the brown civ is).

but here:
edit: i re-read, you finished the romans 15 turns ago, but pisae recently went into revolt. so this is a culture revolt already, not the initial conquer revolt? if so, then if that mod follows normal game rules, the next culture revolt in there is an instant city flip back to him

i should have said "flip to him", not "flip back to him". i'll edit that.
 
You can then reorder your builds without losing them so they come out in the desired order (this is a bit stupid though because you can only add buildings to the top of the queue so you need to pick them in reverse order that you want them built).

Yep, I usually whip when they come out of revolt rather than letting the pop starve. There is a penalty for whipping when no hammers are invested so sometimes it's better not to whip say 4 pop and starve anyway so you can whip for 2 pop later. If they must starve then I re-assign the population to hammer or commerce tiles as you don't need food when starving.

Have you tried pressing SHIFT when picking the buildings (or any build), they add to the bottom of the queue when you do this.

Byrath

When you do use your GAs don't forget to maximise the culture first as you get 20 turns worth of city culture in addition to that from cultural level expansion. Therefore you should set the culture slider to 100% and borrow commerce tiles shared with other cities. THIS GREATLY INCREASES THE POTENCY OF THE CULTURE BOMB. Deranged Duck's Culture Mechanics Dissassembled thread explains this in detail. After the bomb you reset everything back.

If you are spiritual consider changing civics to Caste System and running max artists if this helps increase your city's total culture - this really helps in a culture squeeze situation as the AI may possess most of the commerce producing tiles.

Also any tiles that don't produce commerce that are in the fat cross of another of your cities should be shifted into the sphere of influence of the other city so the culture bombed city govenor cannot reassign citizens to non-commerce tiles during the culture bomb.

You should also consider manually reassign all citizens to max commerce tiles (totally ignoring food and hammers and putting the city into starvation).

Also set the city govenor to max commerce helps because when the city borders expand during the culture bomb I find the the citizens will get reassigned.

You need to determine if it is better to actually turn the govenor on or leave it off. If you expect to get most culture tiles from stealing off the AI then turn it on, if you are happy with the initial setup then leave it off.

Then go ahead and culture bomb with the artist. You get 20 turns worth of city culture and absolutely nothing from the GA culture itself (except in the city tile). The city tile actually gets it's Great Work culture added as 20 blocks of 200 culture (on standard) which helps expand the city's cultural radius and it is this process that adds culture to the tiles outside the city (see Deranged Duck's post).

By maxing the city culture you add more culture at very little cost.

You won't actually loose any food, hammers or population or affect any other city as you will be able to reassign the citizens back to their normal tiles immediately after the culture bomb before pressing ENTER to advance the game year that is. Of course you will have to remain in Caste System for 5 turns if you switched to it as Spiritual.


Another point is whether to culture bomb to get a city out of revolt or not. If you bomb the city out of revolt you loose out on maximising the effectiveness of the culture bomb at long distance as you loose the chance to build up the cultural output of the city which is the only thing that contributes to the fourth ring. This means if the revolt is only a few turns ie small city you could be better off letting the city come out of revolt naturally and not using the culture bomb to suppress the revolt. You can then rush some culture buildings. However, in many if not most cases you are more likely to be under culture pressure or wish to inlfuence the first, second and third rings and are not too concerned with the fourth ring. In this case you should culture bomb instantly to get the extra 60/40/20 cpt + city culture up and running respectively in these rings.

So if I have captured a small city and it is not under cultural pressure or I intend to capture or raze the city applying cultural pressure and I have a need to extend my influence to the fourth ring and the city itself has very little cpt, I would whip a theatre first. This gives you 60 extra culture from the theatre to all tiles including the fourth ring which would otherwise have nothing from the Great Work (less the small amount of normal culture lost by delaying). Another possible reason to be concerned with a small amount of 4th ring culture might be to supplement the cultural influence of one of your other cities. This could be enough to flip a tile that you already have culture invested in from another of your cities. One example is the coast tile 1S of Albanopoli which is getting cpt from Cumae and would have had 18 turns worth of Cumae's cpt at the time of the Great Work.

Deranged Duck also gives values for the cultural garrison strength when suppressing revolts.
 
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