GOTM 31 Spoiler I - End of Ancient Age, Map of starting continent.

[civ_steve]

Welcome to CFC and the GOTM, Bruindane! I'm glad you're enjoying your GOTM experience; you've certainly been able to take advantage of the neighboring civs putting all those shields into Wonders!!

Smackster: England's placement of Nottingham in your game is 2 tiles further South than in mine. I did build a Settler before building the granary, and was able to claim the intermediate Wine river first. I was curious whether those who built Granaries before their first Settler experienced more aggressive English city placement, and if so, did it impede them. (Ultimately, it doesn't matter much with this crowd )

 

[AlanH]

Paris built three warriors then granary and popped its first settler in 2590 BC. She claimed the wine valley with Orleans, and we then built Lyons north of Paris and the river in 2190 BC, with Rheims on the next turn on the west coast.

These placements were all aimed at depriving England, as well as grabbing the wine. Lyons was my third city, delayed to go further north to start my second ring, and illuminated an English settler as it founded, probably messing up their plans for Nottingham. Nottingham was placed on the west coast in my game, and culture flipped to the Iroquois well before I started modifying the political geography.

So all round, England had a bad day at the office early on in my game, and it deteriorated rapidly later on .

 

[FriendlyFire]

A quick Question for the gotm vets.

Cultural Flips. I've suffered from these very badly reversing a war situation.
What am I doing wrong ???

After capturing a city. I Immediately garrison it with 2:1/3:1 mil vs pop ratio of troops and starve the city down to a single pop point. yet I still suffer from CFs.

Need HELP

 

[a space oddity]

I think everybody had problems with the Iroqi culture this game. There are some great strategy articles on culture flips (even a calculator) and what's needed to prevent them. In this case it was the proximity of the Iroqi capital that was the biggest culprit.

I'll add some links for you later.

edit: I found it in the utilities forum flip calculator by annares

edit2: I just left the cities empty and posted a strong unit next to it, waited for them to flip and then retook 'em.

 

[FriendlyFire]

edit2: I just left the cities empty and posted a strong unit next to it, waited for them to flip and then retook 'em.

ahhh thats a great idea.
will try it out,

 

[Dianthus]

@FriendlyFire, another thing you can do is wipe out the AI civ as quick as possible. Once you have wiped them out their ex-cities can't flip to them. Also, the resistors are pacified much more quickly. I often "waste" lots of offensive potential garrisonning recently captured cities in an attempt to quell the resistance, when often I would be better off using those offensive units to attack the remainder of the AI cities.

 

[Xevious]

@FriendlyFire, another thing you can do is wipe out the AI civ as quick as possible. Once you have wiped them out their ex-cities can't flip to them. Also, the resistors are pacified much more quickly. I often "waste" lots of offensive potential garrisonning recently captured cities in an attempt to quell the resistance, when often I would be better off using those offensive units to attack the remainder of the AI cities.

This is what I was planning to do in my game. I loaded troops on ships and took out the 2 lone English towns at the north end of both islands. I then dropped more troops in those towns, and also sent a couple ships to land at Salamanca. I took out the 11 Iroquois cities on our continent/island in 3 or 4 turns. I sued for peace getting 2 more of the 4 they had elsewhere, leaving them with 2 cities far from their initial start point. So far I haven't had any culture flips.

And yes, I am trying to get back into the game after a few months off. I'm finding myself a bit rusty, and still trying to learn all the changes that were made.

 

[a space oddity]

And yes, I am trying to get back into the game after a few months off. I'm finding myself a bit rusty, and still trying to learn all the changes that were made.

Welcome back, sounds like your doing great.

 

[Karasu]

So all round, England had a bad day at the office early on in my game, and it deteriorated rapidly later on .

See what I mean?

 

[smackster]

Smackster: England's placement of Nottingham in your game is 2 tiles further South than in mine. I did build a Settler before building the granary, and was able to claim the intermediate Wine river first. I was curious whether those who built Granaries before their first Settler experienced more aggressive English city placement, and if so, did it impede them. (Ultimately, it doesn't matter much with this crowd )

Ultimately it hurt England to settle that spot and in a number of ways,

1) It was easy for me to settle near to Nottingham (still within my RCP ring) and attack it the first turn of war. As I already had wine, I wasn't too worried, and I would never have traded those wines in this game either.

2) I think it was the third city they settled, and then they roaded it all up, I think that ultimately hurt them more becuase of the distances, their workers must have simply been roading all their tiles, and not doing much else.

3) Finally the distance of their cities made me feel more comfortable in an early (early for me) attack on the English (oh and for those of you that slip into calling the English in Civ, British, I think they should be called English in this game, if however the English in any game, capture all the Celtic cities then and only then can you call them British, we have to keep some modicum of historical perspective in this game).

I did of course build the Granary first and then a settler.

Smackster

 

[civ_steve]

Ultimately it hurt England to settle that spot and in a number of ways,

...

Smackster

I totally agree. An aggresive placement of cities by England makes them just that much vulnerable and accessible. After declaring peace with them, England landed two Settlers in the Tundra south of Paris, and founded 2 cities. They are so exposed, absolutely nothing to worry about and they helped me secure territory so a Barb camp wouldn't suddenly pop up as the change-over to Middle Ages occurred.

Friendly-Fire: if you're not a cultural heavyweight (check out the F8 screen to determine this) then you can expect a LOT more CFs. During active wars I'll only post a few wounded units in these cities, and once healed move them out (if the city isn't vulnerable to recapture, that is.) Something else that seems to help: activate the governor when you capture the city and let them manage the city's mood. This pretty much assures that the city won't go into Civil Disorder as resistance is put down, and it seems to reduce CF occurance (at least subjectively!)

 

[grahamiam]

I totally agree. An aggresive placement of cities by England makes them just that much vulnerable and accessible. After declaring peace with them, England landed two Settlers in the Tundra south of Paris, and founded 2 cities.

England and the Iroquois went after that lousy area aggressively during my game England had 2 settler/spear pairs and Iro had 1, both trying to get down there. Funny thing was, the spice tundra to the west was still open at that point and i already had the iron covered. there must be a resource down there that we can't see yet (i'm not even up to gunpowder atm ).
Due to thier agressive tactics, I actually settled down there before cutting off the spice tundra.

In regards to flips, Iroquois had 3 wonders before I attacked them therefore I was expecting flips. Even so, I still lost 2 healing elites (1 horse and 1 sword) as well as a vet unit while trying to tax starve/quell resistance in thier captured capital. As a rule of thumb, i only keep extremely wounded units (redlined) in cities to quell resistance and i keep the number equal to the number of resisting citz. imho, more than that is useless. i don't usually activate the govenor as I really try to tax starve thier pop down to 1 to minimize flip chances.

 

[bradleyfeanor]

@CivSteve: I built a granary first, and I was one turn away from losing the wine river. The English were also able to get the iron mountain north of Paris. Their city placement didn't help them much in the end though. They only had the iron linked for two turns before I took the city.

 

[Lord Jimbob]

A quick Question for the gotm vets.

Cultural Flips. I've suffered from these very badly reversing a war situation.
What am I doing wrong ???

After capturing a city. I Immediately garrison it with 2:1/3:1 mil vs pop ratio of troops and starve the city down to a single pop point. yet I still suffer from CFs.

This is how I avoided any flips during GOTM31, although it repeats some of the tips from the previous posts.

I, like a lot of the others, just garrison the city w/wounded troops so that by the time they are healed, the resistance is over. Although I used to starve the cities and repopulate w/natives, now I try and just overrun the enemy civ, either eliminating them, or making sure that their capitol relocates to a far-off position so CFing is minimized (when I conquered the Iroquois this month, I made peace and regrouped after I had taken all of their cities on the continent and their capitol had flipped to the north end of the northern island).

I think it also helps to keep the population of the city in WLTKD by using entertainers. The earlier you start capturing the ememy civ's cities, the less likely the civ's overall culture will be much greater than your own, which will also reduce the likelihood of flipping. Likewise, the sooner you start conquering, the easier it will be to catch up or take the lead in culture (=less flipping). I didn't have any flips after conquering cities, from nearly all the civs, up to the domination limit.

Lastly, the ultimate anti-CF technique: use GL to move your palace to the former capitol of the conquered civ- that way, the city that's most likely to flip (the former capitol of the civ) now can't flip b/c it's your capitol! And all of the other cities on the continent will be close to your capitol so when you conquer them, they're more stable. I did this with the blue civ in the MA and it worked like a charm. CFing does indeed suck. [punch]

 

[AlanH]

These don't always work that well. For me, Salamanca flipped after the Iroquois had been banished to far off lands - much further than the local north island. It also took many, many turns to quash resistance in some Iroquois cities. I built workers in one or two cities to help reduce pop, so that must have taken at least ten turns and I probably didn't start immediately. I don't garrison with many troops. If a unit is only one or two hit points down I let him heal in place rather than move him into the city. Badly wounded units are only the ones that get to rest in city beds and I move them out as soon as they are healed.

I certainly don;t have the luxury of garrisoning with multiple units for any length of time at all.

 

[smackster]

When I got my troops to Salamanca it was size one, and had built both Collossus and Great Lighthouse. Iroquois must have been rushing troops to get it down to that size. It still did flip however, and all my galleys in sea squares sank that turn.

For avoiding flips I go with a combination of what most of have already said, conquer quick, starve the pops (or rush settlers/workers), make them happy, garrison with damaged troops only to remove resistors, and put fast troops within reach, ready to take them back.

Smackster

 

[Megalou]

Not confirmed, but here goes:

Leaving a city completely empty tends to lower the risk of a flip. Don't blame me if doesn't work, however.

 

[Sabre]

I avoided flips by burning every city to the ground and sowing the land with salt! Bwuhahahahahaha!!!

 

[smackster]

Not confirmed, but here goes:

Leaving a city completely empty tends to lower the risk of a flip. Don't blame me if doesn't work, however.

It does seem like that sometimes. But I do think the only reason to put a troop in a city is to burn off the resistors (or to defend it if its in striking range of the opposition).

Like AlanH it took forever for me to get rid of some of those resistors, actually I still had an Iro resistor at the end of the game, he must have resisted for about 1000 years.

 

[Dianthus]

I still had an Iro resistor at the end of the game, he must have resisted for about 1000 years.

Had you made peace with the Iro (I like that abbreviation, much easier to spell )? When you're at peace the quelling of resistors is completely predictable. I.e. there is no randomness involved. Every garrisoned unit quells one resistor per turn.