No more culture flips

Steffo

Chieftain
Joined
May 27, 2003
Messages
36
Location
Sweden, Eskilstuna
In my next game I will disable the culture flip possibility. It never works for me, not even when i'm really strong in culture.

I think it's also unbalanced and unrealistic, like when an AI gets beaten down to only a couple of cities but still got the same culture value. It should dimish over time when an AI's power is weakend.

When a city flips, I think war should be declared automatically. What would happen in the real world if a city in country A "decides" to join it's neighbour country B? Just because the TV-shows and theatres are better in that country.

Do you play your civ games with the culture flipping possibility?
 
I leave culture flipping on. It rarely causes me any problems and I gain far more cities than I lose.
like when an AI gets beaten down to only a couple of cities but still got the same culture value. It should dimish over time when an AI's power is weakend.
I assume you're referring to the histograph. The graph represents their accumulated total culture, so even when a civ disappears, their total remains on the graph. They're not generating more culture, of course, so with time their share of the graph diminishes.
 
Steffo,

You can use the FlipCalc I made to determine the odds of a flip, if that will help.

You can see that having captured a city makes it much more likely to flip, most flips will occour in occupied territory, not in uncontested border cities.

This makes sense to me. You capture a city and while there is a large active population they have a good chance of flipping. As your troops squash the resistance that chance drops. As you secure other cities bordering it that chance drops. Finally, over time the citizens are assimilated in to your culture and the chances drop to zero.

In a non-captured city of the target civ your only chance of flipping it is if you are very strong culturally. Even if the city is 4 times closer to you capital then the target civ's, your civ has 3 times the culture of the target civ, you only get a 0.6% chance of flipping it per tile you own in their 21-tile radius. If they have units garrisoned there that drops by 0.2 per unit.

I have (before) had this situation where I had 6 of their tiles. That gives a 3.6% chance of flipping, not including the -0.2% for each unit there. After 30 turns or so it was time for war anyway, so I didn't get the city.
 
Culture flips are unbalanced. That's the point. It's supposed to create more tension in the game by allowing the game state to change without war. And it does infuriate the AI when you flip his cities, and it does infuriate you when he flips your cities. I love the incentive to plunge into an irrational war (in hindsight that is; I suppose I come up with some pretty creative curses when it actually happens to me).

On the lower difficulty levels, flipping unbalances the game in your favor more heavily. On the higher difficulty levels, it unbalances the game (further) in the AIs' favor. I wouldn't want Militaristic to be the only trait I'm afraid of in the game. Having Babylon for a neighbor is the scariest thing to me. Hammurabi has single-handedly taught me Ancient Era warfare because of it. :crazyeye:
 
I leave flips on but I do think it could be tuned better.

Peacetime flips are fine, a city over time becomes more integrated into the culture of your neighbour and eventually leaves (through a referendum or revolt). Much like Hong Kong going back to the Chinese or East and West Germany reuniting. Any local military units would probably disband with the flip.

But war time flips cause me a problem in terms of believability. I can't think of many cities that have successfully revolted during a war. Warsaw tried in WW2 but was easily crushed, Paris had a successful one but only when the Germans were in full retreat and the garrison was very weak.

Also I can't understand how all your units are lost in a wartime flip (I've on occassion lost quite a few units). These units would by and large be non-local and so highly unlikely to want to join the flip. Surely worst case you should lose a couple of random units and the others should be thrown out to the city boundaries.

Still a think a wartime flip should be rare and should be heavily dependent on the garrison (non-local units) as opposed to the culture differences. Because they're not going to flip by means of a referendum they can only flip by revolting and defeating or driving off the garrison.
 
I play on regent and have yet to have a city flip to the AI during peacetime, and it only happened to me once in wartime. I had taken Washinton D.C. and in two turns Lincoln had it back. I always leave flips on because I gain 2-5 cities per game with it on and that's really cool, though I do agree that it could be tweaked better. I'm wondering if this can be done in the editor or not... anyone know?
 
I generally play emperor level and most games will gain 3 to 4 cities from culture filps, if not more. I achieve this by building relatively close to the AI's city on several sides if possible, and immediately building a library and temple. If this is done relatively soon after the AI city is built, you get an early lead in local culture ensuring that you get control of more of the city squares than them. This can lead to a situation where they control less than 10 squares in the city radius, which increases substantially the odds of a successful culture flip.

I do this in the early expansion stage of the game and also later in the game when civilizations collapse under attack from multiple enemies, I may join in the fighting and take 1 or 2 cities, but mostly move settlers in between the captured and razed cities building approximately 1 additional city for each prexisting city. AS these cities are usually far away from all civs capitals and corruption is high, the AI will often take 100 turns before they build any culture. I build the culture immediately by rushing of improvementsand therefore gain considerable cultural force in the area.

I gain 2 advantages from this
1. Often several CF's
2. In a future war I can capture many cities in the first turn of a surprise assault (always declared from diplomacy screen to protect reputation) because 2 move units can reach many of their cities. ie easy to attack when tanks first appear on the stage. In most wars I anticipate capturing 6 or more cities on the first turn of the assault, and even when the cities are largish they rarely flip back because my local culture is strong prior to the hostilities. This reduces the AI civ quickly back to their core cities only and gives you a very competitive land mass where you can have all the resources usually available and 4 or 5 luxuries available as well
 
Originally posted by Trev
In most wars I anticipate capturing 6 or more cities on the first turn of the assault, and even when the cities are largish they rarely flip back because my local culture is strong prior to the hostilities.
Your local culture - that is, culture generated in the captured city - must surely be zero, no?
 
Most times where possible I build cities 3 squares away from the AI city and rush a library and temple. Because this city will have more culture than the AI city as they are slow to build cultural buildings, my local culture is stronger than the AI culture at the time of the war. Yes cuilture in the captured city is zero initially, but I buy a library immediately resistance is crushed, so it begins to grow quickly. My reference to local culture referred to my nearby cities, not the captured cities
 
I think the culture points should increase more rapidly in the modern age, in relation to a Civ's size. It's easier to spread your culture with means of television, movies, etc.

Take for instance the cultural impact of the US today on the whole world today.
 
Trev, culture in your nearby cities isn't relevant to the flip-back-chance of your captured city, unless it can help that city take more of its 21-tile radius from the enemy.

Have a look at the flip-calculators
 
Originally posted by Steffo
I think the culture points should increase more rapidly in the modern age, in relation to a Civ's size. It's easier to spread your culture with means of television, movies, etc.

Take for instance the cultural impact of the US today on the whole world today.
Actually, it does. At the beginning of the game, you're chewing up about 50 years per turn. That translates to 2 culture points every 50 years for a Temple. At the end of the game, it eventually becomes 1 year a turn, so you get 100 culture points every 50 years.

And don't forget the 1000-year bonus on your cultural improvements.
 
I leave it on.
I only play on Regent, but I almost always have more cities flip to me than to the AI, by a very large margin.
The only cities that usually flip against me are captured cities that I didn't bombard to a 1 or 2 pop.
 
My culture from nearby cities and the multiple capture of cities does ensure that I often control all 21 city radii squares, if not all, almost all. There is a variable in the formula 'Cc = local culture', I assumed this took the culture from neighbouring cities into account when calculating the culture flip odds,
 
Trev, the 'cc=local culture' is 2 if the civ it may flip to has had more culture in that city, (it remembers how much culture from each civ so they get it back when recaptured).

If the civ it may flip to hasn't got more local culture in that city it is 1.

The only factors in determining a flip are:
- 'local culture'
- total culture (the ration of their civ's culture to yours)
- WLTKD or rioting
- # of foreign citizens (yours are not factored in at all)
- # of foreign citizens resisting
- tiles in your 21 radii under their civ's control (i.e. within their borders, not if they have troops on it)
- distance ratio from your palace to theirs (FP not used at all)
- number of units garrisoned in the city (not workers, settlers or scouts, etc)
 
I can testify from experience that artillery do not count, at least for purposes of converting protesting workers to productive ones. I once left a city with only an artillery garrison, by mistake and got back to it maybe 50 turns later, and it still had protesting workers. So I moved some troops with attack (not bombardment) factors in and the protesters all assimilated almost immediately (two turns). I am pretty sure I wiped out the original owner's civilization, but the protest goes on forever if you don't use normal combat units to garrison.
 
They don't count as garrison units since they have 0 attack and defense.
 
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