Having trouble with loyalty

[oPunchDrunko]

I'm having trouble with cities constantly flipping to free cities then flipping to another civ. When I conquer a city close to another civ the loyalty pressure is pretty strong and I lose control of it within five turns. I tried putting a governor there and garrison the city but that didnt help.

However i was in a dark age, so that had something to do with it. Do you guys have any tips or suggestions for warmongering?

Should I just avoid warfare while in a dark age?

 

[Disgustipated]

Should I just avoid warfare while in a dark age?

Not necessarily, but you do have to plan on conquering several cities as quickly as you can. I won't go into all the loyalty boosters, this recent thread explains all the things you can do to boost your loyalty.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/how-do-i-add-loyalty-to-a-city.638022/

 

[Infixo]

All is explained here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/civ-vi-loyalty-guide.27114/

 

[oPunchDrunko]

Thanks for those guides, but I already knew most of those things in that guide. My problem isn’t with founding cities with loyalty problems, it’s more for capturing cities. The -20 loyalty hit and the -5 loyalty hit from occupation causes the city to flip fast no matter what I do.

I think what I’m going to do is either use a mod that reduces loyalty penalties or one that takes out loyalty all together.

 

[Gaonac'h]

Before declaring on a civ you can see in the trade panel how much population they have in each city (except capital) so you can plan on taking most populated cities first.
In most cases having more troops to speed up conquest solve the loyalty issue, dark age can still be annoying sometime.
Also if you are warring early you could also build a scout to garrison so your army can keep moving forward.

 

[MooFreaky]

There are several options you can go with (even with Dark Age militarism). Sending a big enough force to be taking multiple settlements quickly, either by moving from one to another rapidly. Or by being able to siege multiple cities simultaneously.

The next option are bring some settlers with you, and build a couple cities at minimum distance the same turn you capture your first city. So your new cities and the captured one all exert loyalty over each other, helping keep them from flipping. Depending on the layout of the enemy empire this is usually very reliable and gives you time to get your conquering rolling.

The final option is to just build cities in the free spaces before you turn to warmongering. Take good city locations and build your empire's reach as far as it can go naturally. Then once you are rubbing borders with the enemy go to war. If you pick the correct initial targets you will not have many loyalty issues and can use it as a staging area to continue the conquering while maintaining good order.

 

[Dragabond]

Prioritizing large population centers might work out; even if they flip, while they're free cities they won't be exerting loyalty pressure on the other cities that you want to capture, and they'll have lost some population when you captured them anyway so they'll exert less pressure if/when they flip to another civilization.

It should be noted that (as of right now; no idea if this will be fixed in the future) conquering Free Cities gives no warmonger penalty, even if you raze it. Allowing a large city to flip to a free city and then recapturing and razing it is a viable way to get large cities off of the map while only getting the warmonger penalty for having captured the city.

In one game, I captured two or three Dutch cities several times, allowing them to flip each time so I could recapture and reduce the population further. Then, once the war was over and they flipped to free again, I captured and liberated them back to Wilhelmina, who was quite delighted to have her now 2 or 3 population cities (down from 13 or 15) back. It reduced whatever warmonger penalties I had picked up, reduced the loyalty pressure on the new cities that I had settled right up next to her borders (and swapped most of the tiles to) and generally netted my units exp.

 

[Disgustipated]

Also there are ways to plan to take cities in rapid succession. The first is to eliminate all the walls of those cities you want. Work on getting the walls down in several cities before taking your first one. Ideally, if you have enough troops, you could put one under siege, get the health down low, and start whittling away on the others. Though doubtful you'll have enough troops to do more than 2 at a time. Regardless, 2 is better than one.

 

[Midgardsormr]

(and swapped most of the tiles to)

Ha! Nice tactic; I hadn't thought of that one. I've swapped tiles away from a city that was about to be captured, but it never occurred to me to swap them out of captured enemy territory prior to the rebellion.