How the RNG can completely destroy a game

[tR1cKy]

Before you ask, the level is deity and the town to the south is the persian capital (Persepolis). Persians are circa 3x my culture. Citizens of antioch are all persians and are NOT resisting. If you count, you see that in Antioch there are 20 military units, not counting cannons, empty armies, the leader and the ships. 20 units to keep a size 6 town quiet should be enough, right? Wrong. Next turn the city flips.

Obviously, after this event the game is completely messed up.

What surprises me more is that there are people that actually like such sort of things. Long live the RNG... bah.

<RANT>
Firaxis, are you reading? I did'n shell out 40 euros for a slot machine. These things are just plain stupid and need to be fixed. Period.
</RANT>

Moderator Action: Please watch your language. I understand it's a rant, but you can do better. --Padma
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Can I have a save please? Is this Conquests, PTW, or Vanilla? If you can give me a save, I'll give you the flip chances. Since you are so close to the capital (the next city) and the population is medium, but all of theirs, the chances actually are pretty high. You could've stationed your units outside the city, starved it, and built workers until it was size one, and so you could retake it.

 

[tR1cKy]

It's Vanilla with latest patch. Yes i have a save, but the game is modded, i should post the entire mod to let you use it.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Can you just give me the save - it might work just without the mod?

 

[Shadow Phoenix]

yea, me 2.
and btw maybe the chances o flipping were modded? just a thought.
"GO RNG!!"

 

[homeyg]

Sometimes the amount of culture of the other civ is so great, or you're so close to the capital that you really can't control culture flipping with units. I would recommend the next time you take a city that is so close to the capital and you need to keep it, park your units outside it so you don't lose all of them. When it flips, just take it back. The city is going to flip eventually so you might as well raze it.

 

[Willem]

Another thing, culture flipping is partialy determined by the number of foreign nationals in the city. If you were to starve the city down to just 1, then start adding your own people, you'll have a better chance of holding it.

And if there's was no resistance, why didn't you rush a Temple or something to develop your own culture? Judging by the cultural boundaries of Frugola, you're not using your cultural buildings very effectively. A population of 6 and no expansion of it's boundaries yet? You should have built the Temple before you built the Harbor.

BTW, it's culture flipping you're upset about, not RNG. That's a different thing altogether.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

It is not the RNG that is the problem, it is the fact that military has almost no influence on the flip chance. You might need a 100 to prevent a flip.

Use mapstat to see the city flip chances.

Starve the city to size 1.
Conquer or destroy any cultural influence in the city radius.

Then culture flip chances will be low (<<1%) enough so that a very few garisons can hold it.

The way you had this city, i would not dare to put any unit inside, not 1, not 50. This was a sure flip.

I do agree that it military should have a better effect on preventing city flips. 1 or 2 per citizen max seems much more reasonable to me.

 

[morchuflex]

Yes, I too think there should be no way for a city to flip when the ratio of occupying units to citizens is high. The number is still debatable. It could vary depending of both civs' govt... Citizens from a despotic civ could actually be glad to see you conquer them, if you're under republic! Conversely, forcing former citizens of a democracy to pledge allegeance to a communist empire would require, say, 2 units per citizen...

 

[microbe]

Before you ask, the level is deity and the town to the south is the persian capital (Persepolis).

Firaxis, are you reading? I did'n shell out 40 damn euros for a slot machine. These things are just plain stupid and need to be fixed. Period.

Sorry, but there is nothing to fix. We all know cities will flip, especially when it's in resistance, has a lot of foreigners, has culture overlap with the enemy, and so on.

Thus it was YOUR fault to put yourself in such a danger. Next time raze the city and bring a settler with your army, and learn from the lesson.

 

[bingen]

They did introduce a 'fix' for this as they enabled cultural comversions to be turned off when starting a new game. I can't remember if you can do this on vanilla though.

 

[Shadow Phoenix]

i still cant see the save ^_^

 

[CrackedCrystal]

Well, the idea of a culture flip I like. After all, the citizens are uprising and taking the town back. However I do not like how all of your units go 'poof'. Like these citizens can just kill off a battalion? I would like it much better if your units are just moved to a tile outside the city (i.e. they had to retreat) Maybe damage them to impose some type of penalty so you don't just retake it?

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Culture flipping can be seen in real life pretty much.

If not enough troops are in Iraq, surely it will flip back to an islamic dictatorship. Even with the troops in Iraq, it is not so sure it will be kept under western influence to become a western nation (no we are not gonna start a political debate about this ! ) I am not expecting all american troops to be lost in a culture flip though

Also in Ukraine you see a kind of culture flip as they want to leave the russian influence and join the european culture. It happens all the time.

 

[tR1cKy]

First, thank to all for the support. I know well how the damn things works, but appreciate the suggestions anyway.

@Ginger Ale: sorry, the save is no more. I reloaded a few turns before and changed the invasion plan, without saving it. My fault. However i can gather the data from the "alternate timeline". I'll post them soon so if you're interested in calculating the probability of the flip you can still do the job with sufficient approximation.

@microbe: in your quest to lecture people, you're missing the point. I'm fully aware of everything you say. The goal of my post is to expose what i consider to be a serious flaw in the game. I was not asking for help.
Is there nothing to fix? Your opinion. Mine is that there's a lot to fix.

@Shadow: no, flip rules are not modded.

@Willem: thank you, but no help. In deity i find impossible to keep my culture on par with ai's. A scientific civ can build a library with 24 shields. A religious one can build a temple with 16. I'm not skilled enough to compete. I can barely crank up enough units to try a "supremacy" victory.

@Whacked: flips depends both on a probability function (which i consider borked) and on the RNG. Every turn you have a probability. The RNG is what triggers the event. The city may flip next turn or never. It's the RNG that decides.
You're talking about CivAssist, not MapStat. It doesn't work with my mod. Runtime error -9 (or something like that) then it bombs out.
Then, i had no chance to do anything. First turn, conquered (every people resisting). Second turn, resistence ends (no disorder). Third turn, flip.

My impression is that both the RNG and the probability function are borked. About the RNG, we all know that it can produce ridicolous events (such as the spear beating the tank). The flip function seems to work well with normal values, but goes astray when something tends to zero (perhaps... ). A possible result is that 6 population units turn into 6 harry potters and vanish 20 military units...

(Off topic): 100 posts!!! no more a chieftain!!!

 

[Willem]

@Willem: thank you, but no help. In deity i find impossible to keep my culture on par with ai's. A scientific civ can build a library with 24 shields. A religious one can build a temple with 16. I'm not skilled enough to compete. I can barely crank up enough units to try a "supremacy" victory.

Of course you find it impossible, you're building a Harbour before you build a culture building, even though you have a Harbour in the city right next to it. That's what I would call redundancy and poor planning. And you build Walls before culture in a besieged city that has a large stack of units in it. There such a thing as rushing you know, it will only cost you some gold to build culture in a city that's prone to flip. You're just making poor choices and blaming the outcome on the game.

@Whacked: flips depends both on a probability function (which i consider borked) and on the RNG. Every turn you have a probability. The RNG is what triggers the event. The city may flip next turn or never. It's the RNG that decides.

No it's not. There are alot of variables that determine a flip. The RNG has very little to do with it. There used to be a post somewhere from Firaxis detailing the factors, maybe if you do a search you can find it.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

yes of course, if you have a 1% chance for a city to flip, it is RNG that decides if it will flip of not.

This situation looks like a MUCH bigger flip chance though. Maybe 10% or more. With such chances, flips are inevitable and you can't blame RNG for it.

And yes i am talking about mapstat. Mapstat gives flip chances for all your cities.

 

[TimBentley]

It looks like about an 11.6% flip chance. I suspect it's 12.8% (unit list blocks some tiles, so it's hard to see how many tiles are under AI influence).

 

[tR1cKy]

Willem, what's the problem with you? No offense intended, but your statement are just plain dumb. I suspect you're still playing on Chieftain. Well, i'm playing Deity. DEITY, you know what i mean? The difficulty level on the far right of the screen, with "hardest" written in parenthesis. And i'm at war from 250bc. Opponents have 4 extra unit support per town and build everything at 60% of the base cost.

Of course you find it impossible, you're building a Harbour before you build a culture building, even though you have a Harbour in the city right next to it. That's what I would call redundancy and poor planning.

A harbor let you build veteran sea units, heal them faster and let you gather 2 foods units from sea instead of one, and it's cheap.
And you also collect 2 gold, which makes the coastal tile a premium tile.
The town you mention is far away from the capital. Its purposes are mainly strategic. Secure luxuries, acquire territory, provide money and unit support.
It has no land gaps to fill. And it's quite corrupt. So what's the point of developing it culturally? Lots of shield that can be spent on military would be wasted.
And redundancy is necessary. A strategist who doesn't provide at least some redundancy is a poor fool. What if the near town is conquered, razed, or the harbor destroyed from the sea?

And you build Walls before culture in a besieged city that has a large stack of units in it.

We're on deity, remember? Not chieftain, deity. AI's have always large armies, and the persians are tossing at me all their military might. Walls=50% defense bonus under size 7. Musketmen defense=6. Rifleman defense=9. Do I really need to expain you what this mean?

There such a thing as rushing you know,...

Really? Oh, my!

it will only cost you some gold to build culture in a city that's prone to flip. You're just making poor choices and blaming the outcome on the game.

First, when there are resistors you cannot rushbuild. Second, you're sadly mistaken.
The first thing to be built is usually a harbor (to have access to luxuries, have some people happy and shorten resistance periods). Second, walls (to improve defense). Third, barracks (to heal wounded units quickly and eventually rushbuild some). Then what? Temples? Yes, but only if i need to grab some land and/or connect cities. Developing culture is a slow process. For the time it has grown to an acceptable size, the war is over and the enemy has already been obliterated.

No it's not. There are alot of variables that determine a flip. The RNG has very little to do with it. There used to be a post somewhere from Firaxis detailing the factors, maybe if you do a search you can find it.

You are really in dumb mode now.
The culture flipping formula gives you a probability to flip. Probability.
Do you know the meaning of "probability"? If not go to www.dictionary.com
If you have a 13% chance to flip in the current turn, you also have an 87% chance that the town stay loyal. What will happen once you press "end turn"??? Will it flip? Will it stay? And who (or what) decides it? Firaxis? The stars? Harry potter?
Doesn't sound obvious to you that a number must be rolled out from a random generator function? OOPS... this is exactly the RNG

 

[WackenOpenAir]