How to effect culture flip

[lcorinth]

Okay, here's the deal. I want to try to flip a couple of cities to my side. I am England, and have the most culture on the board. I have established a group of cities on another continent far from my capital, where the other civs are all located.

I want to make war on the Vikings and/or Germany, but not the Dutch (I'm hoping to make them allies of mine). Problem is, the Dutch have two cities in my way. I could go around them, but I don't really want them there.

I offered a lot of technology and stuff to them to try and buy the cities, but they said no dice. So, I'd like to try to peacefully flip the cities to my side. I have a lot of culture, but not really in the cities near the Dutch ones. My cities there are new. But I do have a lot of military units...

SO, my questions are:

1. Does my territory have to touch theirs to effect the flip?
2. Can I actually do this? Do I have any influence?
3. Do I run the danger of them flipping me?
4. If I can do this, how do I do it?

If you could respond ASAP, that'd be great.

Thanks!

 

[BasketCase]

Why flip them? Make an RoP with them instead.

But if you really, REALLY want to flip 'em:

#1: Your territory has to be inside the target city's "fat X" work area to have a chance of flipping it.

#2: Your chance of flipping is not reliable at all. Ask for all the formulas and odds and other whatever, if it gives you false hope--IT IS FALSE HOPE. There is no way at all to "reliably" force a city to flip. A city that MUST flip to you very soon is likely to go un-flipped the entire game. Meanwhile, some other city that had next-to-zero chance is gonna flip next turn. Culture is not a useful method of attack in this game.

 

[lcorinth]

Hmm. Well, since I'm new, I'll ask the dumb question: How do I ask for RoP without first trespassing on their territory? I tried it before with Spain, but the option didn't seem to appear on the screen until I'd already trespassed. Is that what you have to do?

 

[Tomoyo]

No, ROP is under "Diplomatic Agreements", which you need an embassy for.

 

[lcorinth]

But, I eventually established RoP with Spain, though I didn't have an embassy with them.

Or, maybe I did. I forget. It was hundreds of years ago...

 

[Tomoyo]

You can't have a ROP without an embassy... maybe they established one with you?

 

[Peepers]

There are two things that initiate the possibility of a culture flip:

1) Foreign citizens (of an existing civ) in the city
2) Foreign influence/control of tiles in the city's "fat X" border, even if the city's culture isn't yet sufficient to expand its border beyond 9 tiles

If the cities that you want to flip to your side don't have either of those, they'll never flip to you (without espionage, where you can try to incite them to revolt for risk and cash).

To increase the chances of a flip for a city that has a non-zero chance of flipping to you, you can move your palace closer to them. In my experience, the AI will compenmsate for flip probability in those border cities by strengthening the garrison in them.

I agree with BasketCase, however. Don't count on any given city flipping to you if you need it to. I've yet to have a sufficiently overwhelming cultural advantage (more than 10 times, say) to make culture attacking a reliable tactic. I've heard of a few players who have had some isolated success.