Keeping control of captured cities

[napoleon526]

It seems that every time I capture an enemy city, within the next few turns it revolts! I lose all the units I have there!

Not only that, my main offensive units are already on their way to the next city, so there's no way to heal them.

Does the number of units you have inside a city decrease the chance that it will revolt? Any other tips on preventsting this annoyance?

 

[Bamspeedy]

With v1.17f it's supposed to be easier to prevent city flips be having several troops in the city. I would station some troops just outside the city so you can retake it if it flips. Only station your injured units in the city to quell the resistors.

 

[Quentin]

The easiest way to control a captured city is actually to change all the citizens into entertainers(I'm not sure about other specialists). This way, there never seems to revolt and there will not be civil disorder. Do this until all the resistors are starved to death or quelled. In short, starve them till they stop!

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by napoleon526
It seems that every time I capture an enemy city, within the next few turns it revolts! I lose all the units I have there!

Rush the temple.

 

[XOVER]

Conquered cities absolutely require that you garrison LOTS of strong units until the resistance is quelled.

I'd say for every resister in the city you need AT LEAST 2:1 units v. resistors, but 3:1 is definitely better. Unless you've conquered a baby city of 2 or 3 foreign citizens early in the game, get ready to take 3 or 4 turns, perhaps more, to quell the city. I talking about a good size city with 7 or 8 resistors or so. There simply is no substitute for lots of units, and . . . patience. No other way.

Types of Units to Garrison: As strong as you've got available. I find it is ok to use injured units -- the fact that your units are injured just doesn't matter. It's the NUMBER of units that matters. So, you better invade in the first place with a lot of strong units if your war occurs in, or past, say, industrial times. Because you've got to garrison lots of units per resistors to avoid the defection problem (which as you suggest, is a pain in the ass requiring you reconquer the city, plus you lose your garrisoned units). Invasion with lots of units is simply a cost of waging war.

Rush Buying: Rush buying temples, libraries, etc., is swell -- except for one or two little problems. First, you can't rush buy while the city is in resistance. Second, you can't rush buy when the city is in civil disorder, which can happen in a conquered, but quelled city, if you're not really careful coming out of resistance.

Spin-down to 1 Citizen: This is certainly a tip that works. The strategy guide also talks about starvation spin-down. But I starve a city down to its roots only as a last resort. Hey, it takes lots of turns to rebuild the crushed population with your own citizens. So I generally use a hybrid of the starvation spin-down. Here's what I like to do instead:

Stavation / Worker Strategy: First, you've got to get the resistance quelled. Period. Even during the last remnants of resistance, pull the conquered population off work assignments and make them into entertainers. When all the foreign citizens show "happy," even though the rest are resisting, then make at least one extra entertainer in anticipation of resistors becoming quelled during the next turn. If you don't make extra entertainers, then your conquered city is likely to go into civil disorder when the last of the resistors are quelled, thus wasting an additional turn.

Of course, starvation almost inevitably occurs when this method is used, but hey, war is hell. Better them than you. Also, a city will not fall into civil disorder as long as happiness reigns -- even when the city is starving its butt off. Counter-intuitively, city happiness is not a function of, or related to, starvation. So let'um starve.

Once I get the city quelled and civil disorder is avoided, then I analyze whether the conquered city needs more "help." What I do then to "save" population, especially during later age conquests, is to rush buy workers. Worker rush buys are really cheap. I'll rush buy a few workers per city, and THEN I'll think about rush buys on temples, libraries, etc. First, I want to work on population control.

Now the problem some would complain about with my strategy is that you've got all these lazy foreign workers lolling-gagging around. It's a valid criticizism because as foreign workers are captured or created, they just don't work like the workers of your own civilization. So what to do?

What you do is this: Go ahead and create the lazy foreign workers out of your captured cities because what you're really doing is "saving" the city population in the form of workers for reintroduction into the city in the future. Put their lazy butts to work making railroad, irrigation, etc., even if it does take them twice as long to get the job done as your own civ's workers.

Then after your captured city creates one or more of your civs' citizens, rush buy another worker. If the captured city has created 1 or 2 of your citizens, then the worker produced will be from your civ. It will be one of those hard-working, upstanding indigenous workers, not the lazy boys from the captured civ.

Now take your foreign worker that you saved from the conquest and move him back to the conquered city. Press "join city" and viola! The city population increases, and you conquered but saved much of the foreign population.

Another variation of this gambit is simply to join the foreign worker into one of your own civ's cities, where he's totally subsumed by the sheer numbers of your own city, and rush buy a worker from you own city. Then you can move your own citizen into the foreign city, thus stabilizing the captured city even more.

One thing is for sure: whether you're at war or peace, you always want to get rid of foreign workers as soon as possible and replace them with indigenous workers by using the "join city" method. You'll get a whole lot more mileage out of your workers this way.

Comments / criticisms of these thoughts requested & encouraged.

 

[Bamspeedy]

One thing is for sure: whether you're at war or peace, you always want to get rid of foreign workers as soon as possible and replace them with indigenous workers by using the "join city" method. You'll get a whole lot more mileage out of your workers this way.

Captured workers are free (no upkeep costs), so I'll keep them around even if they are slow. If you get tons of captured workers, you can 'join city' workers of your own nationality, thus saving the expense.

 

[Esca]

When you take a city.

Right click on it.
Select the Governor and make sure he is assigned to look after Happiness and food production.

If you do this, they will never flip back, provided your culture is equal to, or greater than, the Civ you took it from.

 

[Woody]

It seems that every time I capture an enemy city, within the next few turns it revolts

And nothing you will do will prevent this except one thing, kill the cities home country completely. I leave one unit behind in the city knowing that there is a about a 50% chance per turn it will flip but I keep the war going. Keep attacking and taking cities, the farther the city is from the front the less likely it is to flip. Wars in Civ III need to be as quick as possible and to the death. Once you eliminate the enemy there is no chance of the cities flipping back to him.

 

[Ironikinit]

One trick I like hinges on the fact that a city with your palace in it won't flip. This works best if you're on islands of reasonable size... your home island is covered by a central ForbPal, and you're taking out another civ on another island. Obviously, you have to have a spare leader to rush a palace.

When fighting a border war, I think it's a good idea to advance along the front. Cities seem less likely to flip back when they aren't surrounded by the enemy's culture border. Also, it's always a good idea to pay careful attention to building up your culture along your borders, esp. if there are resources there. I believe that the AI knows how to run a culture race and will try hard to get cities with resources to flip.

Reducing population is useful. XOVER's points on starvation and worker production are good. Unfortunately, some micromanagement is required, because after losing population to starvation, the city will automatically change tile use around, requiring the player to go in and rearrange everything each turn. Personally, I'd make the population into tax collecters, not entertainers. Although I can't prove it, I'd suspect that a city can flip even if it's all entertainers or tax collecters. However, I think that it might be less likely to do so, as it cannot go into disorder, and disorder contributes to reversion.

Another way to reduce population is to make use of bombard units before taking the city.

Woody makes a good point: The only way to eliminate reversion is to wipe out the rival civ. Personally, I find this a little off. It seems odd to suddenly have a happy population after a long bitter war with plenty of culture flips.

If you don't like the placement of the captured city, don't hesitate to raze it. OTOH, I try not to raze too often, because it's not that difficult to absorb rival cities. The AI often has fairly weak culture... religious civs are an exception. Also, it's possible to get a few free improvements when capturing rival cities, such as markets, aquaducts, etc., sparing the time needed to build them.

One consideration... it's not a bad idea to rush libraries instead of temples, esp. if playing a scientific civ such as Germany or Russia, who get cheap libraries. This works best if happiness isn't a big concern (you plan on starving the city, you have plenty of luxuries and the captured city isn't very big, you have plenty of obsolete units and you're communist and thus can use weak units as police, etc.) Libraries produce more culture than temples.

I agree with Bams, captured workers are an asset because of their free upkeep. I'd rather have my own workers join a city than captured ones anyway, as native workers create loyal population.

 

[Sodak]

If you have workers in the area, add them to the captured city - a mixed population is better than purely foreign. Also, proximity to each capitol is a factor to consider. If you sacked a city next door to their palace and half a world from yours, expect to lose it soon. Don't keep you elite units in a city that might revolt.

Rushbuild a temple, connect the city to your luxuries. The resistance will end quickly then. This is great if you are still in despotism, it both reduces the population and makes the remaining people happy.

I've only ever lost one city after conquest. Luckily, I had numerous bad guys nearby to reinstate loyalty the next turn. Anyway, I always lead in culture. That seems to be a big factor in keeping new cities.

 

[Grey Knight]

I think resistors count double, so having a higher culture means you'll quell resistors faster.

Personally, I starve & rush temple/library. Usually the cities are totally corrupted anyway, so I don't care how much pop they have!

Oh, and I like to bomb first to soften up cities, and this typically knocks down a few pop points.

Cheers,
Shawn
Then again, having more culture than all the other civs combined helps...

 

[O_o]

Use governor to manage city's moods in that city.Fortify 2-3 units and build temple fast.Since i use governor i cant remember a city revolting while before that was my bigger problem too.leave most of the units outside,u can always retake the city .(if still this thing is pissing u off,use load!

 

[MrBiggBoy]

Originally posted by napoleon526
It seems that every time I capture an enemy city, within the next few turns it revolts! I lose all the units I have there!

Well, if you capture an enemies city on a lower difficulty level, they are really weak and so most of the time your city is going to be far away from your capital and LOADED with corruption. What I do is sell off all the improvements.... and give it to an ally to deal with. You'll find as soon as the ally gets it the city will go into civil disorder.... and its off your hands. Good Luck!!!

 

[Willem]

Originally posted by napoleon526
It seems that every time I capture an enemy city, within the next few turns it revolts! I lose all the units I have there!

Not only that, my main offensive units are already on their way to the next city, so there's no way to heal them.

Does the number of units you have inside a city decrease the chance that it will revolt? Any other tips on preventsting this annoyance?

According to a question answered by Soren, having two defenders for every citizen will probably prevent a flip. Provided you're using the 1.17f patch.

 

[Rain]

I find the esiest thing is to turn em all to entertainers and starve it down. Station no units or only 1 in the city ~ if it flips you wont lose much. If it does flip its wekaly defended so jsut retake it. Acording to the post i read on culture flips from firaxis large numbers of units have a relatively minor effect. Resistance, culture and relative distances to your and the enemies capitol are the major factors. Try to avoid capturing cities with big pops that are far from your capitol and close to the enemies unless u are about to smash thier capitol. I find 6 is a good number to bombard it down to.

 

[Tassadar]

base on my experience capturing ennemy city is not good, destroy them and if there is a strategic ressource, have a settler ready, the road are already there.

 

[Sentinali]

I have only had cities flip after I was back at peace with the civ in question. Also I keep a close eye on population and borders. My general strategy is to push far enough into the other civs empire that our borders no longer meet. Therefore the cities I took at the border have less "pressure" on them to flip. Additionally I always rush build both temple and library. I don't know the relative effects of this but I do know I rarely have any reversion.

 

[Rain]

The push strategy works because a factor is the number of cities 21 squares influenced by the enemy civ. the farther u can push that civ away the less pressure there is as u point out.