Leapfrogging to avoid city culture flips

[undertoad]

Just found a new way of dealing with culture-flips in my current (Regent) game.

This only works if you've put a serious spanner in the works of the enemy's mobility (e.g. by cutting off their Horses, one of my favourite gambits), and are pretty mobile yourself.

It's a kind of blitz tactic, where each time you take a city, you don't bother with the resistance, or even man the city with any units, but simply carry on to the next.

Then the resisters can glare angrily out of the screen at an empty chair while you get on with sweeping through the rest of their empire.

This avoids the "many units in city to kill resistance -> DOH! Many units lost by flip" problem, partly because by the time you garrison the city it has no border with the alien culture, and the alien capital may have been "nudged" further away.

I don't think I've lost a single ungarrisoned city to a flip in this game. Is there a rule that says a city will only flip if it's garrisoned? (Apart from what seems to be the rule, but is just my bitterness: "a city will only flip on the one turn you've got an Army recovering its hitpoints in it")

 

[vmxa]

Only rule is it won't flip in the first turn. Regent civ tend to not have enough culture to flip anyway. Resistance will not end, unless you put at least one unit in the town. If you are rolling over them, just move the one garrison unit out.

If it flip capture it again and it will lose pop. Otherwise put a couple of junk units in and take your chances.

 

[anyoldguy]

I read somewhere that having extraordinary amounts of units in a resisting city (more accurately, a relatively high population/culture city) increases the chance of culture flips. Does having more units in a resisting city than the max number of citizens that can be quelled per turn affect its chances of flipping back?

 

[Bartleby]

The max number of resisters that can be quelled per turn is the number of units in the city, but the more units you have the better the chance of quelling the resistance in one turn.

 

[undertoad]

Regent civ tend to not have enough culture to flip anyway.

That's definitely not what I've found. I lost 5 cities to flips in this one game - all of them garrisoned. Not a big problem, I just retake the city, it's losing the units inside that's a pain. This is why I started not bothering to quell the resistance until I've moved the enemy's border (and possibly capital) away from the city.

And the funny thing was that no city flipped while ungarrisoned - when garrisons (OK, according to CivAssist, in huge amounts) are supposed to reduce the chance of flips. I was wondering whether this was accidental; or a rule; or a matter of perception (since I hardly notice a flipped city when it involves no loss of units - I just detach a couple of Cavs to go and deal with it).

 

[thetrooper]

I have 'discovered' a very efficient (no-cheats) way to eliminate culture flips completely...

Spoiler :

Burn all captured cities to the ground!

 

[vmxa]

I recently played a 4000bc save posted out to domination and I never had a single flip. I would suspect you are letting them get far stronger than they should normally become.

I have played a number of games posted and none had a flip. I do not see flips till I get to Demi God and even those are not common. I take the path mentioned by thetrooper above DG, it just does not pay to hold captured towns, until you are close to elimination of that nation.

 

[Spoonwood]

I believe VMXA said *tend* not always, so what you've found doesn't come as enough to negate what he said.

 

[da3dalus]

it just does not pay to hold captured towns, until you are close to elimination of that nation.

I have to disagree on this. I as a general rule *never* raze cities, I always rush workers and starve the city down to size 1. Doing this you get tons of slaves that you can use to improve tiles or you can sell to other civs for around 20 - 100 gp each.

When upgrading units, I usually leave a few archers/spearment/pikemen unupgraded to quell resisters so I really don't care if a city flips.

I think there's value to undertoad's strategy of not garrisoning captured cities, because invasions often get slowed down by this. When you ignore those cities and keep pushing the front you will basically be executing a blitzkreig invasion...very effective when trying to quickly acheive limited goals or when trying to conquer a small empire.

 

[undertoad]

I believe VMXA said *tend* not always, so what you've found doesn't come as enough to negate what he said.

Absolutely - your/my mileage may vary, due to different playing styles/levels we're used to.

I've reacted against my old "builder" style (after vmxa's advice on another thread) and simply don't build any culture apart from the bare minimum (Libraries for science, one or two Wonders I particularly like), as my preferred VC is Conquest/Spaceship. The result is that the AIs think of my civ as a bunch of uncultured peasants (uncultured peasants waving very scary weapons, mind you...) - especially civs on another continent who I don't get to meet, let alone beat up, for a long while.

Also, I don't raze cities at the moment - just leave them to stew in their own froward rebelliousness until I have time to turn back and deal with them (often, when the remains of their former civ are 2 cities miles away). Don't like making the other AIs too angry with me, as I'm not playing AW.

The result is I have to just deal with the trouble of newly-conquered cities flipping. I've found the "blitz" is a nice way of doing it.

 

[vmxa]

I have to disagree on this. I as a general rule *never* raze cities, I always rush workers and starve the city down to size 1. Doing this you get tons of slaves that you can use to improve tiles or you can sell to other civs for around 20 - 100 gp each.

When upgrading units, I usually leave a few archers/spearment/pikemen unupgraded to quell resisters so I really don't care if a city flips.

You took that piece completely out of context. I was speaking about games above DG.

If you never raze cities, you are doing something wrong. Many AI towns will be very poorly placed and need to be razed or abandoned.

I believe I mentioned using junk units to garrison captured towns.

 

[DFBATTLER]

I recently played a 4000bc save posted out to domination and I never had a single flip. I would suspect you are letting them get far stronger than they should normally become.

I have played a number of games posted and none had a flip. I do not see flips till I get to Demi God and even those are not common. I take the path mentioned by thetrooper above DG, it just does not pay to hold captured towns, until you are close to elimination of that nation.

Hm, that was probably my game.

 

[vmxa]

That's definitely not what I've found. I lost 5 cities to flips in this one game - all of them garrisoned.

I cannot speak to them flipping or not, when they have no garrison. Often that is not the issue, but rather they run in with a cav and capture it.

I will say this, if you post the 4000BC of that game, I will play it to domination and not see a single flip. Even emperor nations with far better culture than I will have only get an occasional flip.

Flips only enter my plans when playing AW emperor or better or normal Sid, I do not play Deity. Flips are a real concern in those games and I do what I can to prevent or minimize them.

At Regent, I give it no thought at all, it is not going to happen, even in AW. What I am saying is that if you are getting 5 flips, you may want to reconsider you over all game strategy.

In my tutorial for Regent players, I am pretty sure no flips occurred. What point in time is it when you got the flips?

 

[DFBATTLER]

I have 'discovered' a very efficient (no-cheats) way to eliminate culture flips completely...

Spoiler :

Burn all captured cities to the ground!

This is so insane it's gotta work. Or just put Modern Armors in every city, about ten. Then you can invade and prevent flips at the same time.

"Great, now we can attack in all directions!"

 

[vmxa]

Hm, that was probably my game.

Yes, I remember it as DF, but I could not think of the rest of your name, sorry.

 

[DFBATTLER]

Yes, I remember it as DF, but I could not think of the rest of your name, sorry.

That's alright, that's exactly what everyone calls me, just "DF".

 

[DFBATTLER]

As long as we're talking about AW, how do you enable that in C3C? Is there a specific file (AlwaysWar.biq?) or setting?

 

[Arexander]

You can do it by declaring war as soon as you meet a rival and not accepting peacenegotiations nor proposing peace yourself. It's that easy.

 

[vmxa]

Yes that is all there is to it. In Civ4 you can actually set the game to that condition.In III you just self impose it. I have played in a few SG's where they would go back and replay a set, if someone failed to DOW.

In a really large game, more than 16 civs, you can make contact and not realize it. You just see a color that is like one you already are at war with and do not know it is a new one.

Like all variants, it is just a way to play to make the game fresher.

 

[DFBATTLER]

Yes that is all there is to it. In Civ4 you can actually set the game to that condition.In III you just self impose it. I have played in a few SG's where they would go back and replay a set, if someone failed to DOW.

In a really large game, more than 16 civs, you can make contact and not realize it. You just see a color that is like one you already are at war with and do not know it is a new one.

Like all variants, it is just a way to play to make the game fresher.

I've played Civ4 before Lots of fun. Hey, I'll make a mod of AW, this means WAR ONLY, NO NEGOTIATIONS, not even between AIs. What do you think? I'll post bic, bix and biq.