losing cities after conquest

[galahad1313]

very annoying aspect of civ 4. going through all the hassle, trouble, planning etc of conquering someone only to lose some of the bloody cities shortly after to another civ(assuming due to culture). i don't see an option to prevent city flipping after conquest from culture. just regular option which is something i use a lot and so choose not to click on. i get a lot of cities from forcing culture revolts. but to lose one after conquering it is frustrating and annoying. ex: on my current game which is described on another post a few posts down, i'm fighting 4 enemies. after all the trouble of finally killing off india, i've lost 2 cities to revolt b4 i even had full control of the damned things, and i have 2 others with 3-4.?? chance of revolt. the rest of the cities are all at "0" ownership?? i've seen this b4 on occasion, but not on this scale.
so i guess i'm asking this. is there a setting i'm either not fully understanding of it's purpose? a setting i'm not seeing, or just part of the game either because of the lvl i'm playing at or other reason. i'm on....i4get now, not the easiest lvl, the next one down and all ai's are on noble.(also this is a custom game map, not a reg game if that makes a difference).

 

[michalbulhakov]

It annoys the hell out of me too. It happens 'cause almost the entire infrastructure (cultural buildings included) is destroyed when a city is conquered. One thing you can do to prevent flipping is stacking units in such city, also if you're running universal suffrage you can fairly easily rush buy the most basic culture buildings (theatre, temples, library). Still, overcoming that is a real pain in the ass and I think the game could be somehow more balanced in that respect.

 

[Scoottr]

I've heard something about hitting the city with a bunch of spys to spread culture before you take the city? Sound familiar to anyone??? Not sure if it works

 

[erikthecelt]

You might try the no city flipping option on the custom game, although it's not commonly used. Also, it's not really a problem if you plan your city conquests in the right order. You can trash the border cities and settle your own in an area that's beyond the culture border of the neighbouring civ, or just keep taking the cities close by. If you are battling 4 civs you must be close to the end of the game anyway.

 

[michalbulhakov]

I've heard something about hitting the city with a bunch of spys to spread culture before you take the city? Sound familiar to anyone??? Not sure if it works

I don't know how well that works but then again it's something you have to set up, you would need to crank out some spies and amass espionage points to make it happen. And I can easily think of at least one better way of using the two mentioned - revolting cities.

Also, this problem is particularly annoying on pangea maps, or generally big landmases with lots of civs sharing borders with each other. I used to play mostly fractal or continents but not until my recent pangea game did it really bother me.

 

[Dig-Doug]

Great Artists anyone?

DD

 

[michalbulhakov]

Great Artists anyone?

DD

As a perfect solution for a single city? Yeah. But in a situation where you're conquering numerous cities which share borders with other civs not really. I just can't see how you could easily come up with enough GA's.

 

[Dig-Doug]

As a perfect solution for a single city? Yeah. But in a situation where you're conquering numerous cities which share borders with other civs not really. I just can't see how you could easily come up with enough GA's.

Caste system ASAP, then create the GA's as you will by setting up 6-9 regular GA's in the city in question. just like your going for a culture win only without all the fuss of building the infrastructure in 3 cities.

In most games I have seen, the AI puts most of their cities quite close together and so, if planned correctly, with a city of your own placed sorta between them then apply the GA to that city. Besides how many cities are we talking about? I never bother keeping the outer cities just the heavy hitters with Wonders in them. Destroy the rest and build your own.

DD

 

[JP1]

You can just leave a larger garrison in the city after you take it over to prevent it from flipping, can't you?

 

[Framesticker]

Build culture and run some Artists if you're losing tiles. I usually build culture first in every city I conquer.

 

[Nothingontv]

You can just leave a larger garrison in the city after you take it over to prevent it from flipping, can't you?

This is what i usually do.

 

[Clam Spammer]

If you're gonna struggle just to hold on to the city, chances are you can't work many tiles either. Just raze. The better sites (wonders, holy cities etc) are usually located towards the core of the AI's empire anyway. Otherwise: Culture build + garrison. Also try to get tile culture from a neighboring city - a city 3 tiles away only needs 100+ total culture to contribute.

 

[automator]

I tend to look closely at the city. If it's near something that is obviously a cultural powerhouse who I'm at peace with, I'll burn the city to the ground.

Otherwise it's universal sufferage and buy up at least a Theater while leaving a large defensive garrison.

 

[UncleJJ]

I've heard something about hitting the city with a bunch of spys to spread culture before you take the city? Sound familiar to anyone??? Not sure if it works

It does work and was one of the main reasons I started investigating how the Spread Culture mission worked, see The Spread Culture Espionage Mission revealed 2 years ago. With the 3.19 patch the spread culture mission adds your culture to a city (CC) and adds some tile culture (TC) to the city and surrounding tiles.

So when you capture a city that has had several spread culture missions run against it, it will have a head start when it comes out of rebellion. If you had raised the CC to 500, for instance, the city would start with 500 culture and immediately pop its borders 3 times. That would start adding 60 TC to the city tile and get rid of motherland quickly. Also if there are neighbouring cities 3 or 4 tiles away the city would start adding a small amount of TC culture to those as well.

 

[ICNP]

Small plug for LoR, in that mod, whenever you win a battle that tile and surrounding tiles gain a part of your culture. This makes it a whole lot easier to hold onto a city as you get a large head start (at least 16%, typically more). The largest downside to this is that random culture can appear in tiles just because there was a fight between 2 other civs there. For example Germany and Spain might start fighting, and now France has Spanish and German culture in its core tiles.