Need tips on fighting superior cultures

[Not Todd]

Been fighting the Egyptians this time. I'm far superior in terms of military, but they'd had a huge lead early on and their culture is at least twice mine.

I've already figured out to raze what I capture, but what if the city has an important wonder? I've captured Memphis no less than three times (it's got Magellan's Voyage), suppressed the rebels, and then had it revert to Egyptian control a couple turns later.

The strategy I've been forced to adopt is to go past Memphis, slogging along in Egyptian territory, and razing his other cities. Already cut off his access to Memphis from his capitol. Needless to say, this is taking forever.

Does anybody have any tips to prevent being deposed so quickly? Even hurrying a courthouse after the resisters were suppressed didn't help. Trade is great, so the population is all happy/content.

 

[RomanLegatus]

This is my first reply, so bear with me.

To answer your question, an easy way to deal with your problem against the Egyptians, is to use artillery. I would take 1-2 Spearman and as many swordsman as you can make, and just bombard a certain city with Catapults. Catapults will sometimes destroy a city improvement, and will put a loss of population on the city.

With the city at an easy population of "1", the city has no resistors, maybe one. And from then on, all you have to do is make sure they do not take back their city. I'm sure you can do at least that. If they have technologically advanced military units, just build MORE of your 'cheaper' units.

Focus on one task at a time, and don't get ahead of yourself. Memphis needs to be cut off from new troops coming in from other Egyptian cities, and I always found that attacking with units is always better than just sitting there and letting yourself get attacked. Just build a numerous amount of units, and bombarding units are very helpful against superior forces.

Bombarding a group of units can take down the units life considerably, its a great help.

I guess that's about it, that's what I would do if there was a certain Wonder in that city that was wanted. (make sure you use terrain and building improvements to your advantages) {i.e. fortresses, mountains, hills, etc...}

 

[Not Todd]

The problem isn't the resistors, it's being deposed even after the resistors are content. I'd already bombarded it to a reasonable size, and garrisoned it heavily.

 

[Asevii_Babyloni]

Your troubles stem from not having too well frontier culture support, i believe. Build your frontier cities up. Then smoothly, go for his luxuries and roads in a quick attack and infiltrate guys
and take Memphis and as many outlying cities around it. Then ask for peace. give him a city or two back. then you can build on the outlying cities culture. and have more success next time. In say around 8 turns, their strength would be less hopefully

 

[tetley]

Here's what I'd do:

1) Station military next door to the city; not in it. Immediately retake it every time it reverts. An inconvenience, no doubt, but it'll do.

2) Wipe out your opponent completely. Then there's no one to revert to.

 

[Flynn]

Jack up luxuries via entertainers or your luxury allocation right after you take the city to throw it into WLKD. Then it's far less likely to revert. After that, you need to build up your own cultural value in the city by building a temple, library, etc.

Also, they're less likely to revert if you're in a freer form of government. So going to Rep. or Dem. would help.

 

[Iskan]

Also, after reducing the size of Memphis significantly (pop.1 is good...), get your workers in and add them to the city pop. so that most of the citizens are of your nationality. I do it most of the time with newly conquered cities and it works. My culture is either superior or equal to theirs, though...

 

[Sam_Catchem]

I concur with jacking up your culture. You can't ignore it. If you do you will lose. I find that I HAVE to have a high culture in order to hold on to those cities. I try to pump in some of my workers if possible and also I rush a temple.

 

[Angmar]

While it isnt difficult to roll across the border with your tanks and step on the defenders, that is only the first step in taking a key city. The way I am able to keep key cities that were "part" of the empire ( ie : not a isolated community ) was to isolate that city. I found that the key was to keep advancing past the city that is your goal and into the surrounding area. I would then raze these cities creating a cultural gap which my new city could grow into. When you take a city and if the cultural borders of the cities around it are in contact with your cities border you are in trouble.

Give the recently taken cities some breathing room! The key is wanting atleast one square of "no mans" land inbetween. The only time I have had a city revert was when I didnt do this. It was too bad also, it was a beautiful english city with 3 dyes around it. As best I could tell 75% of the dyes in the world

 

[Buecephalus]

I was going to say something along the lines of Iskan's sentiments. I would
a: bombard Memphis down to a 1 pop. city, take it over, and then have settlers or workers ready to go to join the city that same turn, obviously I mean YOUR workers, not captured workers.
Or b: capture the city, and then rush-build settlers or workers to the point where you have a pop. 1 city and then proceed with re-population as stated above.
Another good idea is to rush-build big time culture generators like library, temple, university, cathedral. I'll do this when I'm putting a city near a rival's border, so as to avoid assimilation, but my culture is pretty high in all my games since the 1st couple of games when I kept losing outlying cities to other cultures. I've played 8 or 10 complete games and haven't had a city assimilated from me since the 3rd one. It helps that I play as the Greeks and Babylonians a lot though.






"do or do not, there is no try."

 

[RomanLegatus]

I agree with Iskan and Beucephalus...good strategy.

 

[Not Todd]

Adding my own workers to the pop is brilliant. Thanks for the tip.

 

[knowltok]

I like the adding population idea, and can attest to the razing the cities behind your target first idea. I'd also say that you need to look at some other aspects of your game if the AI has twice your culture.

 

[Ferd]

I've had this problem a lot. It's really annoying to take a city, have a stack of units in there quelling the resistance, and they overthrow you and you lose all your fighting force. It doesn't seem to matter how many units you have in a city or how big it is, or if there are improvements or not, We Love The King Day or not, or even if all the resisters have been quelled, or how many of the population are domestic nationality. The city can still revert at any time. Usually when I have the most units stationed there to lose.

It doesn't seem efficient to me to raze cities and bring in my own settlers. Or to starve out the existing population and build it up with my own workers. I usually want the cities for my own production. Besides, if I actually take the city, I get a pocket of my own territory I can use to heal units. If I don't want to deal with resisters, I just bring in bombardment units while I'm taking the city and kill off all the population then.

I eventually resorted to using Tetley's technique--position one cheap or wounded unit in the city, and make plans to retake the city if it reverts. And make sure I can intercept enemy units in case they decide to sneak past my advancing force and retake it.

The biggest problem I have is remembering to not make peace until I'm pretty well satisified I can keep all the cities I've got. If a city reverts after I've made a treaty, it's more of a problem.