not a very cultural person

[ThanSeiko]

hi, i'm a pretty experienced civ 3 player. i can hold my own on monarch difficulty which is what i'm playin now. theres only one problem i've been having, and thats culture. all the civs i've met are dismissive of my culture. i'm not tryin to be a warmonger, but i'm definitly trying to get as much land as i can while i'm still in the era where my immortals are effective (i'm persia obviously). to the north is babylon, which i just entered in to war with around 5-6 turns ago. i took 6 of their cities and had at least 5 immortals fortified in each. the turn after, 2 of the cities went back to babylon because of culture. the next turn 2 more went. i lost a ****load of immortals and i didnt really gain much out of it. before i invaded (around 10 turns or so) i built a bunch of temples and libraries to boost my culture a bit before i invaded, but that didnt seem to help too much. so i leave you with two questions. is there an efficient way to gain more culture and get above the other civs? and when i invade other civs, should i just raze the cities and build my own (i'm guessing that would solve the culture filpping problem)? thanks

 

[madviking]

A- build libs -> unis etc. to boost sci
B- dpn't build temples unless its a extreme unhappy issue
C- In SGs (Successsion Games) section, most of the people raze cities and bring some settlers along for the ride.

 

[Mathias]

Don't defend captured cities if you think they will flip. Just recapture them if they do.

 

[warpstorm]

Build culture early and everywhere (by everywhere I do mean every single city). Culture builds up over time. A last second shot in the arm doesn't work.

 

[vmxa]

The best way to get culture better than Babs is to eliminate them. They are one of the best culture civs in the game and you will probably not be able to have more than them for a very long time. It is just not worth trying.

Warpstorms point is correct as you would expect. Culture takes time and acums over the whole game. So it will not be useful to try to jack it up in a few turns, except to expand borders.

 

[Minesweeper]

You should be thinking about culture from the beginning of the game. If you do it allows youy to get even more land without using up more precious settler. I build temples until literature comes along, because Libraries have 1 more culture per turn, and cost a bit less to build. Culture flipping, out of my experience, doesn't just happen with a city with ten culture, susally it takes a least 100 culture. Also the amount of units you have in the city increases the chances of a flip.

Mathias

 

[cleverhandle]

Also the amount of units you have in the city increases the chances of a flip.

Um... no, a larger garrison decreases the chance of a flip.

@OP: As you've seen, holding on to captured cities is risky and, as others have pointed out, many people feel it isn't worth it and just raze and resettle. In the early to mid game, there's very little reason to hold on to a captured city of a culturally superior opponent (a Wonder being basically the only good reason). Later on in the game, it may be more worthwhile since you might get some expensive buildings for free (aqueduct and market most significantly). In that case, you'll want to starve out the native populace before stationing a significant number of troops there. In the meantime, leave one quality defender stationed there along with some obsoletes (if you have any lying around) to quell resisters and reduce the flip chance.

 

[MaxArt]

Libraries have 1 more culture per turn, and cost a bit less to build.

Only if you're Scientific.

 

[Minesweeper]

Sorry, I was refering to offensive flipping, a large garrison and a courthouse decrease chances of losing one of your own cities to their culture. Culture Buildings, such as temples and Libraries, and a large garrison increase your chances of culturally converting one of their cities.

Hope that clears it up,
Mathias

 

[SJ Frank]

Sorry, I was refering to offensive flipping, a large garrison and a courthouse decrease chances of losing one of your own cities to their culture. Culture Buildings, such as temples and Libraries, and a large garrison increase your chances of culturally converting one of their cities.

Hope that clears it up,
Mathias

I hope by "offensive flipping", you mean propaganda attempts. Courthouse increases your defense against enemy propagandas, but does not help against culture flipping. On the other hand, having a large garrison does NOT help against propaganda, but does help against culture flipping.

Also, culture building in a city does not "increase" your chances of culturally converting enemy cities. If those buildings give your city more culture than your neighbor's city, then you'll have a chance to flip your neighbor's city. Otherwise, your neighbor's city will have a chance to flip you. See this link for an explanation of how culture flipping work.

Having a large garrison also does not increase your chance of flipping other cities. It only defends you against flips to other civs.

 

[BobCW]

This used to happen to me, and I hated to drag a bunch of settlers everywhere my army went so that I could "raze and replace". I decided that it made the most sense to leave 2-3 strong units outside of each city that I captured, to take it back if it flipped.

 

[rysingsun]

i agree with bob ... the only turn i am willing to put large number of troops (even obsolete ones) in a captured city from a culture giant is the first turn of capture when it appears to be immune to flip.

it is better to learn to live with poor culture than it is to learn to gain big culture. at the higher levels you simply wont be able to be a culture leader anymore.

when attacking culture superpowers you have two choices: hold the cities ungarrisoned until you have conquered the civ or raze them.

 

[Titankid]

Turn off cult con...

 

[CarnDaWoods]

You can turn Culture off. Its one of the game settings as you start.

I have the same problem in Emperor games. Especially against the Maya and a few other powerful early cultural civs.

My solution is to only heal redlined and yellow lined units in captured cities and then move them on. Do not garrison at all. If you are paranoid about flips and counter attacks leave some horsemen in the area to recapture.

Occasionally this strategy falls foul, like when I lost nearly all my attacking force that was either healing or just passing through when it flipped. I had to make peace immediately and rebuild my offensive force.

 

[Fried Egg]

I think that Immortals last so long before they become obselete that you need not feel you must neglect cultural building altogether. Squeeze in a temple and library into each city every now and then so that you can maintain good cultural growth. That shouldn't really hamper your immortal production too much. And it should mean culture flips against you are a lot less liekly.

 

[Spartanism]

If you dont want to raise the cities I would suggest doing these 3 things

1. Begin starving population/making workers
2. pop a temple
3. have workers/settalers join the city

When I capture a city with a wonder I send extra workers (I usualy have 30-50) to join the city.

 

[rysingsun]

3. have workers/settalers join the city

this does not decrease the chance of culture flip however.

 

[MarcoPolo]

My problem is just the opposite. I tend to do more culture and less unit building than I should. Even if you go culture crazy it's still tough to get culture flips. Then you also suffer from not having enough troops. I'd say that the minimum you want is the basics; temple, library...etc. Just try to balance unit building with cultural building and you should be ok.

 

[GangsterOctopus]

While we are on the subject of culture and city-flipping, can a capital city ever flip? I know a stupid question.

And does a city’s distance from the capital effect how easily it will flip?

 

[TimBentley]

No. Yes.

Edit: Here's more information. n (in the second formula) is 2000, and d and Cte/Cty (this one not confirmed, but I'm pretty sure of it) is capped between 1/4 and 4.

How many units do i need to suprpess a culture flip?

• the full formula (this is from Sorenson, who is responsible for this programming):
  
  P=[(F+T)*Cc*H*(Cte/Cty) - G]/D
  
  where:
  P = probability that it will flip this turn
  F = # foreignors, with resistors counting double
  T = # working tiles under foreign control (out of the max of 21, no matter what the cultural boundaries are atm)
  Cc = 2 if foreign civ has more local culture than you, 1 otherwise
  H = .5 for WLTKD, 2 for disorder, 1 otherwise
  Cte = Total culture of the foreign civ
  Cty = Total culture of your civ
  G = # garrison units
  D = factor based on relative distance to capitals
  
  Now reorganizing this gives the required garrison as:
  G = (F+T)*Cc*H*(Cte/Cty)
  
  As you can see there is a nice set of extra factors there. Now when you take a city Cc is likely to be 2 for a long while. And then there is the culture ratio. And this is a true ratio so it could be 1.1:1, 2:1, 5:1 depending on how much culture each of you has.
  According to this, the factor D is a crucial scaling variable that will enable us to work out the exact chance of a culture flip, since all other factors are known. 'D' should really be written 'n*d', where 'd' is the actual ratio of distance to capitals, and 'n' is the scaling factor.
  
  P=[(F+T)*Cc*H*(Cte/Cty) - G]/n*d