Possible Cultural Takeover?

[randomguy13]

I'm wondering if it's possible to culturally take over a civilization. I remember one game, where I was nuking the crap out of Gilgamesh and I took two cities before he capitulated. I didn't want Gilgamesh to be able to do anything for the rest of the game so that it would practically be taking him over, but I didn't want the two cities that I took from him to revolt back on my watch, as they were his two top cities. So, I created a vassal to try to take care of my problem, and to just delay Gilgamesh from getting these cities, because I had more pressing issues. So, I created Frederick, who promptly lost both his cities to Gilgamesh. He had absolutely no cities and I was playing without complete kills, yet he was still surviving. Was it a bug or does that just happen?
At the end, Frederick was left with 7 ocean tiles, which were culturally within his borders before he was "taken over".

 

[diegovelasco45]

You have to put units in the cities you don't want to revolt... On the other hand, why would you want a vassal if you are going to cripple him? better to just run him over completely.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Yes, you can do complete cultural takeover. Long ago I had a game where I took a vassal with twoo cities only to have them both later on culture revolt and join my empire thus the civilization was destroyed.
About your second question I dont know. But I had similar experience creating a vassal out of conquered cities on different continent only to find out that the new vassal liberated some of them to the old enemy.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

He had absolutely no cities and I was playing without complete kills, yet he was still surviving. Was it a bug or does that just happen?

That situation is not a bug in that when a City gets Culturally-flipped, the units inside of the City do not die.

Frederick, therefore, likely still had some units roaming around. As long as he had at least 1 unit, he would not be eliminated.


Your approach could have worked had you used Frederick's units PLUS YOUR OWN MILITARY UNITS to garrison Frederick's new Cities until the Cultural presense in those Cities was strong enough to start removing military units.

You can hover your mouse in the City screen over the Cultural bar (bottom left) to see if there is a chance of the City revolting... if there is a chance, white hover text will appear, giving you the per-turn chance of it happening. If no white hover text appears, then you have sufficient Military Units garrisoned in the City to prevent a flip (it could take a LOT of units initially, since Frederick would start with 0 Culture in each of those Cities).

Next, you would want to spread as many Religions as possible to those Cities, to give Frederick a chance to build some additional Cultural buildings.


Of course, in order to see the City screen, you would need sufficient Espionage Points spent on Frederick, but it should only take you a few turns to get sufficient Espionage Points against a newly-founded Colony.

 

[s.bernbaum]

I'm wondering if it's possible to culturally take over a civilization. I remember one game, where I was nuking the crap out of Gilgamesh and I took two cities before he capitulated. I didn't want Gilgamesh to be able to do anything for the rest of the game so that it would practically be taking him over, but I didn't want the two cities that I took from him to revolt back on my watch, as they were his two top cities. So, I created a vassal to try to take care of my problem, and to just delay Gilgamesh from getting these cities, because I had more pressing issues. So, I created Frederick, who promptly lost both his cities to Gilgamesh. He had absolutely no cities and I was playing without complete kills, yet he was still surviving. Was it a bug or does that just happen?
At the end, Frederick was left with 7 ocean tiles, which were culturally within his borders before he was "taken over".

Unless you have selected the option to allow captured cities to revolt back in the Custom Game screen, cities that you capture can never revolt back to the original owner. They can revolt over and over ad nauseum, if you have really low culture and too few garrisoned units but they won't revert to the original civ. OTOH, cities that change hands to a third civ can revolt back to the original one. So, by creating a vassal civ to hold the two cities, you nearly guaranteed that they would revert to Gilgamesh. You might as well have gifted them to him and at least gotten the positive diplo points.