Problems with flipping and corruption

[AntiQual]

Hello everybody

I installed civ 3 two weeks ago and roughly 120 hours of play later I'm getting REALLY frustrated. I have played civ 1 and 2 waaaaay to much when they came out many years ago and had no problems beating the computer at deity level - the same is soooooo not true with civ 3.

I have tried looking for information on this site and I have found some that has helped with other problems except my two current problems: How to avoid losing because of flipping or corruption

Corruption seems to be so much worse than in the older versions. My normal strategy can be simplified like this

1. Get more cities than the opponent by a claiming more land mass than opponents have or by an early war while units are stil equal.
2. Make pease with everybody and use those cities to get better technology 3. Kill opponent

I cant seem to get to goal 2. If I by some miracle have reached the first goal almost all of my cities have one shield production and no money/science. I am told that choosing communism will help but how are you supposed to keep up in tech with your opponents long enough to get communism with such small a number of cities you can have before corruption totally kicks your ass considering the opponents have so huge advantages in city management, that you quickly will have nothing to trade with ???

Here is the only way I have come anywhere close to beating the computer:

I choose the persians because having the persians makes it possible to build a few cities with barracks - build lots of immortals which will mean attack 4 against defence 2. Then I go after the civilization that has build the great library - this of course means a lot of restarts because I need to have iron close by and be close to that civilization. I need to acquire the great library because I have spent so many resources at building units and not city improvements that I am behind big time in tech and don't have enough money to acquire the tech by trade. This is okay if I get the great library because I quickly get all the missing tech and with my newly taken over cities I can build more immortals and at the last city of an oppenent get all the techs that the oppenents have more than me.

Here is where flipping comes in taking over cities just means that it will flip right back to the enemy even if the enemy has no other cities close by (as in on the same continent or the city being anywhere close to the enemys borders). I find this concept of flipping totally unrealistic and it REALLY makes the game totally unfun. God damn I hate it sooooooo much right now - the person that came up with that idea should be shot!

The only way I have come close to solving this is to raze the cities that I capture and build new cities where the old cities where. The problem with this is that I need some to build new immortals and I need the great library. I have read some advice on how to avoid flipping but I doesn't seem to apply to captured cities because mine flip every fricking time !!!! Quite often before the restiance has ended or with a lot of my units in them - aaaaaaaaaargh

I am so close to burning my civ 3 box and joining a satanic cult - so any help would be appreciated deeply!!!

AntiQual

 

[majk-iii]

You only got civ3 3 weeks ago?
Since it doesn't work exactly like civ 1 or 2 maybe you shouldn't start on deity.
I'd say you'd be better off starting on lets say warlord or regent and work your way up untill you've got the hang of the whole cultural spectrum of civ 3... and so on.

...theres an prng-count for flipping as well as most otherthings in the game... make sure to build some tempels and such from time to time in order to increase your odds and maybe get the cities of others to flip over to you instead.
However flipping itself is not very common and hardly ever makes for a strategic difference... then again, sometimes spearmen can finish off tanks wich means that anything can happen.

Oh, and by the way... install conquest (1.22) ...it's worth it.

 

[BasketCase]

Solution #1: turn flipping off.

Solution #2: build up your culture base more. The TOTAL culture amassed by your civ does play a part in determining flips, and this is the only thing I can think of which is causing your conquered cities to flip "every (&@#@ time". In many of my games, NO cities flip at all! At worst, I had a Persians game where four cities flipped--but all of those flips were FROM other civs TO me, so no problem there. I never have seen a case of gigantic mass ongoing flippage, which means you must be doing something REALLY nasty.

Solution #3: conquer faster. Your cities can't flip to an enemy that doesn't exist.

 

[Tomoyo]

Corruption is always there. The Forbidden Palace, police stations, and courthouses help. Democracy has the least corruption. Commercial civs have an increased OCN by 25%.

 

[kb2tvl]

d/l the latest patch. 1.22 for civ3/ptw and some other number if you have conquests.

The "bestest" approach to culature flipping is to 'population rush' temples early. Each turn gives a small amount of culture but it adds up quick over the starting turns of the game. Culture also double every 1,000 years and a temple build in 3kBC will have 5 doublings by 2050.

For me, civ1/2 I spread out my cities a lot. For civ 3/ptw, you want to plan for size 13~16 max and make sure you use all your land near your capitol. Typically, 5 cities near your capitol and 8 every ring out.

Conquests is a bit different in strat and I will assume you do not have c3c.

For civ3/ptw, You want a ring or two around your capitol and then a Forbidden palace with a ring or two. There are some abuses and you can find those explained but I won't go into them. Visualize two butt cheeks! One cheek would have a palace with surrounding cities and the second will have a forbidden palace. Depending on map size will determine the number of rings. See posts on corruption under strat section.

OCN(optimal city number) is related to map size. Try to keep your total number of initial cities at the OCN for that map size.

As a final note, starve down the city. Chance of flipping is determined by number of forgein born citizens.

 

[Tomoyo]

Actually, a culture building will only double once, at 1000 years.

 

[AntiQual]

Thx for the replies everybody.

For corruption I know about ring placement, courthouses, policestations, forbidden palace etc but it doesn't help when the number of cities gets high enough so I guess the answer was that there is no effiecient way of battling corruption ie there is a limit to the number of cities you can have ?

I have no trouble beating the computer at lower levels since it doesn't have such a big advantage from the beginning, at deity I'm really having trouble staying in the game in the beginning.

majk-iii wrote:
"...theres an prng-count for flipping as well as most otherthings in the game... make sure to build some tempels and such from time to time in order to increase your odds and maybe get the cities of others to flip over to you instead. However flipping itself is not very common and hardly ever makes for a strategic difference..."

BasketCase wrote:
"build up your culture base more. The TOTAL culture amassed by your civ does play a part in determining flips, and this is the only thing I can think of which is causing your conquered cities to flip "every (&@#@ time". In many of my games, NO cities flip at all!"

Maybe I didn't explain very well - I am talking about cities that I have captured from the enemy - I can't control what the enemies build in their cities. I do build temples in my cities my own cities rarely flip but the cities I capture from the enemy flip allmost every time. I can't starve them because they will flip before this happens. At deity level I can't see how you avoid the opponent having more culture than you since it will quickly build wonders etc. Their cities also quite often flip back eventhough they are not within reach of their own borders - is that still because it has more culture than me ?

BasketCase wrote:
"Solution #1: turn flipping off."

How ? I can't seem to find that option anywhere - is it a cheat ?

 

[Tomoyo]

ie there is a limit to the number of cities you can have ?

Simply put, yes.

 

[wildWolverine]

This doesn't pertain to actual gameplay, but if you think massive "flipping" is unrealistic, look into the history of ancient Greece, especially the twenty odd years during the Peloponnesian War.

And what [I think] BasketCase was suggesting was building temples in the cities you capture, as well as your original cities.

 

[Dirkonium]

I choose the persians because having the persians makes it possible to build a few cities with barracks - build lots of immortals which will mean attack 4 against defence 2. Then I go after the civilization that has build the great library - this of course means a lot of restarts because I need to have iron close by and be close to that civilization. I need to acquire the great library because I have spent so many resources at building units and not city improvements that I am behind big time in tech and don't have enough money to acquire the tech by trade. This is okay if I get the great library because I quickly get all the missing tech and with my newly taken over cities I can build more immortals and at the last city of an oppenent get all the techs that the oppenents have more than me.

Why not just build the Great Library yourself? I mean, if you have to go looking for it and capture the city that has it, that seems like an absurdly hit-or-miss approach to the game, if you're staking everything on that. The GL has become central to my strategy playing on Regent level. In my current game I was having trouble finding more than one other civ, and on virtually the last turn before I discovered Education, they finally found me. It was pretty cool, getting about a dozen advances all at once!

It also sounds to me like you need to balance early conquest with early development. Sometimes conquest isn't viable until much later in the game. For me it often starts when I get cavalry and cannon.

 

[Tomoyo]

I suggest not building/capturing the Great Library at all. Check out Ision's Wonder Addiction article for why.

 

[Crimso]

Dude, stop playing on Deity. It's supposed to @#$% you off, I'm sure of it.

 

[Pook]

I agree with crimso, quit playing on Deity until you get the hang of Civ III. In Civ II, I was accustomed to playing at deity level and using the AI as a super-swipper to mop the floor. I had a rude awakening in Civ III- it took several weeks for me to get my first win at Monarch.

I agree with what dirkonium, majk-iii and BasketCase wrote.

Play C3C 1.22. Ring City Placement no longer works (too much of an exploit), but a number of other bugs have been worked out.

Culture flip calculator is located here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53157

 

[Dianthus]

RE Flipping, you don't have to have high culture to stop flips. There is a 0% probability of flipping if both:

• The city's population is all your nationality.
• All 21 of the city's tiles are controlled by you or are neutral.

 

[ukrneal]

Flipping: There were many discussions here long ago. I suggest looking for them.

Flipping IS affected by how many tiles, a city has out of 21, but I am not aware that a city can't flip if there is no overlap. It is affected by the number of units in the city as well - if you leave one unit to defend, there is certainly a high probability of flipping if: your overall culture is lower than the opponent, the city is rioting, there are still resisters in the city, the city had a high culture before you took it, and you haven't built any culture in it yet. Track down the formula in the FAQ, as it really explains what is happening. I also recommend poking around the editor. It shows how some things are determined and helps understand the game even if you don't plan on modding.

Do you have vanilla civ or C3C? If vanilla, the patch should be to 1.29 I think. If COnquests, to 1.22. Corruption was lowered somewhat in the patches if I remember correctly.

Managing corruption and culture are significant changes to CivIII. Most likely, you are still playing too much in the style of I and II. It has been generally shown that if you don't change, you won't win.

Finally, I suggest taking a look at some of the diety games that have been done at the succession games section. There are a lot of good players there and it might help to see what they are doing.

 

[Pook]

I referenced the thread with the culture flip calculator above, in post #13 on this page.

ukrneal, you are absolutely right. Even if a city has no overlap, it can flip- I lost a Fall of Rome scenario on just such a culture flip.

 

[Dianthus]

@ukrneal and Pook, did you notice I listed two things? Both of them have to be true to get 0% flip probability. I'm guessing your examples flipped because you had foreign citizens in your citys.

Referring to the Formula :

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)
....
​

This means that if (F+T) is zero the whole forumula evaluates to <= 0.

 

[Pook]

You're right, dianthus- my mistake. I hang my head in shame.

I went back through the most up-to-date flip calc. As long as foreigners (or as pronounced in the States, ferners) are not in the city and all 21 tiles are out of AI influence, there is 0% chance of a flip.

 

[BasketCase]

"Solution #1: turn flipping off."

How ? I can't seem to find that option anywhere - is it a cheat ?

In the game Setup screen, uncheck "Allow Cultural Conversions". And no, it's not a cheat since flips in your favor are turned off too.

 

[rschissler]

In the game Setup screen, uncheck "Allow Cultural Conversions". And no, it's not a cheat since flips in your favor are turned off too.

Except it only works in Conquests. If you have standard CivIII you are out of luck.