Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

[CKS]

I ended up holding elections ... I won 5-3 vs. Greece. I expected Greece & Korea (my archenemy) to vote for Greece, but Iroquois was a surprise ... "Polite" does not mean you get the vote after all, though I did end up getting the win. Got "Magnificent" again, and my 2nd-highest C3C score.

They won't vote for you unless they are at least polite, but polite doesn't mean they will vote for you. The safest way to win the vote is to declare war on your opponent (or opponents) and ally everyone else against them. They won't vote for someone they are at war with. If they still don't like you, they will abstain, but at least they won't vote for your opponent. If they don't like you, give them a bribe. Note, though that giving them something at a big discount doesn't work. (Giving them Computers for 1 g doesn't make them happy. Giving them 100g for nothing does.)

(If there are MPPs, they won't sign an alliance with you, but you can probably get them to sign an MPP with you. If you declare war and leave weak units easily accessible just inside your borders but don't attack, the MPP will trigger in your favor and they'll be at war with your opponent on the next turn.)

 

[justanick]

I was thinking more along the lines of what causes AI cities to flip to me ... the reverse has very rarely occurred for me. But I suppose the formula works either direction?

Yes.

I don't know the civ-wide culture for Korea (or how to find it, apart from investigating all their cities), so I'm not sure how to use this formula - unless I missed that it's just about civ-culture points for the city alone (which is 100% me, 0% Korea).

It is the total culture. You could get to this figure, but you actually donnot need to know the value. For the formula you only need the ratio and a look at the culture graph will get you an idea. If you need precise facts make screnshot and count the pixels, but i really doubt you need best precision available.

In this particular case, it was a city of 12 that unexpectedly flipped to me. It had no buildings - i.e., no culture - and currently I have a Temple (not ToA), Library, Colosseum, other non-culture buildings, and am working on Cathedral. 11 happy, 1 content, all Korean (I'm Netherlands).

Please be aware that a flip destroys all culture buildings except world wonders. So culture production ceases upon flip, but foreign culture may be higher than zero.

Anyway, I'm interested in understanding how it flipped to me in the first place (I've not yet been to war with anyone), and how to prevent a return flip.

Mostly it means that a rare chance came true. Chances are very low.

I donnot have your facts available, so i will need to speculate a lot.

Say before the flip there were zero citizens of your nationality, but you controlled 3 tiles within the fatcross of the foreign city. That means F+T=3. You had no culture in this city, so Cc=1. Unless there was disorder in the city H=1. If your culture was 3 times as big, than Cte/Cty = 3. If there were 2 units defending the city, than G=2. If the city was twice as far away from their capital than yours, than D=1000.

This leaves P =(3x1x1x3-2)/1000=0.7%. That is an unusually high chance, lower chances are more likely.

Now the city is yours. F=12. Say no tiles in the fatcross are are under korean control, than F+T=12. According to your facts Cc=1. Due to 11 happy + 1 content citizens you have the WLTKD, thus H=0.5. Cte/Cty = 1/3 and D=4000 because facts need to stay the same as before. For educational purposes i assume G=0.

This leaves P =(12x1x0.5/3-G)/4000=(2-0)/4000=0.05%. This chance would be very small due to the many assumptions in your favour.

Please note that by increasing G to 2 chances will be zero. That will safely prevent a flip. But lose the WLTKD and you need G=4 instead. And if Cte/Cty = 1, than you need G=12. So pending many details you cannot have enough units in the city to safely prevent a flip.

If you cannot safely prevent it, than you should not even try because a flip will destroy all your units in the city.

 

[vorlon_mi]

In my last game, I had a size 6 Aztec city flip to me unexpectedly. I had hooked up *lots* of luxuries, and taken some from the Aztecs in my last war with them. My culture overall was probably 3x their culture, and since I don't think that the city's border had popped, I doubt that they had any local culture buildings. I got lucky. I built a temple, to provide some local culture, and I probably got a WLTKD with a marketplace.

Is there a way to tell if an AI city is in disorder? Without spending the gold to "investigate city", just by looking on the screen.

 

[Takhisis]

Is there a way to tell if an AI city is in disorder? Without spending the gold to "investigate city", just by looking on the screen.

If it's visible you should be able to see tell-tale symptoms such as a column of smoke rising from it.

 

[WeirdoJoker]

Please be aware that a flip destroys all culture buildings except world wonders.

That is something I did not know, and had not occurred to me. Interesting.

Mostly it means that a rare chance came true. Chances are very low.

I donnot have your facts available, so i will need to speculate a lot.

That's ok. It sounds like the RNGs just happened to be on my side with that one.

If you cannot safely prevent it, than you should not even try because a flip will destroy all your units in the city.

A couple times a long time ago, a city captured in a war flipped back to its original Civ and I had to recapture it, but IIRC it was weakly garrisoned anyway, and then there was the one that culture flipped to me, then flipped back. And then there was the city I surrounded by my territory that was literally down to no more than the city square that took forever to culture flip, and that was just interesting (never went to war with that Civ), and I still have the screenshot.

In my current game, there is an AI city that is down to two land squares (the city itself + 1 square) and a couple or so water squares. The Dutch have to go through my territory to get to & from it, and it'd be nice if it flipped but I'm not counting on it (and I'll likely get a 60K victory soon anyway ... annoying low-resource Tiny map).

 

[tjs282]

Is there a way to tell if an AI city is in disorder? Without spending the gold to "investigate city", just by looking on the screen.

If it's visible you should be able to see tell-tale symptoms such as a column of smoke rising from it.

I don't remember seeing an AI city riot, in any of my games.

Since the AI by definition has its city-governors "Managing moods", and it always revolts into a non-WW gov if its current Republic/Democracy is teetering due to prolonged/losing wars, I would actually be very surprised to learn that AI-towns ever rioted (I would love to see a screenie of an AI-town in flames, though, if anyone has one!).

If they don't burn, then I suppose the only visible indicator that an AI-town is in trouble would likely be its pop-count. If a large AI-town's size is dropping turn by turn, even while not being besieged/ attacked, then it might be starving due to excessive Clown-age.

 

[Takhisis]

AI-controlled cities usually only riot when they are at war, the difficulty level is not high enough to allow the AI to cheat, and you've just snatched a lot of luxuries off them, or something like that. I'e last seen in, IIRC, in EFZI.

…two years ago?

 

[Vuldacon]

Yes, the AI Cities can riot. I see their buildings in flames from time to time in EFZI2 Elite.
Takhisis is correct, the AI usually has riots when at war and losing cities, population, resources, etc...

 

[RobS]

After about a three-year hiatus, and after dabbling in Civ IV a few months go, I'm back to playing The Complete Civ III (GOG edition).
Although I'm the proud owner of the special tin box edition and have been playing this for about 15 years, there are still a couple of things I'm unclear about. One, is why sometimes I have some small towns, population of perhaps 3-5, that refuse to become content and stay angry. Typically, these are some distance from my capital, although not near any borders. There are no foreign citizens or anything else I can discern that would cause their unhappiness. Government might be despotism or feudalism. I think I have temples in them too. I've just had this happen in a game as the Germans.
Any clues?

 

[tjs282]

One, is why sometimes I have some small towns, population of perhaps 3-5, that refuse to become content and stay angry. Typically, these are some distance from my capital, although not near any borders. There are no foreign citizens or anything else I can discern that would cause their unhappiness.

Have you forgotten that you can actually ask these citizens what their problem is? If you go to the city-screen, and right-click on one of the unhappy faces, you will get a pop-up box that tells you why they are unhappy:

"It's just too crowded" is basic unhappiness. At Emperor (possibly also already at Monarch, don't remember), the second citizen in every town is born unhappy unless you do something to cheer them up: e.g. turning the unhappy citizen into a Specialist (who is always content), stationing a military garrison(s) (under governments which can use 'military police'), increasing your LUX%-slider setting (may not help in outlying towns), hooking a new, different Lux-resource(s) to your trade-net, obtaining "War Happiness" (at least for a little while) by provoking an AI-Civ's DoW...

"All we are saying..." is War-Weariness. You'll only see this one under governments subject to it: Republic, Democracy -- and Feudalism!

"Stop the aggression..." is foreign citizens unhappy about your current war against their parent civ.

"We cannot forget the cruel oppression..." is whip-rushing unhappiness. If you're using Despotism/Feudalism (or later Communism/Fascism), and whip-rushing to complete builds in these towns, for every citizen whipped to death, you will make 1 surviving citizen unhappy for 20 turns.

"No more draft! ..." is conscription-unhappiness. You won't see this one until you've learned Nationalism, and drafted your citizens as defenders (or you've captured an AI-town which has drafted).

 

[Vuldacon]

RobS... Also under "Difficulty Levels" in the Game Biq, the "number of citizens born content", and the "percentage of optimal cities" directly affect your cities and their population.

 

[justanick]

"We cannot forget the cruel oppression..." is whip-rushing unhappiness. If you're using Despotism/Feudalism (or later Communism/Fascism), and whip-rushing to complete builds in these towns, for every citizen whipped to death, you will make 1 surviving citizen unhappy for 20 turns.

That is rather imprecise. You cannot help it by whipping away the surviving citizens. The correct formulation is that unhappyness is increased by 1 for each citizen whipped away. This unhappiness is reduced by one every 20 turns. So if you whip away 20 citizens it takes 400 turns to remove the unhappiness. Most of the time whipping is very bad idea.

The same mechanism works with conscription. Here also it is 20 turns, but the entry is a seperate one.

 

[RobS]

That is rather imprecise. You cannot help it by whipping away the surviving citizens. The correct formulation is that unhappyness is increased by 1 for each citizen whipped away. This unhappiness is reduced by one every 20 turns. So if you whip away 20 citizens it takes 400 turns to remove the unhappiness. Most of the time whipping is very bad idea.

The same mechanism works with conscription. Here also it is 20 turns, but the entry is a seperate one.

Ahh, that's the culprit then. Thanks for the clarification, tjs, and additional info, nick.

 

[Takhisis]

Remember that defensive wars tend to bring less war weariness than offensive ones, as well.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Trade embargoes -- late in the game, I get an AI asking me to join their embargo against some other AI, that is being warred against.
When I get these requests, I usually don't remember if I have any active trades with the other AI.

Does joining an embargo break any existing trades that I have? I know that it stops me from initiating new trades for luxuries or resources.
I'm wary of breaking an existing deal, just because somebody asks.

 

[Lanzelot]

Remember that defensive wars tend to bring less war weariness than offensive ones, as well.

In my experience, it is the other way around: an offensive war brings less WW. The reason is: every attack on one of your units, no matter whether your unit wins or loses, gives 2 WW points. Attacking on the other hand, only gives WW points, if your units loses. So a "successful" offensive war is to be preferred.

 

[Takhisis]

Yes, but if you're on enemy territory your units will be attacked anyway.

 

[tjs282]

Trade embargoes -- late in the game, I get an AI asking me to join their embargo against some other AI, that is being warred against.
When I get these requests, I usually don't remember if I have any active trades with the other AI.

Did you know that if you are contacted by an AI during the interturn, you can go to your Advisors' screens?

Just click on your Foreign Advisor's head above his advice box, which will take you to the F4 screen, where you can then check your Active Deals under the 'Trade' tab. (You can also navigate from there to your Domestic Advisor, if you need to adjust your SCI%/LUX%-sliders to increase a GPT-payment for e.g. a just-cancelled Lux-import).

Or (if it works for you) you could look at 'Current Trades' in CivAssist.

Does joining an embargo break any existing trades that I have? I know that it stops me from initiating new trades for luxuries or resources.
I'm wary of breaking an existing deal, just because somebody asks.

I would guess that signing a TE would break ongoing (Resource) deals, so if you can't remember (and/or can't check) what you're trading, it's probably safer not to agree.

But as a rule, I will not sign TEs (or MPPs or MAs) just because an AI has asked for one -- because the AI does not 'understand' how these work, nor does it value them appropriately. So any time I get an interturn request for such an agreement, I'll just fob them off with my World Map or something equally worthless.

I may ask for such deals myself, but only if it serves my purposes (e.g. I might ask for an MPP, designed to break my intended target's MPPs).

 

[RobS]

Is there a way to find out which World Wonders have been built in the current game, and perhaps in which cities?

 

[Takhisis]

It's very-late-a.m. here in notAmerica but IIRC it's F8 for the Wonder screen. F1-F6 for the advisors and the further Fs for other functions. Browse around!