Real Solution to Culture Flipping

[jpowers]

I was reading another thread when it hit me - Culture Flipping could be much more realistic if it merely involved a population point from a border city leaving that city in the form of a worker and appearing in the closest city of the Civ who it has flipped to. This is immigration, which has been a constant throughout history. Military unit defections could also happen, although as a result of losing badly in a war, not as a result of culture differential.

 

[bobgote]

That would be pretty complicated, and hard to keep track of. Some people dislike it, some people love it, many just endure it, but i think it all evens out. Do we really need a "solution" if there's no problem?

 

[jpowers]

The two useful metrics of simulation games are gameplay and realism. Culture flipping creates problems for both of them. Cities don't just change linguistically, governmentally and religiously from one culture to another. Armies located in those cities certainly don't just vanish. My proposal is not any more complicated than the current starvation/disease mechanisms currently in place in the game for losing population.

 

[Gastric ReFlux]

Contrary to what some people feel that my present sigline may indicate, I rather like culture flipping. Probably because a majority of culture flips happen in my favor; I've had games where I've flipped over a dozen cities to my side.

As many properly point out, this is a game simulation--both of reality, and what we and the game designers imagine. Now since none of us has 6050 years of time, there has to be compression of events and abstractions. Some of those compressions/abstractions hardly get a second thought--population points, the time it takes to mine grasslands, etc.

Culture flipping ends up seeing a lot more second thoughts. I think this is because of a few factors: a culture flip as done in the game has extreme compression, instead of a longer and prolonged display of the conflict, a culture flip happens instantly and contrasts conspicuously with the more familiar military conquest which involves immediate tactics and long-term strategy. That makes it harder for the gameplayer to feel control, and I suspect it is even tougher on those gameplayers of warmongering inclinations. Whereas a builder mentality is more used to guiding production towards more abstract benefits, the warmonger prefers production that has upfront, almost tangible results, as tangible as one may get with digital simulation.

Now due to the nature of warmonger production, that player is more susceptible to adverse culture flips. It probably tends to feel like something that can't be controlled the way war and battle can be controlled. It is from this, I think, that much of the problems with culture flipping occur.

And perhaps it needs some sort of resolution, either a checkbox to disable culture flipping, or as suggested by the threadstarter, a method of resolution that isn't quite so compressed as the game engine currently performs it.

 

[sabo]

Gastric,

Which Civ do you play? I normally play Germans (I like those panzers) and I hardly ever get any cities to culture flip in my favor, and I always build the lastest up to date "culture buildings"

 

[Gastric ReFlux]

Originally posted by sabo10
Gastric,

Which Civ do you play? I normally play Germans (I like those panzers) and I hardly ever get any cities to culture flip in my favor, and I always build the lastest up to date "culture buildings"

I tend to play Religious civs with those cheap temples and cathedrals. Though the game where I flipped over a dozen cities to my side I was playing as the French, played it in almost pure builder style and producing just enough military to keep any aggressive AIs at bay.

Lately, I've been playing China, Japan, or Iroquois.

 

[jpowers]

I have to say, as the threadstarter, that I almost always win culture flips. Shanghai, a Chinese city of size 11 adjacent to the Chinese capital flipped to me (the Japanese) in my last game. I was stunned Shanghai had a Great Wonder and was at the far edge of my territory. In my current game as the Americans on a hugh world with 16 Civs, I have had 4 cities flip to me, and we are just discovering Monotheism.

 

[warpstorm]

Its not what buildings, but the overall culture. How much of a total culture lead do you have in your civ? If the answer is less than 2:1, you're not going to see much flipping towards you.

 

[Gastric ReFlux]

Originally posted by jpowers
I have to say, as the threadstarter, that I almost always win culture flips. Shanghai, a Chinese city of size 11 adjacent to the Chinese capital flipped to me (the Japanese) in my last game. I was stunned Shanghai had a Great Wonder and was at the far edge of my territory. In my current game as the Americans on a hugh world with 16 Civs, I have had 4 cities flip to me, and we are just discovering Monotheism.

I flipped a wonder city to me a few games ago. Though it wasn't a native city to Persia, but one Xerxes had grabbed while we were carving up England. I surrounded that sucker on three sides and squeezed it down to a minimal number of tiles.

It was very sweet to have Sun-Tzu's flip to me.

 

[sabo]

Gastric,

Which Civ do you play? I normally play Germans (I like those panzers) and I hardly ever get any cities to culture flip in my favor, and I always build the lastest up to date "culture buildings"

 

[Gastric ReFlux]

Originally posted by sabo10
Gastric,

Which Civ do you play? I normally play Germans (I like those panzers) and I hardly ever get any cities to culture flip in my favor, and I always build the lastest up to date "culture buildings"

Deja vu all over again.

 

[mad_stork]

Originally posted by jpowers
I was reading another thread when it hit me - Culture Flipping could be much more realistic if it merely involved a population point from a border city leaving that city in the form of a worker and appearing in the closest city of the Civ who it has flipped to. This is immigration, which has been a constant throughout history. Military unit defections could also happen, although as a result of losing badly in a war, not as a result of culture differential.

This sounds like a good idea to me. The only thing I would add is that the flipping would have to be more frequent than it is currently. Otherwise losing one population point every now and then wouldn't have much effect.

 

[Zouave]

First of all, you must realize that if you play a game that has this braindead Culture Flipping crap you are NOT playing a game that even attempts to simulate even partly reality or history. You are thus playing a Fantasy game - which is unacceptable. At least Sid's Alpha Centauri did not pretend to be historical in any way.

We've seen ludicrous CF screw ups; they have been posted repeatedly. The one recently up where TEN military units would be unable to stop a town of '1' from flipping causing the garrison to magically vanish is the worst. Thus, we must ALWAYS raze towns and cities - an option almost as absurd (and genocidal) as CF itself.

Solution??

Firaxis will do nothing. But what they should do is this:

Culture can change borders over open terrain - but never over improvements, resources within your borders, or colonies.

Culture can make you stronger Diplomatically, and give a Happiness bonus.

Culture can NOT cause cities to switch allegiances or garrisons to vanish. Period.

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by jpowers
I have to say, as the threadstarter, that I almost always win culture flips. . .

Irrelevant.

Flipping borders or cities is absurd, unrealistic, and ludicrous regardless of whether the human or AI wins.

If you invade an enemy (but can't use their roads - also absurd)
you wil have to either leave gigantic garrisons in every town (impossible) or raze everything you come across - equally absurd and genocidal, plus it requires you to build extra settlers to create new towns for units to heal in, thus offensives are even more tedious and drawn out.

 

[Azale]

I would get rid of culture flipping,but shorten the amount of time it takes for borders to expand.That would,in a way,create a sort of culture war between countries.

Anbother option is to make culture flipping or the whole culture concept an option,probably in the civilization selection screen with the other options.


Just my ideas though.

 

[Mongoloid Cow]

I love culture flipping! Its the best - I have only ever had three cities flip away from me in the entire time I'm playing (two in one game) and I always get cities to flip to me. Why change something that obviously is good ?

BTW: I always play as Egypt

 

[Smoking mirror]

I like the Idea of culture flipping, but I don't like the reality of it.
People who claim that culture flipping never happens in real life have not been reading history. Two examples spring instantly to mind; The anexation of Czechezovakia by nazi germany in the 1930s and the Imfamous "retreat form Kabul" by the british army @100 years earlier.
British Empire troops had developed a great tactic for dealing with culture flipping. When you take a city, build a fortress garrison outside the city and place all your troops there with artillery or cavalry support, and only have a token force actualy in the city, if the city revolts only the token force is destroyed (and if you were quick, troops from outside the city could repress the revolt and rescue the garrison). I sugest players use this tactic when attacking a cultural equal if you want to capture "Wonder cities".

I think four things should apply to culture flipping;
#1 a city should never flip unless part of its radius includes enemy cultural borders.
#2 at least half the troops should be expelled from the city rather than all being destroyed.
#3 there should be at least 50% foreign citizens in the city
#4 each unit stationed in the city should be able to totaly repress 1 population point with no chance of flipping
these should not be random number modifications, making it less likely to happen (we all know about "random" events in Civ 3) but should be concrete, unbreakable rules

just yesterday I lost a city to the french under the following conditions;
I had no military units in the city.
I had captured the city @20 turns earlier and during that time I had build a temple, a cathedral, a libray and my culture was @50% higher than the french
There were two french citizens in the city and ten of my own.
The city was more than 15 squares away from the current french cultural borders and completely surounded by my own borders.
The city was equaly distant from both our capitals.

and in the same game I lost a 4 tank army and six cavalry units in a culture flip in a size ten city on the same turn i captured it to a civ that had less than half my culture rating. It would have been O.K. but I didn't have enough movement left in the tank army to move it back out of the city so I had to place the cavalry in the city in order protect the tanks.
Please at least give us at least one turn with which to withdraw our troops!

Oh yes also I think cultur flipping should be linked to total overall Military strength as well as culture, even the best propaganda cant disquise the fact that I have an army 4 times as big as their cultural allies and I also have three size 4 tank armies heading for the capital. O.k so it wouldn't deter hard core political independance fanatics (like ETA or the IRA), but normal citizens are genaraly not that stupid/fanatical.

 

[konigstiger]

Culture flipping is ok, the annoying thing is it targets the city where you station the most troops, now that's NOT NOT NOT OKAY!!!!!!!! Which idiot resistance groups would pick a heavily defended city to revolt on.

 

[Falcon02]

I agree military should be a larger factor in stoping flips, such as 1 unit to prevent 1 pop from fliping, like Smoking Mirror said. So, to ensure a size 11 city won't flip you'd need 11 military units stationed there. Or some adaptation of that principle. Also, most importantly, you should NEVER lose ALL your forces in a city to flipping, unless it's only 1 unit. Most, if not ALL units should escape, maybe damaged, expelled to your nearest city. Losing Entire Armies to a culture flip can be the most devistating thing to occur, esp. when your waging war against someone.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

When I read about Civ3 before it came out, I did indeed think it was going to be a case of individual citizens emigrating out of some cities and joining others.

The flip should never happen to a human unless it is a city captured in war, due to the fact that human culture almost always surpasses AI.

When I have a captured city flip back (as sometimes happens, usually taking five tanks and four bombers with them) my policy is to take it back and raze it. I then move settlers in and name the new city after the whole disgrace.