Stopping culture flip

[The Great Proxy]

Does it matter for culture meanings the continent? I have good culture and was destroying the evil egypt, who had their own continent next to mine. I had to demolish the cities I conquered and bring a settler of my own because of the constant turnings.

 

[Crow T Robot]

As with many things Civ, preventing CF is situational. Preventing it on a captured city during a war is easier than a native border city because you at least KNOW the possibility exists and its severity.

The 2 *main* factors are: number of unhappy/resisting foreign nationals on the city and the number of the Big X tiles under foreign control. Lesser factors are the new govt type, number of luxuries you provide and entertainment spending. Even less is things like your culture score or standing.

If it is a small city with 4 or 5 resistors, you would need at least 16 units to counter them. If there are say 6 tiles under enemy control you would need at least another 12. The numbers get huge with 15 or 20 resistors. The trick is that these need not be your best troops - those antiquated swordsman and cavalry will quell resistors just as well. It is not a bad tactic at all to hold onto some cavalry and riflemen to garrison a captured cities even after you graduate to ranks or armor. If it does flip, all you lost was "antiquated" units.

Note: There is a point where the GPT support cost does make something like a spearman or swordman truly outdated, but it is because of movement. For my Golds, cavalry never go out of style: their mobility is the same as MA, they can shoot the flanks and take workers and settlers meandering about, or execute a feint to confuse the "AI". But their movement makes them odeal for rushing a captured city to quell resistance (not alone - some MA or Infantry as well). I may stop making new ones, but I rarely disband existing cavalry.

Even so-so production cities can build a swordman in a few turns to quickly build a resistance garrison force. This can work, but if you are in a unit support cost situation, you are paying a Gold for a units whose ONLY value is resistance garrison. Further, you might be paying 20 to 35 GPT to garrison a city generating 3 GPT. In that case, unless it has a Wonder, consider the option to raze or abandon it.

Wounded units can heal in that city at the same time that they garrison and quell stinking resistors.

When the city is a large one with lots of resistors (and therefore a much better chance of it flipping), it is a good idea to post a few units ourside to retake it if it flips. I dont like the idea of leaving just one unit inside because it just increases the chance it will flip. This is also a good idea if your gov is "less" than the once they came from and/or you have fewer luxuries to provide.

Starving the city down - make entertainers, not scientists - will pacify them sooner, and the garrison effectiveness increases as the population decreases. Once the resistance has ended keep starving them down to 2 or 3, then repopulate with some settlers and NATIVE workers.

Even once the resistance ends, the danger is only slightly diminished - you still have a city overflowing with ungreatful heathens and some land under foreign influence. When the war is over, the chance of a riot is diminished, but chance of CF remains at DefCon-3. Continue starving them until your can join enough settlers or workers to even out the heathen to nationals ratio. (I once tried to speed grow a city by feeding to captured Baylonian workers only to have it flip without warning when I went to war with them.)

Speeding a temple, library and maybe a marketplace helps, but the temple itself is not the key. The improvement is nice, but the key is that the culture aura (usually) expands 2 or 3 turns later which reclaims those Big-X tiles under foreign influence.

Equally helpful is prewar preparation. Pumping up the culture near target cities long before you attack. If your culture extends onto THEIR Big X, you tend to have fewer resistors when you do take it.

Last of course, is the option to raze it. This can depend on how it was taken. If you had a long bombardment phase, you may have already destroyed the contents to the point where a city with no (or few) improvements but LOTS of resistors. Such a city has more value if razed for the resulting slaves. OTOH, if you were able to take it with minimal damage that it still has worthwhile/expensive improvements or wonders, then it can be worth the longterm hands on effort it takes to monitor, garrison, starve and rush things to hold onto it.

If you dont have sufficient troops to garrison it, you can TRY to just post sentries outside the city, but should consider razing it OR abandoning after you sell off improvements. You can also hold it a turn or two while attack troops get the movement bonus across your own territory, then abandon it and replace it when a settler moves up, or just before you sue for peace.


HTH, FWIW

 

[mad-bax]

Originally posted by DasScoot
Here's another question, is there a way to keep all citizens as entertainers? After the city starves one turn it gets set back to self-sustaining levels.

Instead of hiring clowns you can instead hire taxmen or Scientists.
Although you won't get WLTKD the specialists won't revert to working the land. Of course as resistors reduce in number the new citizens will work the land and can prevent starvation. So cities in resistance need to be visited every turn pretty much anyway.

Personally I like to raze big cities. It increases your opponent war weariness a lot, and forces them into anarchy and then communism sooner. Secondly, big cities convert some of the citizens into workers when razed and these are extremely helpful in building roads and rails to the front line. Obviously, if you do this, then you need a ready supply of settlers to replace the razed cities.
Lastly, captured cities are very often completely corrupt. Normally you will capture large cities with some buildings intact. These buildings, such as banks and stock exchanges are useless to you, but they do cost money for their upkeep. Selling these buildings gets you some gold, and saves you some gpt.

For all of these reasons I capture and hold cities of size 6 or less and raze and replace cities with higher populations. The obvious exception is where the new city contains a wonder. I normally try to keep these cities, or maybe if I am shooting for a diplo victory where razing cities hurts the AI attitude towards you.

 

[anarres]

It appears several people are not aware of the culture flip formula, so here it is (this is from Sorenson, who is responsible for this programming):

P=((F+T)*Cc*H*(Cte/Cty) - G)/(2000 * 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 = relative distance to capitals

Reorganizing this gives the required garrison guarenteed to stop a flip 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.

Government type is not relevent at all, and adding units as garrison in the city reduces the chance of flip.

If you check this Flip Calc out you can put in the numbers and see exactly what effect moving troops in has on flip chance. Sometimes the difference is minute and all you are realistically doing is putting your units at risk if it does flip. Putting armies in cities is absolute madness IMO (since armies a rare breed).

My preferred method of controling it is to starve cities and retake them if they flip. If I am going to wipe out a civ within 10 turns or so I will just leave the city without leaving troops in, and quell the resistance when the civ is dead (so no flip chance).

Also worth noting is that cities do not flip the turn you capture them, so you can leave as many troops in as you can the first turn to quell resistance.

 

[ArmyOfOne]

Great ideas so far! I just thought of another idea but I'm not sure if it would work. How about making your own workers join the recently conquered city (if you have workers to spare)? But then the city is starving constantly so I don't if it would make a difference. Anyone else try it?

I have a question about the "producing settlers" method. Once I produce a settler/worker, what nationality would it have? And if I settle the settler somewhere, what nationality would that have?

Thanks!

 

[Crow T Robot]

Originally posted by anarres


Government type is not relevent at all, and adding units as garrison in the city reduces the chance of flip.

Not directly it isnt. The Gov type differential does affect the likelihood and severity of disorder/resistance in a captured city which in turn increases the chance for a resistance CF.

The magnifying effect of starving a captured city is that long haired hippie resistors die first, thus increasing the impact of the garrison on the rest of the populace.

 

[Crow T Robot]

Originally posted by ArmyOfOne
Great ideas so far! I just thought of another idea but I'm not sure if it would work. How about making your own workers join the recently conquered city (if you have workers to spare)? But then the city is starving constantly so I don't if it would make a difference. Anyone else try it?

This actually makes it is bit harder to get it under control. Once you add some workers/settlers, the effect of starving etc impacts both peoples - you cant just starve the heathens.

Better to starve it down VERY low then add settlers or workers otherwise you can be stuck with a sizable ungrateful heathen population segment for a very long time. If you have anohter war with that culture, that city can go into disorder very quickly.

Originally posted by ArmyOfOne
I have a question about the "producing settlers" method. Once I produce a settler/worker, what nationality would it have? And if I settle the settler somewhere, what nationality would that have?[/B]

First, it tends to take a captured city with a small population and few improvements a long time to produce settlers (the city is prolly a long way from your center, so waste is amok). The settlers come out as foreign which means you should take them out back and shoot them. If you start a city with them, you spread the problem to a another city. Better to make workers to pare it down.

 

[casual_moose]

if your using ptw you canturn it off completely