Take with might, lose with culture- can I stop this?

[benn]

Originally posted by lkendter


Culture defection is 100% tied to borders When two cultural borders overlap, then a defection is possible.

Actually, this is not true. Someone else has pointed out that it is tied to distance from the respective capitals.

I have seen a city-- completely surrounded by my cities and border (no enemy border with 7 squares) and with me having 30% more culture by the graph-- defect back to the original culture.

I think the defection rate has to be decreased.

 

[Ruffin]

Alarmed to read the previous post about 2 armies going with a city. I thought I'd found a solution. I kept losing a strategically located city (straddling the isthmus connecting my enemy to the third of his territory I wanted) to culture no matter what I did. I'd saved it so I spent a half hour reloading, etc. Temples didn't work. Adding my workers didn't do it. Finally I put an army there and haven't heard a peep from it since. I thought I'd found a solution... oh, well.

 

[Borealis]

A slight modification on what's been said before, about rushing improvements:

1) Go straight for Monarchy so you can buy improvements for your other cities close by. Since you won't be able to reduce the population of a resisting city by rush-building a settler/workers/other improvements, you need to increase your cultural rating another way. Plus, there are some very good military units from the prereqs early on (chariots, anyone?)

2) Play a more balanced civ, with either one attribute being 'religious' or 'scientific': the 'religious' benefit is obvious-faster temples, and being 'scientific' allows you to build libraries, which contribute to culture, faster.

3) 'Weakening' strategy: Throw in a few good defensive units with your front-line force, head to the enemy AI's cities, and whittle all their cities' garrisons down to 1 unit. This works best with 4-5 cities, if you can pull it off with a tech/production edge. Then, whenever the AI sends units out to hunt you down for still having units in their territory, wave your defensive units as big, fat targets in the AI's face, preferably on good terrain. The AI will spend its time going after those units, sparing your high-powered units while you 'catch up' on culture. Once you have the 'minimal' amount you need to stop the cities from revolting immediately, blitzkrieg.
Note: in order for this to work, you must have developed good defensive unitsby this time, which you should have anyway if you're going to fight an AI that likes to take 'revenge.'

or 4) If you have a significant military edge, play 'hunt the capital' or 'hunt the AI cities with wonders' and take 'wary' control of them: even if the city revolts back again, the AI loses all of the 'accumulated' benefit of the wonders/temples/etc. built in that city from its previous ownership. Once you've messed with their culture rating enough this way, you should be able to 'permanently' occupy cities in relative safety from cultural backsliding.

Whoops, really long post.

 

[ozymandyus]

After quite a bit of experimentation on the topic, I've figured several things out about defection.

--First and foremost: IT IS WAAAAY TOO EASY FOR THE COMPUTER TO CULTURALLY TAKE/RETAKE YOUR CITIES, AND WAAAAY TOO HARD FOR YOU TO DO LIKEWISE. I played a game in which I was so far and away the dominant culture that I was on my way to a cultural victory, had a relatively small and concentrated empire, and still was on the negative end of defections.

--Although defections are not tied directly to war and peace, if you are at war with a nation from whom you have taken cities, or EVEN AT WAR OR UNDER EMBARGO FROM ONE OF THEIR ALLIES, the chances are much higher.

--Happiness and WLTK day do not stop defections. I've had all-happy WLTK cities defect several times.

--Number of units in the city makes no apparent difference. When the city defects, you lose all units stationed there, and the benefitting nation gets an automatic defender of his best troop type.

--Having a shared cultural border probably effects things, but it is certainly not required. I've reduced an enemy civ to one city halfway around the world, and later had a city I'd long since captured/pacified from them (about 350 years ago!) surrounded by other cities suddenly defect.

Conclusions: The only ways I've found that make significant differences in these situations is to change the number of citizens somehow (starvation, create or join workers/settlers), or make sure that I'm not in conflict at all with their ethnic source nation. IMHO, I think that Firaxis should lower defection rates.