Tell Me How You Cheat

[tjs282]

Making peace won't stop those flips, it'll just make it impossible to retake the town for the next 20 turns (assuming you're playing honourably!)

So you either have to (switch on the governator) live with the flip-risk and just keep retaking the town -- which is what I generally do (conquered enemy towns 'rebelling' is frustrating, but 'fair' from a roleplaying perspective -- again, IMHO, YMMV, etc.) -- or gift the town away to someone else, or just plain burn it down.

The way the game is programmed, the only way to 100% prevent flips back to the original owner is (unfortunately) to eliminate that enemy entirely. So if they're now OCC on a 1-tile island, it might be better not to sign peace at all.

(Or mod your game to make Ampihibious attacks possible with an earlier unit than the Marine...)

 

[WeirdoJoker]

So if they're now OCC on a 1-tile island, it might be better not to sign peace at all.

I considered that, but it did stop flipping once I made peace. Besides, at peace I was able to continue sucking money out of them (even after a trade embargo against me) by selling them useless techs for gold + GPT.

(Or mod your game to make Ampihibious attacks possible with an earlier unit than the Marine...)

Ooh, hadn't thought of that. Not going to mod mid-game (not even sure how), but I have thought making amphibious attacks possible with guerillas might be fun.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Making peace won't stop those flips, it'll just make it impossible to retake the town for the next 20 turns (assuming you're playing honourably!)

So you either have to (switch on the governator) live with the flip-risk and just keep retaking the town -- which is what I generally do (conquered enemy towns 'rebelling' is frustrating, but 'fair' from a roleplaying perspective -- again, IMHO, YMMV, etc.) -- or gift the town away to someone else, or just plain burn it down.

The way the game is programmed, the only way to 100% prevent flips back to the original owner is (unfortunately) to eliminate that enemy entirely. So if they're now OCC on a 1-tile island, it might be better not to sign peace at all.

(Or mod your game to make Ampihibious attacks possible with an earlier unit than the Marine...)

I've had good luck with the governor (select "Manage Moods" as yes) and conquering other towns/cities nearby, so that none of the tiles worked by the flip-risky city are owned by anyone but you. Both of those reduce, but not eliminate, the risk. If the city had really high culture for the AI (say, it's former capital), I may need to retake it.

 

[kaskavel]

Or you can deactivate cult flips entirely...

 

[tjs282]

Ooh, hadn't thought of that. Not going to mod mid-game (not even sure how), but I have thought making amphibious attacks possible with guerillas might be fun.

The only aspects that can be modded in an ongoing game are artfiles (e.g. swapping out terrain-graphic files) and C3X-dependent options (if you have that patch-system installed; requires the Steam or GOG version).

Changing actual building- or unit-attributes has to be done in one of the Civ3 Editors, by making a customised .biq (ruleset) file and then starting a whole new game using that .biq-file via the "Civ Content" menu-screen.

 

[CriticalFailure]

I'm afraid I think I'm squeaky clean since I gave scouts a defence of 1. I disliked the concept of a nimble scouting unit being destroyed by barbarians by walking into fog if war (and therefore arguably being more likely to be destroyed than a slow moving warrior) . So I would sometimes reload to avoid that, because Expansionist is a weak enough trait.

Which brings me to my thought that if you gave your scouts a defence of 1, you could play expansionist and get your perfect city placement first time around. Just a thought.

How did you accomplish the stat change?

 

[Fergei]

How did you accomplish the stat change?

In the editor, just add 1 to the scouts defence and save the biq file. Then when starting a game load that biq file via the 'Civ Content' option on the menu.
Probably worth reducing the scouts health by 1 to compensate.

 

[justanick]

Speaking of culture flips ... how best to avoid a city culture-flipping a turn or two after it's captured? I reload to avoid culture flips even like that. Delhi kept wanting to flip back sometimes before I really had a chance to nail it down. I eventually made peace with India just so it would stop (India's last city is on a 1-square island & no Marines yet - I'll get it later).

There is little you can do in the short term. You can disband units in the risky city to rush settlers. Those suck up 2 population points and if those settlers will be foreign, then they require no unit support.

All in all the best strategy is to either accept flips and retake the city afterwards or eliminate the enemy all together.

If you only need to keep one town from flipping,then a large garrision can safely avoid a flip. If you match the total culture of the enemy, then you need 2 military units per foreign population point and tile under foreign control. So if a take size 14 metro, whose size is reduced to size 13 on capture and 7 tiles of the fat cross are controlled by culture from a close city of that civ, then you need 40 military units to reduce the flip chance to zero. That is quite a troops commitment, it is unlikely to be worth it and reducing the risk only a bit is quite risky at it does risk all units in the risky town. So a rather discourage this approach unless your culture is widely superior.

Thread 'D=2000, in flip formula'

Jan 17, 2003

Hey all, I've been trying to track this one down for some time. We all know (or should know) the flip probability formula.

P=[(F+T)*Cc*H*(Cte/Cty) - G]/D

where:
P = probability that it will flip this turn
F = # foreigners, with resistors counting double
T = # working tiles under foreign control
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 = factor based on relative distance to capitals

Now it occured to me early...

• Gothmog
• Replies: 72
• Forum: Civ3 - General Discussions

 

[vorlon_mi]

Thanks for re-posting the formula.

I agree that the only effective medium-term answer is to eliminate the civ. Or maybe that's long-term, depending on where you are in conducting the war.

Consider the size of the conquered city. As Justanick points out, pacifying a size 14 metro is different than a size 9 city.
F = population of the city, at least, since there will be some resistors. Putting wounded units in the city to heal will help quell the resistors. Setting the governor to "Manage moods" will also help keep the H factor closer to 1 rather than 2.

Conquering neighboring cities/towns can reduce T to zero; all of the tiles will be under your control.

Although I know it's not optimal play, I tend to build a culture building (Library in most cases, Temple if they are cheap) in every town to get the culture border pop. This increases the "Cty" factor. Yes, the AI tend to build a lot of buildings (including Cathedrals and Colosseums) in their towns, which increases the "Cte" factor. But each of their cities/towns that I conquer reduces the contributions to "Cte". The ratio (Cte/Cty) is less than 1.0, getting smaller with each turn as my war succeeds. At higher difficulties, though, the ratio may be greater than 1.0 until you have conquered a substantial fraction of their cities, making the flip risk higher.

 

[CKS]

Since accumulated culture stays with the civ instead of disappearing when the city is lost, in my experience the ratio is greater than one until they are gone. (Assuming I'm not going for 100k culture and the difficulty level is fairly high.)

 

[justanick]

Since accumulated culture stays with the civ instead of disappearing when the city is lost, in my experience the ratio is greater than one until they are gone. (Assuming I'm not going for 100k culture and the difficulty level is fairly high.)

Yes. Building culture is a very long term approach, something that would need to occur long before starting the war to have any meaningful effect. Thus this here

Although I know it's not optimal play, I tend to build a culture building (Library in most cases, Temple if they are cheap) in every town to get the culture border pop. This increases the "Cty" factor. Yes, the AI tend to build a lot of buildings (including Cathedrals and Colosseums) in their towns, which increases the "Cte" factor. But each of their cities/towns that I conquer reduces the contributions to "Cte". The ratio (Cte/Cty) is less than 1.0, getting smaller with each turn as my war succeeds.

is likely a rather inefficient use of scarce resources. Only the effect on T may be meaningful, but here are alternatives to that.

I agree that the only effective medium-term answer is to eliminate the civ. Or maybe that's long-term, depending on where you are in conducting the war.

If we are talking long term, then assimilation needs to be considered. Assimilation is 2% per turn as a republic. So after 20 turns 13 foreign citizens may shrink down to 13*0.98^20=8.679 on average.

While at war foreigners are unhappy, so peace is actually useful there. Still, such an approach is almost always suboptimal.

 

[HardCode]

Hello, my name is Robert and I cheat at Civ III.
...
Sometimes the mountains don't want to cooperate either and no matter how I tweak the pattern, it just won't work. Time to abandon and start a new game.

You can use the editor to make mountains settle-able. I do that, because I also do your kind of city placement. I just get annoyed when the 2nd or 3rd ring of cities contains a one-square lake in the way of OCD placement.

 

[RobS]

You can use the editor to make mountains settle-able.

This takes cheating too far, at least for me. Won't go as far as using the editor.

 

[kaskavel]

This takes cheating too far, at least for me. Won't go as far as using the editor.

That is not unfair...the AI will also be able to settle there.

 

[Theov]

This takes cheating too far, at least for me. Won't go as far as using the editor.

This is before a game.
You could change the game and make mountains settleable. But i advice against it.
I would even make tundra and desert unsettleable.

 

[kaskavel]

This is before a game.
You could change the game and make mountains settleable. But i advice against it.
I would even make tundra and desert unsettleable.

Why? For realism reasons perhaps? Settling on deserts and tundras is what I am usually TRYING to do.

 

[Theov]

Why? For realism reasons perhaps? Settling on deserts and tundras is what I am usually TRYING to do.

the AI loves to settle on these bad plots - so I wanted to discourage them from it.
Corruption grows with every city, so I don't want to plant cities on deserts and tundras.
And realism, too. Yeah.
Why do you want to settle there? Resources?
(Tundra + forest is still settleable)

 

[kaskavel]

I do not like settling on bad terrain in general. I like settling on the bad square (choosing the desert square surrounded by plains and FPs for example)

 

[tjs282]

choosing the desert square surrounded by plains and FPs for example

Unless you're talking about Beaker- or Gold-farming sites, then Settling on the Desert (i.e. no adjacent river) rather than on the Floodplain tile, is generally not the best plan. Yes, you get access to more FPT, but at the expense of less SPT -- which you will now need to build the Aqueduct that you wouldn't have needed if you'd just Settled the Floodplain-tile in the first place.

Floodplain-regions are so food-rich that it's usually easy to hit useful breakpoints of 3, 4, 5 or 7 FPT (for growth in 7, 5, 4 or 3 turns, respectively) -- so if that's already been achieved, getting extra FPT isn't all that helpful, while shields are usually still lacking. The "mine green, irrigate brown" rule doesn't really apply here; instead, I usually irrigate the Floods, but mine nearly everything else.

 

[kaskavel]

That was just an example. I find "trying to build on the worst tile" an interesting addition to the already interesting mission of planning your city formation. There are many cases of inferior tiles, I just used one.
Founding on tundra (in tundra-hills-grassland regions or tundra-coast-hills regions)
Founding on non bonus grasslands
Founding on deserts (in desert-plains regions when non agr)
Not founding on hills (in grassland-plains-hills regions)
But what you say is of course possible. The floodplain offers 5 food, the desert offers 2 food and 1 shield (or 3 shields). This is a big difference...The river commerce is retained (from the beginning in town size or in city size?) You have to build the aqueduct, but having 3 extra food against 1 shield should usually be superior in the long run. Lots of specialists later on, policemen will kill the investment of the aqueduct in startling speed. But yes, if the city is very high food-low shield, it may be a close call (specificaly because early game achievments are more important). Having some hills to back up the FPs is fantastic...