Osaka, and its conqueror Cyrus (Persia AI) - was a big-time thorn in my fillet parts for over 7 thousand years of this game. See, Cyrus kept well over 30 modern military land units in Osaka, supressing any chance for mostly american (my) population of Osaka to revolt. Worse yet, it just happened that Osaka was located in such a supremely middle spot that it slowed my further cultural expansion for thousands years. Here's how it was back in 2777 AD - the year when last war between AIs have ended. Note that troops listed on the left are from hovering my mouse over Osaka, and it is far incomplete list of 'em - full list just doesn't fit available space; also, note how Osaka was already only 24% persian city even back then:
Worse yet, as you may notice from a tiny yellow star on the Taoism icon - Osaka is Taoism's holy city in my game. So naturally, I wished to culturally flip it to my empire - way more than any other city, that is. But here it stayed, Persian as ever, so close yet so not available, for thousands years; as this game is Eternal Peace, I couldn't just invade and grab it via war. And as you can also notice on the screenshot, top-left corner - that Uranium source was Cyrus' even back then, already. And even back then, it was right near the border with England to the north. And so it stayed, for over 7 thousand years: english culture was pushing that persian border, trying to snatch that Uranium - but Cyrus' culture was better, and this Uranium stayed quite firmly persian. I sure was keeping an eye on it, for obvious reasons.
Then, like i mentioned couple posts above, Cyrus had a nuclear meltdown - and it thinned his troops in Osaka. Plus, all those thousands years, i was busy building cities around Osaka, and improving culture in them, thus slowly increasing percentage of my population in Osaka even further.
And thus, some time near 7000 AD, 0.03% revolt chance have appeared in Osaka, after that meltdown - and Cyrus started to build another Nuclear Plant in Osaka. And because this game is vanilla Civ4, my spies can only sabotage a percentage of production of currently-built building; they can't remove already-built ones nor do any other fancy BtS stuff. So, still intending to culturally flip Osaka and to have it done without a Nuclear Plant in it, I then kept sabotaging Osaka production 3...4 times every 40 years (this minimizes chances to get my spies caught) - losing and re-building a spy or three, each 40 years, while at it.
And while at it, I also was busy creeping around along the coasts - both Persia and England sides, - culturally flipping some less-garrisoned cities, building my own whereever I could, putting Great Artists to work on furthering cultural pressure, etc.
Then, some time between 7800 AD and 8000 AD, revolt chance in Osaka increased from 0.03% to 0.10%, as I was pushing more and more culture into Osaka, thus increasing american population in it. I was still sabotaging that Nuclear Plant every 40 years. At this revolt chance, you can expect one revolt per every 1000 turns (years) on average. But by 9000 AD, still zero revolts in Osaka happened! Even while by 9000 AD, the chance went up to 0.23% already - one revolt per less than 500 years, on average. And still, it wasn't until 9475 AD when 1st revolt in Osaka happened. So stubborn! Kept stubborn, too: at 0.30% ... 0.36% revolt chance, it took not 300sh, but nearly 450 more years for 2nd revolt to occur, in
Sidenote: apart from Osaka flipping, there's one funny thing on this screenshot: -90 relations modifier with Cyrus!
Apparently, there is no cap whatsoever for how big "spies were caught" relations hit can go? As you can see, three millenia of sabotaging Cyrus' Nuclear Plant being built - got 90 of my spies caught, and so I got this huge relations hit with Cyrus. This is many times larger than any positive relations buff from _anything_ in the game. Nuts! %) Will it ever be forgotten by Cyrus, i wonder. Alas, not that i care any much, though.
Anyway, "finally - Osaka defeated, victory!!!", right?
Nope!
It was one last trap Cyrus made. Last freaking effort to piss me off, to make me fail at least in some way!
Because, also in the above screenshot, you can see that Uranium source in the top part of the image - and you can see it was still Cyrus' when Osaka flipped to me. Funnier yet, the tile was only 36% Persian at the time. Meaning, I was _very_ close to flipping that Uranium tile into my territory: 35% was Persia's culture, which means remaining 65% - was the sum of my culture on this tile plus England's culture, and both my and England's culture there - were between 31% and 34%, too (otherwise, the tile would already flip to me or England).
Why was that important? Naturally - to find the answer to the question this post starts with! See, i needed to have that Uranium flipped while Osaka still belongs to Cyrus, and while Cyrus is still trying to build that Nuclear Plant.
In other words, that punk Cyrus, hating me for sabotaging his building efforts for ~3 thousand years, decided to at least mess up my chances to find the answer to that question, surrendering Osaka shortly before that Uranium tile would flip and give me the answer! Right?
"Oh no, you tricky bastard, I'll get it done now!" i thought - then saved the game (with Osaka flipped, to continue "the game proper" from it later), then loaded an earlier save, and pushed Free Religion through UN. Why that? Because UN's Free Religion nulified revolt chance in Osaka, by disabling my state religion, which was doubling number of troops which Cyrus needed to completely nulify my cultural pressure, all those thousands years; Cyrus was using Free Religion civic himself, while I was pushing in with Pacifism civic and having my state religion matching one of his religions in Osaka - Hinduism. It's a bit complicated, yeah, but it's the key thing, without which I'd never have any chance to flip Osaka in my game, ever.
Anyway, now, with Osaka still-not-flipped, with now-0% revolt chance in it, and still sabotaging that Nuclear Plant every 40 years - I made a "side fork" bit of play, just to find the answer to my question.
And then, really unexpected thing happened: that tile with Uranium - flipped to me in the year 10,000 AD. _Exactly_ the year 10k. When I saw it happen, I loaded an auto-save to 9998 AD, re-played it to 10,000 AD again - and made those two screenshots: one at 9999 AD, and the 2nd very next turn.
The rest was obvious: after that Uranium tile flipped, I checked Cyrus' Osaka (which, as you can see on both screenshots, was still building that Nuclear Plant). And I got my answer: nope - Cyrus was still building the damn Nuclear Plant!
I then skipped turns to its completion, plus one turn more, and checked Osaka's complete buildings list with a spy - and sure enough, Nuclear Plant was in it. Sigh... %)
But that aside - what were the chances of all these events to happen in my game? I mean, for the very last Uranium source any AI has - to flip to me at exactly the year which I was initially planning to play this game to (10,000 AD), PLUS that same tile being almost equally belonging to three players at the time - Persia, England and my American nation? The latter thing - is by itself hella rare thing to see, already, but at exactly year 10k? "Gulp"...
And on top of it, for it to happen less than a century after hella stubborn 3-millenia-long resistance of Osaka to my cultural pressure?
Those are astronomically low odds if there ever were "astronomically low", me thinks.
But, it happened. I couldn't believe it. And I know, of course, that AIs in a computer game can't read human players' thoughts. I know that they are just some code running inside some silicon CPU. But still, this sure felt something like "that slippery Cyrus doing some surreal tricks again!!", you know?
P.S. Yes, I reached 10,000 AD in this game. But there are still few more things to do. Last forest on this whole huge map - died to Global Warming some time in 8100s, and last non-desert non-tundra tile was desertified in 8238 AD. But, I'll keep going even further: quite some more of this game beyond 10,000 AD. As you could notice from screenshots' minimap, i'm quite close to complete cultural domination on both continents. My current hope is to solidify everything by year 12,777 AD - exactly 10,000 years after the end of last AI war; since 2777 AD, so far, it's been complete peace - not a single war, not even between AIs. "10,000 years of complete peace" - would be neat to get done.
So, i'm just wondering, here. Kinda sidenote.
)/(total 
)*100, so it can not reach more than 100.
