Tips for avoiding a flip after capturing an enemy city.

[alcibaides]

I have been having a problem with cities that I capture flipping back to the enemy. I have been searching the forum for tips on how to mitigate this problem and found vague and sometimes contradictory advice. So I wanted to get some clarification and additional advice:

Tactic 1: Starving the Captured City

Some people have said that you can starve off the resistance:

Two last notes on resistors: They are the first in line to die from starvation and disease, so if you can’t quell ‘em, starve ‘em!

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=56487&highlight=starve

Others say that you cannot because they do not eat food:

Resistors don't eat and therefore can't starve.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=204920&highlight=starve

So which is correct? Can i assume that the real truth is that whilst resistors do not produce or consume food they can still starve and will be the first to starve if the city is in a food deficit?

I.e. let's say I capture a size 5 city with 3 resistors and 2 non resisting citizens. If I turn the 2 non resisting citizens into tax collectors to cause a deficit will this cause the resistors to gradually starve?

What about if I capture a city and all the citizens are resistors, in that scenario there is no way to starve off the city. But let's say I also captured some workers when I walked into the city, if I join these workers to the city and then turn them into tax collectors will that allow me to starve off the city? Or will these workers automatically become resistors? (seeing as they are part of the foreign nation)

Tactic 2: Allow flips and reconquer

Another tactic that I thought about is to allow the city to flip on purpose and then recapture it on the subsequent turn. Recently I attacked a size 10 city, when I conquered it it went down to size 8 and all 8 citizens were resisters. Perhaps in this scenario it is a lost cause to try to garrison as many units as possible in there so I should just empty out the city and allow it to flip back and then attack it again on the subseqeunt turn. So perhaps I can bring the pop down from 8 to 6, and then on the next turn if the city still has 6 resistors then withdraw my troops again and re-attack to bring it down to 4.

Some questions about this method:

1) What determines how many defensive units the AI city will recieve when they flip my city? Last time a conquered city flipped back I had 4 units stationed in it and they got 2 spearmen. So do they get half as many units as you have stationed in the city but with a minimum of 1? So in that case if I pulled out all my units then they would only get 1 defensive unit after the flip? Or do they always get 2 units?

What determines how much a city shrinks when it is conquered? Last time it shrunk by 2, but do cities always shrink by 2 when they are conquered? Does it make a difference how many defenders are in the city? Does it make a difference whether the city has walls or not?

Tactic 3: Lessen the chance of a flip:

If starving and reconquering the city are not feasible, under what circumstances should I attempt to hold a conquered city and simply mitigate the chance of a flip in the first place? If I make peace with the enemy will that lessen the chance of a flip? That would be a really risky approach since if the city does flip, the only way to get it back would be to declare war again and take a reputation hit.

If I use workers to build up the city with non-resistors, must they be workers of my own nationality? If I add captured workers to the city will they retain their foreign nationality and thus increase the likelyhood of a flip?

 

[Fiddlin Nero]

Reasons to keep a captured city: no settlers available to replace, Wonders you want to keep, provides access to next conquest. Keeping a captured city is not a preference for me and I disable the Flip function.

Resistors require no food if that is all you have you can't starve them. Adding workers only to starve them sounds pointless to me, adding slaves will add foreigners to population.

Chances for the rest of your questions I leave to those who have more access to the inside workings of the game.

I don't see Flip and reconquer as a strategy but a necessity if you want the city, just be sure to keep a few units close by for the retaking. I don't recall ever having more than 1/2 defenders in a flipped city, but then I havn't seen that many cities flip recently.

 

[Theov]

Tactic 1: Starving the Captured City

Some people have said that you can starve off the resistance:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=56487&highlight=starve

Others say that you cannot because they do not eat food:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=204920&highlight=starve

So which is correct? Can i assume that the real truth is that whilst resistors do not produce or consume food they can still starve and will be the first to starve if the city is in a food deficit?

They will starve just like any other city if the foodbox is empty and they eat more than they produce. So yeah, they eat and starve. I've never noticed that it's the resistors that starve first. Try and see.

I.e. let's say I capture a size 5 city with 3 resistors and 2 non resisting citizens. If I turn the 2 non resisting citizens into tax collectors to cause a deficit will this cause the resistors to gradually starve?

What about if I capture a city and all the citizens are resistors, in that scenario there is no way to starve off the city. But let's say I also captured some workers when I walked into the city, if I join these workers to the city and then turn them into tax collectors will that allow me to starve off the city? Or will these workers automatically become resistors? (seeing as they are part of the foreign nation)

There are 2 kinds of workers: workers (your nationality) and slaves (captured workers or workers that came from razed cities) they have a nationality indicator.
If you add workers to a city, they will keep their nationality.

Tactic 2: Allow flips and reconquer

Another tactic that I thought about is to allow the city to flip on purpose and then recapture it on the subsequent turn. Recently I attacked a size 10 city, when I conquered it it went down to size 8 and all 8 citizens were resisters. Perhaps in this scenario it is a lost cause to try to garrison as many units as possible in there so I should just empty out the city and allow it to flip back and then attack it again on the subseqeunt turn. So perhaps I can bring the pop down from 8 to 6, and then on the next turn if the city still has 6 resistors then withdraw my troops again and re-attack to bring it down to 4.

Some questions about this method:

1) What determines how many defensive units the AI city will recieve when they flip my city? Last time a conquered city flipped back I had 4 units stationed in it and they got 2 spearmen. So do they get half as many units as you have stationed in the city but with a minimum of 1? So in that case if I pulled out all my units then they would only get 1 defensive unit after the flip? Or do they always get 2 units?

What determines how much a city shrinks when it is conquered? Last time it shrunk by 2, but do cities always shrink by 2 when they are conquered? Does it make a difference how many defenders are in the city? Does it make a difference whether the city has walls or not?

The difficulty level determines the number of units the AI gets. 1 for Regent, 2 for Monarch from the top of my head.
Don't know the rest. But I don't find this tactic logical. It's slow and costs a lot of units. Better to raze the city and just put down a settler if you take this route.

Tactic 3: Lessen the chance of a flip:

If starving and reconquering the city are not feasible, under what circumstances should I attempt to hold a conquered city and simply mitigate the chance of a flip in the first place? If I make peace with the enemy will that lessen the chance of a flip? That would be a really risky approach since if the city does flip, the only way to get it back would be to declare war again and take a reputation hit.

If I use workers to build up the city with non-resistors, must they be workers of my own nationality? If I add captured workers to the city will they retain their foreign nationality and thus increase the likelyhood of a flip?

Yes the city is more likely to flip when you're at war, since the happiness is a factor. Unhappiness causes more flips.
I would only add your own workers, since foreigners take on your nationality over time if they are a minority. Also, your workers require upkeep, slaves don't.

My best way is keeping some units in the city to stop the resistance, then leave and produce some workers to get the pop down, then add a granary to get the pop back up (New pop is always your nationality). The remaining population will be a minority and won't flip often when the rest is of your nationality.

 

[Spoonwood]

The difficulty level determines the number of units the AI gets. 1 for Regent, 2 for Monarch from the top of my head.

From the Sid game I've had going on now for a while this certainly does not seem the case! The number of units I've had in flipped cities has varied.

 

[MysteryX]

I like the Religious trait, because it means AI cities are always flipping to me, and very rarely the other way around. With enough culture in my own civilization, recently captured cities rarely ever flip.

Whether a recently captured city flips back depends in part on many of the factors which influence a flip in peacetime. Is the newly captured city connected to the rest of your civilization? Are your enemies borders still exerting a lot of cultural pressure on it?

If you strike first deep at a prize core city in your enemy's civilization rather than eating up less prized cities on your enemy's borders first before working in to your main target, you may carry more of risk of losing your target back in a culture flip.

But if your strategy involves skipping a lot of cultural buildings to build military buildings first, you may have no hope of really preventing the culture flip (unless you are attacking an equally uncouth enemy). If that's the kind of strategy you use, raze-resettle is probably your best alternative.

 

[del62]

If their is a forest near bye and you have the capability of getting workers their, then chopping a worker out can be done while in resistance works, I have even disbanded a treb or catapult in these circumstances

 

[vorlon_mi]

Tactic 2: Allow flips and reconquer

Another tactic that I thought about is to allow the city to flip on purpose and then recapture it on the subsequent turn.

Tactic 3: Lessen the chance of a flip:

If starving and reconquering the city are not feasible, under what circumstances should I attempt to hold a conquered city and simply mitigate the chance of a flip in the first place? If I make peace with the enemy will that lessen the chance of a flip? That would be a really risky approach since if the city does flip, the only way to get it back would be to declare war again and take a reputation hit.

If I use workers to build up the city with non-resistors, must they be workers of my own nationality? If I add captured workers to the city will they retain their foreign nationality and thus increase the likelyhood of a flip?

I also find the "let it flip and conquer it again" to be less desirable. I have to expend units (possibly losing them!) to retake the city, when they have greener pastures to conquer. I will often let injured troops rest in a conquered city, which also serves as a garrison to suppress resistance and reduce the chance of flip. Letting it flip back to the AI also means that the roads around it are SLOW again; I like using the roads that the AI has built to speed in my reinforcements.

There's an article in the War Academy about flipping, which lists the actual equation used. IIRC, two of the factors which are important are: the amount of culture the enemy has generated in a city, and the cultural pressure from the AI, that comes from surrounding cities.

Simply put, striking deep into AI territory to capture a single, highly cultured city (that has a wonder you want) is setting the table for a flip. My wars usually work their way in from the borders, so that the enemy's fringe cities are not very cultured and benefit from the culture I've built in the cities on *my* side of the border. IIRC, if there are no tiles owned by the AI in your new city's BFC, it cannot flip back.

 

[ionize]

If a city has no immediate value to you (i.e. a desired wonder, a strategic resource/luxury, a strategical position for conquest), abandon it. At least that's how I feel about it. I don't want to tie down a chunk of my force to quell resistances and I don't want to conquer -> flip -> reconquer cities.

But then again, if I keep a city I immediately starve the population (if possible) to a minimum and let it regrow from there. I also consider getting walls and barracks for direct military support.

 

[bigFRANK]

Do police act in a way to reduce flips I seem to think they do but could be wrong?

 

[Quasar1011]

1. Post enough troops in the new city to reduce resistors.
2. Starve city each turn.
3. As soon as resistance ends, rush build a temple.
4. 2 turns later, rush build a library.

Your borders will expand a couple of turns after that. Make sure you starve the city down to size 1 (unless that civ has been conquered).

 

[ionize]

Isn't rushing a temple and a library a bit too expensive? In my opinion it would depend on the city and its immediate value to do so. Of course you can counter-act flips this way, but -2gpt maintenance for some smalltown somewhere in enemy territory is a bad investment imho. I'd recommend capture => abandon => re-settle. But then again I'm not much of a cities-keeper.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Expensive ... I suppose. The raze-n-replace strategy that ionize prefers requires a 30 shield settler, which has been safely delivered to the front line to found a new town. It will also require some number of turns to grow to size 3 or 4, using the available food; those citizens will be all natives, so no flip risk.

The rush-build-your-culture strategy recommended by quasar1011 requires gold, but no shields. Assuming you let the conquered town build 1 shield before you rush-buy, the temple will cost 59*4 = 236 gold, and the library will cost 79*4=316 gold (assuming you are not religious or scientific). Since there will be foreign citizens, and there may be cultural pressure from the other AI cities, the flip risk is reduced, but not zero. Those citizens can start working the fields right away, and could be turned into specialists right away, without waiting for the town to grow.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Here's the link to the thread, originated by a Firaxis person Culture Flipping Exposed

 

[MysteryX]

I have always used the strategy of rushing culture buildings in newly captured towns, in part to help avoid the flip-back risk. I am questioning how effective it is though. I don't know that it's possible to build up enough culture in a town over the course of a few turns to overcome the several hundred or more turns of culture that the natives have built up.

 

[del62]

It is not so much building up culture versus the native culture in that town, but the control of the squares in the fat X and the foreign citizens that induce the cultural pressure, so rushing a library / temple works well if you have made peace or you progress is slow, but otherwise take the next city to reduce cultural pressure,

 

[MysteryX]

It is not so much building up culture versus the native culture in that town, but the control of the squares in the fat X and the foreign citizens that induce the cultural pressure, so rushing a library / temple works well if you have made peace or you progress is slow, but otherwise take the next city to reduce cultural pressure,

That's true, expanding the town's footprint as soon as possible should help reduce the risk.

 

[Spoonwood]

The most effective way lies in completely eliminating any tribe that you capture towns from.

 

[ionize]

The most effective way lies in completely eliminating any tribe that you capture towns from.

So true!

And back to costs: Though you say a settler costs shields to produce while some rushed library/temple hardly do, I'd argue that you should always produce some settlers anyways (especially when you're at war/planning a war). This way it doesn't really matter, at least in my opinion. Bring some settlers with your SOD and plant new cities where necessary.

Especially during wars I tend to keep only cities with strategic resources and luxuries. I usually abandon every city, even those with wonders.

 

[del62]

I think the whole thing on how you want to avoid flips is very much game dependent and what you want to achieve, if you were playing for a diplomatic victory then you never want to abandon a city, if the civ has a one tile island city then conquest is a remote option, if you need to keep you reputaion good and it is in your best interests to make peace (for say techs gained, to put an end to war weariness etc) then this effects what you do.

What I would say it depends on how you want to play the game,

One good thing for looking at flip possibilities is one of the utility programs like mapstat

 

[cain3456]

Click on the "No flipping after capture" option

Spoiler :

Oh wait, you need Civ4 for that