I HATE culture!!!!

[VetteroX]

Note: If you havn't played the game OR you have played but havn't captured a lot of cities, you can't understand how frustrating this is... so please think of that before making a comment.

Ok, let me set up a little example: Im America. I am playing on Monach (king in civ 2) This is my first game, been playing since tues. I have the largest empire in the world, but not by much. High culture rating, most cities have lots of buildings that produce culture.

I go to war with any other civ in the game, different wars, to get thier raw resourses, for thier land, because they may much later be a threat in the space race... whatever. I capture a couple cities, and garrison plenty of troops in them. anywhere from 1-50 turns later in a captured city, an announcement pops up: "Sir, we have terrible news. The people of so and so have left our civ and pledged alligance to ( insert the civ the city once belonged to) This is infuriating me. Why? because it is 100% IMPOSSIBLE to prevent it. I will list why I claim this.

1) I have tried garisoning A LOT of powerful units in the city. Still turns to the other civ. Not only that, but the units I had in the city simply disappear. They dont even get pushed out, or change over to the other civ. They just "vanish"

2) I make sure ALL the people who arent resisting are happy. Not content, HAPPY. I have tons of luxries. They still change to other civ.

3) I have tons of culture in my empire, and I rush build temples, cathedrals, or libraries asap in the captured city, to riase its culture rating. They still change to other civ.

4) Its SLIGHTLY understandable that culture takes back a city ive captured when I have spearheaded an assult into thier empire, and the captured city is totaly surrounded by thier culture. However, it is absolutely stupid that a city I captued 40 turns ago, which is not even touching the other culture, STILL sometimes (though rarely) switches to the other side.. I mean WTF!?

So, what the heck am I supposed to do? Don't even say "well, its a challenge, live with it" Im all up for a challnge, like having to garrison lots of troops in a city until it quets down, but theres no way to beat this. I read all the things that cause culture switch and im countering them. Its almost impossible to take out a civ, cause 1/2 the time I take 3 cities, 2 switch back within a few turns. Streathening the culture of the captured cities and pushing the boarders back of the enemy civs help, but doesnt totaly prevent switch overs.

If anyone can help me on this, it would be MUCH appreciated. Ive tried everything I can think of but I can't stop it.

For anyone whos going to argue with me on this, like people against going to unprovked war, war is already much harder to manege then in Civ 2. It strains the economy, you need raw materials, and people get upset. I LIKE CHALENGES like this, but not BS like this culture switch stuff.

For anyone who is going to say that culture switch can happen, give me ONE example in real life of a captured city/country Throwing the huge force holding the city out, without military help from thier nation, and not only this, but doing it while 3/4 of the people are HAPPY with the new rulers!

And no saying turn the difficulty down, except for this unfairness im winning, and will still win even with this bs.

I really like Civ 3 but this culture switch thing is driving me mad... I really think its unbalanced or a bug, if so, a patch better come out soon if this is the case. If not, someone please help.

[SteveJH]

If you're still a despotism you could kill the foreign nationals with forced labor.

[Changmai Beagle]

Hmm. How about those rebellious colonials in America? The cultural aspects of Thomas Paine et al appealed (if I remember correctly, which is always an area to suspect) to a quarter or less of the population. However, it doesn't take an entire population to change sides.

Of course, if Canadian culture becomes strong enough, we should be able to seduce back at least Baltimore! Vive le CFL?

[Setsuna]

Thomas Paine was an individual, not a country overflowing with culture that inevitably spills into neighboring lands. Though I suppose you could argue that he was a product of culture. Ah well, he still wasn't living in a big city next to the American colonies.

Though that would be an interesting scenario (Not a Civ III Scenario scenario - did that make sense?) for the game - can your cities survive the destructive influence of Movement X and Popular Ideology Y?

Of course the problem there is how to treat the rebellious cities - do they count as a new player, or just turn into a sort of generic NPC? Maybe if you don't take them over in time they turn into one of the other civs (Assuming one has been defeated.)

Someone write this down for the expansion pack.. I'm too lazy.

[saracen31]

I think it compares your Total Culture Rating to that of the enemy civ. Theirs must be higher than yours. I've never had a city I took go back to the other side, but I can see how it would happen. Culture has really restricted war quite a bit.

At the same time, resources have made war necessary in a lot of cases, so it's a Catch-22.

[incie]

I know EXACTLY where you're coming from, I noticed the same thing for the first time earlier today. Chinese cities kept going back over to China, even though they'd been mine for a hundred years or so, were developing culture again, and were right in the middle of my territory.

My way of handling it, since I can't find any way to prevent it, is to keep a couple of military units and a settler fortified just outside any city I think may turn (don't fortify them in the city; I'm sure you've noticed you lose any units in the city when it turns).

When the city revolts it has one defensive unit in it...usually low tech. I attack it with the fortified units, raze it to the ground, and use the settler to found a new one.

Pretty simple in practice -- join me or you die.

I've been playing this game for 3 days now, still haven't decided if I like it or not. It's got some issues.

[UKScud]

raze it to the ground

Burn resistors, Burn!!!!!

By all accounts war weariness is something you can change in the editor, no?

If not, I'm sure in a upcoming patch you'll be able to do it.

Thinking back to about 3 weeks ago, I seem to recall someone saying that it WOULD be necessary to raze the occasional city. If the culture of the enemy is higher than yours...you'll have to adopt this attitude. Have you tried to degrade his culture by using artillery to destroy temples and libraries and so on.

[Drefsab]

Yup, if you capture a city from a civ with a high culture rating... Raze the city and follow behind with a settler. That's what I did to those damn English bastards...

[d_dudy]

thouht i heard something about making foreigners into workers to suppress cities. have you done this?

[smellymummy]

use your embassy intelligence, and investigate the neighbooring citys of the enemy. More than likely they are producing much more culture, or at the very least attained a higher level.

Notice how the culture level is 10, 100, 1000, etc. Although it's odd how all your troops dissapear when a city turns over. The city that I lost only had 2 units in it and like you, there was only happy people. It had no surrounding enemy city either... I still haven't seen a city switching sides with a whole bunch of units though.

[treedom]

Of course, I know I'm going to eat my words when this happens to me...but I couldn't resist pointing out how realistic this is. Look at what happened to Napoleon's empire and even to USSR recently. A strong leader or regime can compensate for conquests made over cultural boundaries for a while, but it always comes tumbling down in the end

[Setsuna]

That isn't why either of those empires fell apart.

It's late. Someone else want to tell him why?

[treedom]

The details don't matter. All the immediate causes that led to their demise were simply symptoms of one simple fact; people of one cultural group do not like to be ruled by another.

[Travathian]

I have just the opposite problem, the computer just keeps giving me cities. They seem to enjoy planting a new city in the one empty square on my continent, and with my awesome culture they sometimes revolt and join me. Granted some have taken countless numbers of turns.

I wasn't aware military units had anything to do with whether or not a city switches sides. I know it helps to negate protestors after a few turns, but where did you find info about military preventing a defection?

Rush building religious buildings doesn't help if the city isn't yours for long enough for them to accumulate much culture.

Given your purpose of just trying to disrupt the computers economy and prevent access to resources wouldn't the following be easier:

Razing the city and destroying the surrounding terrain improvements, then fortifying the resource and just parking a few good units to guard it?

Not only do you deny the resource, but I bet the computer throws a lot at you to try and get it back, so in the long run its likely to cost em more than you.

Lastly, what's the point of garrisoning a lot of good troops in a few cities in the computers area, go attack. Heck, don't even raze cities. Sell off improvements, destroy terrain enhancements and capture workers. Then who cares if they get their cities back thru culture or force, the people will be starving, pissed off and cost em more to fix than what it cost you to go do it.

[D4everman]

Don't hold me to this, but I think I read in the Strategy guide that you can turn the citizens into workers or starve them out, then let the city grow again. The new citzens will be *your* citizens. I'm too lazy to look it up now, but I do believe I read that.

[Adagio]

Last night I took over my first cities by war and I haven't seen them switch yet (but maybe that will happen today, who knows ), but I think I might have an idea how to avoid that: What I believe is it's only the (let's call the enemy Germans, they are in my game now ) Germans in the city who will revolt in such a case, then what about let the new city build workers and let the new workers move to your other cities, at the same time some of your other cities makes workers and let them move to the new city (Make it atleast 50% of your people)...Then I don't think they can posibly switch back...You can try it, maybe it works, and then maybe not

[Mike4879]

Originally posted by VetteroX
Note: If you havn't played the game OR you have played but havn't captured a lot of cities, you can't understand how frustrating this is... so please think of that before making a comment.

I'm playing a game as the Romans on reagant level on the standard size real-earth map. For the first part of the game my entire strategy was simply: BUILD AS MANY SETTLERS/CITIES AS POSSIBLE. I did not stop this strategy until around half way through the middle ages. I have found that civ3 is so insanely realistic in so many ways, it all makes sense historically...

I have been at war with several other countries during the game and everytime I occupy an enemy city, I get the same problem. ut it is possible to prevent them from rebelling by building cultural improvements (such as temple, library) as well as garrisoning. It may be a combination of both thats causing you problems.

Some other strategies, later on in the game you can draft the city population into military units, you can kill off citizens by forcing production in despotism, but you should eventually be able to make the cities stick and productive again over time

[Ludwig]

Since you wanted an example....

In ancient Mesopotamia portions of the kingdoms dominating the river valleys were invaded and conquered by tribes from the Iranian plateau and/or the Arabian peninsula many times. Since the river valley societies were at a much higher level of culture than the surrounding tribes, within a generation or two the invaders would "go native" and be reabsorbed into the mainstream culture.

China was conquered by foreigners on at least two occasions that I can think of - once by the Mongols and once by the Manchurians. On each occasion the powerful Chinese culture absorbed the invaders and THEY were assimilated into the CHINESE culture, and not the other way around.

The introduction of the concept of culture makes Civ more than just a political history. We think of Civ as a game of political empires, and history is more than that. In the cases above, civilizations lost military and political struggles, but WON the civilization struggle, because they suborned and absorbed their conquerors. It was the Chinese civilization which continued to develop - for all practical purposes, the Manchurian civilization disappeared, and the Mongolian civilization dwindled to insignificance.

Sometimes conquest is cultural suicide. Ask the Norman kings of Sicily. If the nation you're invading is a powerful cultural rival, you can't expect your governors to remain YOUR governors.

The best advice I've seen here is to relocate the populations by turning as many of the conquered city's people into workers as possible. Move those workers into your own cultural areas and add them to cities that could use the population points. Then move your own workers up and rebuild the city's population with your own people.

[incie]

Originally posted by Travathian

Lastly, what's the point of garrisoning a lot of good troops in a few cities in the computers area, go attack. Heck, don't even raze cities. Sell off improvements, destroy terrain enhancements and capture workers. Then who cares if they get their cities back thru culture or force, the people will be starving, pissed off and cost em more to fix than what it cost you to go do it.

This is a fine plan if you're just interested in hurting your enemy. In my case, my goal was to have the continent to myself so I could do away with most of my military and focus on tech. I had been at war for hundreds of years longer than I had anticipated (Chinese Riders and Musketmen are a tough combo even for Samurai) and had fallen behind.

In a situation like mine, having a city in the middle of my empire suddenly turn back to it's former nation would have been a huge hole in security.