foreign nationals - city defection

[jack_frost]

I've played through on monarch, and now again on emperor, and from my experiance (pseudo) cultural city defection is waaaaay unbalanced.

Scenerio: Difficulty Emperor. Large world. 12 civs.

I invade germany. He is a smaller civ, squished between me and the (quite large) russians.

I check up on all the stats before combat. Culturally, the small german empire is my inferior (although not by much), his military is larger, but he has no iron or horseman. My knights can roll him.

On the first turn of combat, I take berlin, and some other 'edge city' (his dye city). Both are around size 6-8. Berlin has the pyramids and great wall.

A bunch of resisting laborers. I sit 4-5 knights in each city.

Remembering the problems I had had with city defection before, I make sure I start on a temple, and get ready to rush it once resistance is crushed (I do this before market, even though I have about 5-6 luxuries coming in).

Success! Three turns later the city doesn't revolt. I rush the temple, next a market for the wopping 8 or so happy points I get from the variety of luxuries.

I continue my conquest of germany. War wariyness (sp) starts to cause some trouble. I up my luxury rate from 10 to 30% to compensate. I check on my conquered cities. Berlin now complete with market, library and court house (it will later have my forbidden palace) has declared we love the presidents day.

Next turn. With 4 knights, culture pumping AND NO OTHER GERMAN CITY BORDERS MAKING CONTACT WITH BERLIN (my conquest went quickly, knights eat pikes). Berlin revolts. Eating up my 4 knights.

I load auto save. I move in another knight from another german city (leaving 3 knights in a size 4 or 5 city, with nothing but happy people and 1 or 2 entertainers) small culture from temple.

Next turn. That city defects. Again eatting my knights.

This process kept recurring every 4 or so turns. It didn't matter then at this point germany consisted of no more then 3 cities. That the remaining german cities did not make border contact with mine, or that the people were never rioting (and later I didn't allow even 1 unhappy citizen for fear of defection). Or that german culture as a whole was much weaker then mine.

The bottom line is, without warning or reason, german cities would revolt. Making what ever sizable amount of knights/workers and even leaders just dissapear.

My losses in actual combat were not half as great as those that simply poofed from city defection. Eventually after much frustration I just abused the autosave endlessly.

My point is just this. In conquered cities (I have no problem with actual culture revolt) the rate of defection and the cost of it is simply too great. There is no warning of defection, and having the units in the city simply vanish is just absurd.

Perhaps a better system would be: "the citizens of berlin begin a revolt. Two units of knights were killed" untill finally you either fix the problem (revolutionary citizens or AT LEAST unhappy ones) or you have no military left at which point the city defects.

I can't imagine that this problem only happens with me. And it isn't comperable at lower levels (even on monarch it isn't as common/insane). Although in monarch I did have rome defect even when the romans only had two cities left (on a differant island)... of course I had culture and happy giving improvements built.

Bottom line: its f'd up.

Comment two: its silly that there is no point to using monarchy / communism.

Comment three: spy/diplomacy is way too expensive to be useful.

Comment four: armies suck (at the least you should be able to upgrade the units in them...****, you did trade a wonder for this crappy military unit).

Comment five: the advisor screens could have been a lot better, especially the trade screen. If I have extra iron, there should be some advisor who will -quickly- tell me what civs might be interested. The domestic advisor should have a "show me only cities which have more unhappy then happy" filter/sort.

Comment six: all these complaints are pretty minor, the game itself is ****ing awsome.

[DaXX]

well, i think you pointed out the problem early in your post. i think the chance of defection is higher for large cities, so i would suggest bombing the city into submission before invading. take the population down a few notches cause you don't want all those revolting citizens anyways!!

worst case you bomb the city to a 1, take it over, and bring in workers to populate the city. if you insert workers of your own nationality you can almost be guaranteed the city won't revolt, you can also create a mixed city made up of your workers and workers you've captured from other civs, mixed cities are definitely my favorite...

bombing it to a 1 will likely destroy all its improvements so try to find a balance

[jack_frost]

well, the real point of my post is to spread dissention throughout the civ3 community, forcing the developers to release a patch which fixes this problem.

Especially later in the game when your attacking size 14+ cities, it shouldn't be required that you kill 10 population points so you can repopulate it with your own workers to (I think the max pop before you cant use workers to add is 7 it might be 12) stop revolts.

The rule of thumb I've been using is: get all citizens happy instantly (requires ownership of at least 6 differant luxuries and a market place). A temple immediately to start culture production. And 1 military per 2 population points. Then work on more culture/happy. Col/Cathed followed by university. I never allow a single unhappy citizen, starvation via entertainers might be required.

The trick is you CANNOT move the military units out of the city until the population assimilates. Which is really absurd. I understand that it is difficult to hold conquered cities, but its really out of wack.

And revolts should REQUIRE at least some number of unhappy citizens. A city celebrating we love the king day should NEVER defect.

But the point is this - I should be able to use conquest as a method of rapidly increasing my population. The tremendous corruption + huge defection system means: you MUST rush every city improvement till you get your forbidden palace up using cash. Cost for basics (temple/market) is around 600 gold after a few shields while citizens are still resisting. Then I need to station 4+ military units in each city, leaving them there for a huge number of turns, rendering them more or less useless (maybe I should start pumping large numbers of warriors for this task). The costs are just too high, considering all conquered cities are completely useless (aside form resource/wonder) till you get up your forbidden palace.

[liupang]

Well, you have to play smart. In most cases, capture a small city is not worth it. Just raze it and bring in a settler if it's a good position.

In your case, that city has some wonders that your really want to keep. Well, my strategy is don't build anything in that city until that Civ is wiped out. Basically, after you quelled all resistors, pull out all of your army. Put 2 good offensive army next to city tile, then move all other units on. If you want, you can buy a temple, but if you don't, just starve them all. It will make it more managable when you eventually move your own workers and join the city.

The point here is don't lose your precious units due to city defection. If it defects, just get it back(since you have 2 or 3 strong units right by the city), and repeat. It seems to me that it seldom defect back while you are quelling resistors.

If you can sweep that civ fast enough, all problem will be solved. They have no more nations to defect to!

Actually, I kind of find it disturbing in that Civ3 strongly encourage racial cleansing.

[Garth Vader]

Yep, raze and rebuild unless it has a wonder. Since you don't get culture for a captured wonder you can raze obsolete wonders if you want.

I started this after Berlin reverted when it was completely surrounded by other cities of mine. I had owned it for more than 400 years, it had over 700 of my culture and about half of the citizens were ethnically mine. It was about 15 squares from the closest other German city and they had only 3 cities left.

[jack_frost]

I've had similar experiances. I think there is an additional modifier for the old owners culture ie:

if berlin has 1500 culture points when it belonged to germany it is more likely to defect then some other german city that only has 100 culture points.

It would explain why capital cities with wonders seem to defect much more often then other cities of equal size.

[jack_frost]

and razing and rebuilding hardly seems worthwhile if your going to use the workers gained from raze to up population, since the city is going to still be populated by foreign nationals.

[DaXX]

if you're rushing the temple in the capture city and they still revolt i would suspect you're civ is lacking in overall culture points.... lagging behind your enemy for sure, so in the future you need to focus on building a solid base of culture in your empire, not just on the outskirts.

[eMarkM]

Yeah, I think the main problem is how their culture feels about yours in addition to resisters. It's a killer if they look down on you. I'm having the same problems, nothing stays in my hands for more than a few turns before reverting back. I'm afraid to load troops in a captured city for fear I'll lose all the units. Same with rush building temple, it might go to waste.

Razing and rebuilding with your own settler is probably a good solution. Another good one is if you're really kicking a civ's butt, when you offer a peace treaty, throw in some cities in the deal. They revert to you completely if they give in.

But here's my question. I'm up against Babylon on Monarch. I've been stubbornly retaking their cities and they keep revolting back. I sue for peace (helps with revolts) and load units in. I keep losing them and then I notice that they are "disdainful" of my culture. I'm sure this is the main reason for the mass defections. This still happens even though they have 3 cities left to my 14. How can they "out culture" me 3 to 1 (the requirement for "disdainful")? I have temples in just about every city, some libraries and a FP. How can their pulverized civ still have a stronger cultural rating than mine?

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[dexters]

I find it more profitable to bomb a city into submission, starve it, or raze it altogether.