Culture & Captured City & Capital City

[Howling Chip]

I've been making incremental success in keeping cities I have captured. Been at least 20 hours of game play since I lost a city I captured to "They stupid citizens of the city of (insert city name) admire the culture of the stupid (insert nationality) and have revolted to join.....".

I am aware that culture lead, distance from capital, unhappiness, garrisons, and number of nationals effects chances of losing a city.

Last night a city that I had captured a long time ago reverted back. I had a 50/50 citizen mix of Germans and French, 6 of each. What suprised me is that I had completed the forbidden palace in that city about 6 turns earlier. I was banking on it firmly putting the city in my civilization. I am the French and my culture dwarfs bigtime the German culture.

Since this strategy of garrison, citizen nationality mix, et all had seemed to be working well so far, I was suprised.

This morning, the only "new variable" hit me. This city I lost (that I took from the Germans eons ago) is 5 squares from the German capital.

Thank god I did not have 10 units in the city garrisoning it. I had moved them out in preparation for the final solution to Germany. I had already aborbed two German cities via culture envy, and had moved most of these units out to finish off Germany (I need that oil well).

I would appreciate hearing about success with holding for long periods of time captured cities, and conclusion on why you lost them. In this example, I think distance to capital because it was so close equaled the effect of my overbearing culture lead. i.e. distance to (and from) capital is very very influential.

[nato]

Moving the troops out probably hurt as well, since they could no longer stop people from thinking of revolting.

[Howling Chip]

Nato, have you seen as a postive though, having the majority of your nationals populate the city? I've been working on a basis that if 60/40 are my nationality, the city is not likely to revert. In the posted example, I should have caught that I was only 50/50 at the time I reduced the garrison to two units.

[inca911]

I think it was Soren who said that each troop prevents a citizen from thinking about defection. Certainly having a large garrison tends to make city defections almost non-existent in my recent game. I also moved my capital closer towards the front lines to minimize the chance at defection. Lastly, you mentioned that you know that culture lead is a factor in city defection. What you might not realize that the ratio of your cultural count within that specific city vs. your opps cultural count in that city is also a factor in defection. It is not just civ-wide culture that matters but city specific culture!

[Howling Chip]

Inca, thanks for the reply. I had read that about city culture in the mix and had forgotten about it. I wonder what the culture value of the Forbidden Palace is? Probably zero!

Anyway, I'll add the city culture to my "stability evaluation" when I'm making decisions about what to build and garrisons.

[David Weldon]

I don't think the FP has zero culture, it's just that it hasn't had the time to build up total culture points like the original german improvements did. You might have much larger culture/turn in that city than they ever did, but whatever they accumulated might still be much larger than what you have accumulated.

Since most of my city occupations include artillery until they are a small city, and since cities on the fringe have horrible corruption anyway (and therefore almost no production), I have taken to simply starving them out. I'll starve the city down to 1 citizen and then either bring in workers and settlers to grow it back up (one settler does the trick), or just wait for growth. Either way I very quickly establish a nationality advantage, and I have never had a city revolt on me.

Another thing that you can do is sack their Captial, and either raze it or give it back (if you're not ready to hold it yet). By doing this you reset the culture counter on their new capital (wherever they build it). This will also greatly help.

[Howling Chip]

"....sack capital or raze it.. to reset enemy culture points".... scribbles on to do list.

Thanks!

[BlackOut]

Originally posted by Howling Chip
I've been working on a basis that if 60/40 are my nationality, the city is not likely to revert.

Ive noticed this as well, so what i have taken to doing is if a city
can support it(producing enough food, etc), i will add some of my own workers/settlers to the city to quickly raise the number of my nations citizens in the city to be greater than that of its original
inhabitants. That a strong Garrison so far have worked for me.

BlackOut

[Howling Chip]

On adding workers, I've not actually totally 100% checked this (you know, too involved in actually playing each turn), but it looked like even when I overloaded a city with my workers, and starvation set in, the foreign nationals died first. Need to really verify this (hint... hint... Has any one confirmed this?).

[Jack_www]

I had captured a city form a civ that a culture that a bit stronger then mine. I held this city for a very long time, and then it reverted back to the civ I took it form. It was about 50 of my own nationalty and 50 theirs. It was close to their capital. Well I started a war with right after that and took that city back as well as 4 more of their cities. Then after I made peace with them again I set up a buffer zone between me and the other civ. What I did was sell to 4 different other civs the 4 cities I had taken. This has worked really well in keeping any more of my cities reverting back to them.

[hanZ]

some games ago i lost one of my OWN citys to an nation 3 islands away (i have 20 citys, they 2 and i have 3 times more culture then them). my mistake was to add a foreign worker to my 2 poppoints city. 5 squares from my capital away. i was very surprised.

(deity, tiny map, played as babylon)

so, having a 2:1 own:foreign population doesnt help.