Easier to culturally acquire cities -- WHAT????

[bahoo]

From the patch:

* It's slightly easier to culturally acquire cities.

HUH??? What??? Who asked for this???
Was this at all necessary?

I could buy it, had the patch also included:

* new option to suppress/put down deposers

or even:

* units will no longer mysteriously disappear when a city deposes, they will wisely retreat to your nearest border

The game is anti war and conquest enough as is. War is impossible to wage successfully, unless you have enough troops to pile up all the taken cities while maintaining an offense and tons of extra money to hurry production of temples/libraries etc. Even then you're not guaranteed keeping the cities.... In the course of my games I've lost numerous cities with 10+ troops in them. I have also lost a city twice to defection that was within 4 squares of a city that had all cultural improvements and 3 or 4 wonders in it.

It doesn't make sense and it's just plain lame. I get sick of razing cities when I have no particular qualm with the population, just their backwards governments.

If I wanted to devote my time to growing my population, making them happy, cleaning up pollution, and building a cute spaceship, I'd have bought SimCity. I at least want the option to be able to successfully wage global war and conquest.

I realize this is just (or rather hopefully) the first patch and it's to fix all the nagging game-breaking bugs. But PLEASE firaxis, tell us something is going to be done about this cultural business in the future....OR

...give me ONE LOGICAL EXPLANATION as to why an army of soldiers (these people are armed remember) would peacefully allow citizens to defect from THEIR country to an ENEMY country, without putting up a fight, or if they were outnumbered and scared, at least retreating.

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

IIRC this refers to the human player getting culture flips against the AI, not vice-versa.

Dan

[Disk Killer]

Exactly, it was clear enough in the readme.txt that this was an advantage for the human, ergo it will be EASIER to keep captured cities.

I can see how it would be misread by one or two, though, especially people that are especially peeved at defections [I'm not.... since it's never happened to me]

[Wrong_shui]

Originally posted by Disk Killer
[I'm not.... since it's never happened to me]

An what, pray tell, magical potion allows that?

[Karhgath]

The trick is to always be culturally strong. Getting temples early on in each of your cities is a very good step in the right direction. I never had cities defecting, except once, but I attacked a bigger civ with equal culture on a far away continent, so it was mostly my fault(and it was its capital too).

[ElitePersian]

i dont get it, you mean the culture of the AI has been given lower priority, therefore it makes it harder for their cities to depose and/or easier for yours to depose?

[Ralf]

Then the human player gets kicked out from a newly conquered city, it indirectly means that his culture wasnt strong enough. Now, thanks to this adjustment, it becomes slightly easier for the human player to avoid being kicked out.

[barefootbadass]

Umm, I don't think this has anything to do with random depositions, it is about cultural assimilations like when you place a city two squares from one of theirs and start pumping culture improvements. The cultural assimilation thing is pretty predictable, especially earlier in the game.

The governer being overthrown thing is related to culture, but is more random because it is not likely and involves other factors.

[bahoo]

Thanks for the response Dan....

I must've misunderstood that part of the patch.

But at any rate, is there any plan in the future to patch in an option to try to suppress a deposing city(i.e. have my soldeirs fight the revolutionaries) or to retreat from the city without incident?

It'll be nice that cities don't depose 4 or 5 turns after capture as much now, but I still have a hard time accepting the fact that my troops up and vanish without a trace.

[The Rook]

Originally posted by bahoo
Thanks for the response Dan....


It'll be nice that cities don't depose 4 or 5 turns after capture as much now, but I still have a hard time accepting the fact that my troops up and vanish without a trace.

True that. I had a city that I built that was taken over by the Indians. At that point in the game, I couldn't do much about it, but later in the game, I was able to get it back. Towards the end of the game though, the city deposed my government and went back to the Indians. I lost an Army, 4 or 5 misc units, and about 12 bombers. It's not so much I lost the city, but losing the units was hard to swallow.

[Malleus]

I had a city flip back to the original civilization, which would be fine, except for the following:

city size 22:
11 russians (original culture)
8 babylonians (the only reasonable civ)
1 german (via worker)
2 egyptians (via workers)

I had the city for 200 years, from the 1700's on.
I had built every cultural object in it.
It was four squares from a size 35 city of mine with six wonders and gobs of culture (I think 9000+)
It had close to 1000 culture of my own in it.

FLIP!
Luckily I won the game via spaceship four turns later, so I just took the minor score hit.

But...grrrrr

K

[fikrii]

I might be wrong, and this might be off topic, but in the case of insurrection, as I recall in Civ1/Civ2 you could massacre 1 population point to end an insurrection and keep things in order.

I WANT THAT POWER!!!

MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

[Skanky Burns]

There are 2 types of war: A war of aggression (kill em all!!) and a war of colonisation (more land for me!!)

In a war of aggression, you shouldnt be keeping any cities - raze them all. You wont be getting deposed anytime soon.

In a war of colonisation, bring a settler along with your main attack force. After beating an enemy citiy into submission, RAZE IT!! Use your settler on that spot to build yourself a loyal city, and get a heap of free workers as a bonus.

The only exception to the RAZE rule is when a city has wonders in it. Just use your artillery (you do have artillery, dont you??) until the city is down to 1 pop point. Then capture and hold. With 1 pop point, they will be very unlikely to revolt. Just to be sure, add another 2 pop to the city (from your workers, NOT captured slaves) and deposing will be a thing of the past.

For this, you dont even need a large cultural value

[simwiz2]

"In a war of colonisation, bring a settler along with your main attack force. After beating an enemy citiy into submission, RAZE IT!! Use your settler on that spot to build yourself a loyal city, and get a heap of free workers as a bonus.

The only exception to the RAZE rule is when a city has wonders in it. Just use your artillery (you do have artillery, dont you??) until the city is down to 1 pop point. Then capture and hold. With 1 pop point, they will be very unlikely to revolt. Just to be sure, add another 2 pop to the city (from your workers, NOT captured slaves) and deposing will be a thing of the past."

But the whole point of conquest is to take things to increase your size/pop/score. how does your score improve if u go around destroying cities and merely spreading out your population? Plus its not realistic. Do you think when someone goes out to conquer a nation, that they would actually kill the million+ citizens in the capital, burn it to the ground, and then build another city right there? Not likely. "oh, i didnt like their citizens, so i killed them, and i didnt like their buildings so i burnt them down so i could build the exact same buildings myself" maybe in ancient times, but not nowadays. razing cities and ordering the slaughter of millions of civilians would land your nation a quick death in the hands of the UN and US.

[wapamingo]

I dont know where you got the idea that you can masacre 1 population to stop insurection in civ1 and civ2. There is not such thing there...

I understand that city defection is annoying but you got conquest war all wrong...If you are about to go conquer do not stop and just eliminate the civ. I rarely had problems with city defection (I play Huge map, 16 civs, monarch-emperor). I go conquer a civ 1.5x my size and maybe 1 or 2 did a city defect but always I had enough troops to take it back. I do not raze cities.

So my advice: Eliminate the civ fully and no defection will happen.

cheers

[Disk Killer]

I'm still at Chieftan so my cultural lead is immense. I'm sure it gets much worse at the higher levels, when the AI will be more competitive, however I believe the basic rules will still apply.

Take cities that enlarge your borders naturally. Don't try to spearhead into enemy territory towards his capital, and then be surprised when computer's encroaching culture captures everything back. Take cities that jut into your natural area of control.

If you must fight a large-scale war, fight equally along the entire border, so you don't jut into enemy territory too much when capturing cities. Takes a big army to accomplish this. Or you have to raze.

Force out traitorous elements by shutting down their bases of operations: The city's farms and factories. [IE starve 'em out, but this sounds more humane, I feel like I'm deporting the bad seeds in my mind]

I'll see how it goes when I hit regent.

[Dis]

war is impossible to wage successfully

funny sh!t there

this is a joke thread

try winning diety without war. I dare you (no diplomatic victory of course)

[Dis]

and you don't have to kill civilians!!!!

if you want to be a nice guy. after reistance has ended, rush build workers/settlers. This will reduce the city to size 1. and you have loyal national workers/settlers. If you want to be cheezy you can then add them back into the city you just used to rush them, and they will become your citizens. I don't do that though, it is a exploit. I will use the workers to add into my other older cities though.

[siredgar]

Cruel, but true...

Just starve the suckers down to population 1 and then move in your own settlers/workers. This, of course, is not the best idea for a large city of population 22!

[Frito]

Originally posted by Dissident
try winning diety without war. I dare you (no diplomatic victory of course)

I agree. Without early war to curve the ai expansion diety is impossible in my mind.

[Torquemada]

As posted by DiskKiller:

Force out traitorous elements by shutting down their bases of operations: The city's farms and factories. [IE starve 'em out, but this sounds more humane, I feel like I'm deporting the bad seeds in my mind]

Actually, if you think how conquest has historically proceeded, up until the late 19th century, siege warfare was the primary method of city acquisition (as opposed to mobile land/air warfare). And as a rule, this involved civilian starvation during the siege itself and civilian massacre via looting and rapine following seizure, e.g. an estimated THIRD of Germany's civilians died during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). So Disk Killer's advice is both astute game strategy and more reflective of history.

[bahoo]

Yep, there is definately ways too successfully wage war... Raze and follow with settlers, exterminate, what have you.... That's not the point of my post though, I don't want strategies, I want explanation.

The question I ask, is there anyone here who actually thinks your soldiers should up and disappear when a city deposes? And if so what's the logic?

Personally I liked the Civ2 partisan way of things working. If a city wants to depose and you don't want to retreat your forces, partisans should appear and have to actually take the city.

[mtgillespie]

With regards to the idea of reducing cities to pop.1 then adding your own workers. There is a problem with this strategy. If the city has unhappiness due to the previous owners using the draft or forced labour, any workers you add will be unhappy for this reason as well!

[Comrade Tribune]

This is sooooo easy to solve:

-Never leave more than one unit in a conquered city.

-If they revolt, conquer them again. And again.

-Raze the centers of resistance: The one or two largest cities with the highest culture.

-Conquer the entire enemy civilization: No more defections!

[Dis]

why is everyone so upset over losing units when a city reverts back? How can a few guys in tanks defend against a population of over 1 million people attacking them? This is why they are lost.

It would behoove you to take steps to avoid that. And yes you can do it without killing people. Just make workers to get the city down to 1 person.

[bahoo]

Originally posted by Dissident
why is everyone so upset over losing units when a city reverts back? How can a few guys in tanks defend against a population of over 1 million people attacking them? This is why they are lost.

It would behoove you to take steps to avoid that. And yes you can do it without killing people. Just make workers to get the city down to 1 person.

If there's millions of people there that didn't want to be taken, how did the tanks take it in the first place?

If you conscript you get one unit, so I assume 1 unit of population has as many people in it as a military unit.

So say for a size 10 city, assuming they ALL were revolting, I think a half a dozen tanks and infantry could take 10 stick wielding citizens (or maybe they have guns, but even then they should at least have a chance to fight).

[Arrian]

I, too, was puzzled by the "increased chance of city defection" in the patch. I figured they meant for both the human and AI, particularly during war. Now it appears it's just a boost for the human player. Hmm. Frankly, I don't think it should be easier. I've conquered large empires, keeping most of their cities razing some, and usually have 0 or 1 city defect back, on average. It's actually pretty easy (my experience has been on Regent and Monarch levels) to keep conquered cities.

Have strong culture. Starve the heck out of the captured city, and rushbuild culture improvements asap - and make sure it's connected to your trade network so it gets your luxuries. Oh, and DO NOT put lots of offensive units in there! Keep them outside the city (out of harm's way, of course) in case of defection, and then just re-take it.

What I'm trying to say is that I've never had much problem with losing cities to the AI culturally as it is... so this may unbalance the game (in my opinion). Let's see how it works out.

-Arrian

[inca911]

This really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but I'll restate it again. Cultural reversion must be prevented militarily if the population of the city is large. Do you realistically think that the Germans in WW2 could simply capture a town, leave a tiny garrison and move on to the next town without any worries about the city? Nope. The occupation of enemy land, especially cities, requires a massive commitment of troops and resources. You *should* be limited in your conquest and you should also be forced to leave troops in the cities you capture to prevent their loss. If you want to Blitzkrieg through another civ, you must totally destroy the cities you capture and move on. It's ugly, and you lose a lot of infrastructure in the cities you just burnt down, but it means you do not have to commit troops to maintaining the peace. I have heard comments from several warmongers that they don't like to tie up their units to prevent cultural reversion of cities but they do want to keep the cities intact. Well, you can't do both of these things in the real world either. The fact that a large city that is mostly not of your citizenry revolts shouldn't be an amazing surprise. Granted that 700 years of your rule should help to prevent defections (which I hope is what they have fixed), but in the short term reversion must be dealt with via military force. I have never had a city defect to another civ, and it is simply because I use obsolete units from the unassailable heart of my empire to garrison these newly acquired cities. Yes it does drain you militarily. Yes it does bog down your war advancement some. And both of these things reflect reality and preserve a game balance much improved from Civ2 where you could capture, leave one weak unit, and move on....

[Blackadar1]

Do you realistically think that the Germans in WW2 could simply capture a town, leave a tiny garrison and move on to the next town without any worries about the city?

Actually, read your history - they did. In fact, the battle plan was BASED on this. They'd invade...say Poland and Russia. Then they'd raise conscript armies from each and let them police their own (or sometimes, each other), leaving the majority of the Wehrmacht to continue their advance. The germans didn't have huge garrisons of main-line German troops stationed in every French, Czechosolvakia, Russian and Polish city. They'd use natives, managed by German officers, to keep the existing poplulace in check.

[MrWhereItsAt]

All well and good, BUT...

the game tells me to garrison strong military units in the city to quell resisters. Now, call me crazy, but this turns me off leaving only an infantry or two in a newly conquered city. I have found, with a sufficient cultre, I can with my cavalry, cannons and riflemen (6 units in total) capture an enemy capital near my FP and quell 7 resisters in 5 turns.

How does the game work out resistance quelling? It looks to me like the more units in a city you have, the quicker the resistance disappears. In which case you stand MORE of a chance of getting away scot-free with a nice shiny city by letyting the conquering forces stay until the city gets used to their new masters - logical, I should hope.