Simple patch idea to save units in defecting cities; please support

[Be'lial]

Just a comment about cultural reversion being unrealistic.

I think that when you actually look at history over the past century, you'll find its actually almost impossible to hold a populace against their will, for any serious length of time.

Even when totally overwhelming, nations with massive military might have had to retreat and withdraw in the long run.

Look at the collapse of the Soviet Union, or the British control of Ireland, or Yugoslavia. In all cases the occupying country had a massive military superiority, yet had to withdraw and loose the territory it held, due to Cultural Reversion effectively. Certainly, no outside force intervened in a Civ 3 military sense.

(Heck, countries that haven't been independatnt states for 100's of years have now formed their own countries by suceeding from their "main" country - what apart from cultural reversion could represent this?)

If you think that Cultural Reverison involves partisan action by the occupied popluace, and that it usually takes several turns to take effect (i.e. 4 years or more), then it is very realistic. Its hard to hold a modern populace against its will without slaughtering most of them...

However, I do agree that the army shouldn't just vanish - randomly loose a couple of units, and wound the others, then retreat them to your territy would be a much better solution.

[Be'lial]

Oh, just something I forgot...

My own games seem to show that military presence in a city has a massive effect - every time I've lost one of my own or a captured city to cultural reversion, if I reload the game and move more units into the city, it stops the reversion happening.

Given that the seed code is saved when you save your games, I would presume that indicates that military units are having an effect on the chance to revert.

[kimmygibler]

Everyone's arguing about something that nobody knows for sure. If we knew the exact way it was calculated there would be less problems. But firaxis has never been helpfull in this regard...

[korn469]

how about in peace when there is a cultural reversion the army get teleported to the border without any loses on either side

then in war if a cultural reversion happens there is a 75% chance a citizen will die for every unit that disappeared, and if the enemy has twice as many units as population the city can't revert

[Ancientfool]

Something needs to be done about it... I support that.

Its one of the worst "features" ive seen in a game since Battlecruiser2000.

[squeeze truck]

Originally posted by Xentropy


Actually, number of units garrisoned having no effect is also incorrect. The only times I've had a city defect back, I had only a unit or two in that city and it was near the enemy capital. When I garrison at least one unit per population point, I have never had a city defect. From what I hear, you need two per pop point to *completely* get rid of the possibility, but one per pop point drops the chance so low you can feel moderately safe. (For these purposes, "garrisoned units" only include ground units with an attack value. Workers/settlers/scouts/explorers, bombardiers, ships, and planes don't count.)

If you're trying to capture cities with under 100 units late enough in the game for culture to have this kind of effect, you're screwed anyway, so you can afford to leave 8 or 9 behind in a city, right?

I've had many landed invasion forces in forieign territory capture a city, and then use the city to heal up faster. I try to build a temple as quickly as possible to lessen the chance that it flips back, but you can't rush build while a city is in resistance.

Once I had 27 (!!) Cavalry resting up in a size 3 city, and had the city revert in only 3 turns, before I could even think about securing it. I lost almost my entire invasion force.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by squeeze truck


I've had many landed invasion forces in forieign territory capture a city, and then use the city to heal up faster. I try to build a temple as quickly as possible to lessen the chance that it flips back, but you can't rush build while a city is in resistance.

Once I had 27 (!!) Cavalry resting up in a size 3 city, and had the city revert in only 3 turns, before I could even think about securing it. I lost almost my entire invasion force.

This reminds me of a situation in the fantasy novel 'The Demon King'. After a lengthy campaign a large invading army finally captures the capital of their enemy, which seems almost totally abandoned by the time they get there. Winter is coming and their supply lines have been cut, so they garrison the army in the city. Several weeks later the citizens of the city, who had been hiding in an extensive underground network rise up and burn down most of the city, wiping out the invading army.

[Grumbold]

I don't have a problem with a garrison force being overwhelmed, but there is no relation between the number of units required to capture a city exerting active resistance and the number then needed to suppress the population. 2 units per point of popupation (and not even that is a guaranteed amount) is just ludicrously excessive when it only took 3 units to capture the size 20 city in the first place.

[Mokael]

khe, you got my vote. Don't you just hate it when you lose your newly "tested" tanks, that you just parked for healing purposes, just because you forget to hire some citizens as ententainers. blah!
<-- check out the mad santa

[Dadeo]

This is another one of the nails in the coffin for this game. How frustrating is it to spend turn after turn building up an army then transporting it across an ocean to have it wiped out when the first city you take over defects. I sent 5 galleons of cavalry and samurai to take Paris and one other city. Most of my cavalry took heavy damage so I had them garrisoned in Paris to heal. If I had left these one hit point forces outside the city they would have been easily wiped out by the French. Two turns later they are all lost to defection and at the same time I am suffering war weariness back home with cities going into disorder all over the place.
This is a game; it is supposed to be fun. It should try to mirror events in the real world. Does it make sense that German troops would station themselves outside of Paris in the open because they were worried that the Parisians might revolt?
For me, a lot of the enjoyment out of these games is the combat and the tactical planning the takes place to make successful campaigns happen.
Anyone played EUII?

[Kristjan]

City defection is a great feature, but right now its implementation is absurd. What would happen to these half a million men when Normandia wanted to defect back to Germans during operation Overload? Would they be teleported to the Outer Space or Dimension 4 or what? Or should I say what the heck?

Suggestions:
1) About defection in wartime. That should be possible, but before that a kind of battle should take place between armed civilians (riflemen) and the garrison and the outcome of that battle should determine the actual defection. Every slain rifleman should represent one citizen and there should be as much riflemen as there are citizens of hostile nationality. Besides the danger of defection, some city improvements should be destroyed in that battle. That is realistic.

2) Defection in peacetime is probably connected with mutiny of armed forces as well as civil unrest. Because of that, the civ that gets the city should get all its military units as well.

[gachnar]

Originally posted by Venger
How about y'all fix the real problem, cultural defection in cities that have large numbers of military units.

What are you doing that makes this a big problem? I've had one city revert in the last six games. That city was a strategic staging point next to the victim civ's capital. Probably something similar with you? I know that its a risky tactic, I just needed the roads to transport some Legions to supporting towns. I routed them around (not through) the city, and used them to take out all the outlying cities that were tough to reach otherwise. As the Legions worked back to the civ's capital, the city revolted. I took it the next turn with the 2 legion sitting outside the city.

Is this too difficult a tactic for you to pull off?

Its very sad. War isn't as simple and easy as it was in Civ2. It takes planning and new strategies. Its no longer a one-dimensional problem of sitting steel on an area and being invincible.

How about you REALLY fix it and create a cultural defection switch? People who wear cotton lined panties can keep it on, and people who want something approaching a reality that may exist in this universe can turn it off...

I support the option. Though I would prefer it be saved in the game files with a score penalty, so wussies who cant wrap their minds around anything other than massive, mindless war have to admit that they can't handle having to deal with war and culture at the same time.

[gachnar]

Originally posted by squeeze truck
Once I had 27 (!!) Cavalry resting up in a size 3 city, and had the city revert in only 3 turns, before I could even think about securing it. I lost almost my entire invasion force.

Why did you put that many in the city? Put the wounded in. Leave the rest around the city.

Huh? What is that you say? They would be killed? Yes of course the would be killed. You sent cavalry without any decent defenders. I'm guessing there was no artillery either. So basically, you used the same tactics you used in Civ2, and they failed.

When you send an invasion force, send them with defenders and artillery. Its that simple. You lost your invasion force because you didnt want to have to actually build a well-rounded invasion force.

Instead of your 27 Cav, I would have sent something like

Ship 1-5: 2 Cavalry, 1 Musketman, 1 Cannon
Ship 6: 2 Cavalry, 2 Musketmen
Ship 7: 2 Musketman, 2 Cannon

This brings your total to:

12 Cavalry
9 Musketman
7 Cannon

If you stick a Musketman, a Canon, and a Cavalry in the first city, you have a nice base to heal at, an the remaining force can be split into 2 or 3 large armies that can do quite a bit of damage. If the city reverts (which it shouldn't since you didn't pick a city near the capital) your force is more than enough to take it back.

Now. You have to realize that this force will get strung out the more cities you take. I would suggest taking no more than 6. If you want to take more, send groups of musketmen and cavalry to replace lost units. Advance from the fringe of the civ inward. Set up a nice large battle on helpful terrain to drain the Civs offensive units.

Really. Its not that hard. You lost your 27 Cavalry because you sent a weak force to execute a weak minded attack without even thinking about any other aspects of battle. Sorry. Civ3 requires a bit more planning.

[Redstar]

i don't think so, eh

[Arrian]

As I understand it, cultural reversion was put in the game in order to represent the difficulties of conquest. I personally like it, overall. I would like to see some kind of fight take place when a city defects, but I would imagine that would be difficult to add now. Maybe "teleporation" of your units with 50% losses would be fair. I've never really had trouble with cities defecting back to their original owners (I've played mabye 15 games out, ranging from Cheiftain to Monarch, and have lost a total of 4 cities that way). However, I can see how losing a massive army which is stopping to rest in a size 3 city would cause one to scratch one's head a bit (and yes, bringing a few riflemen with those cavalry is probably a good idea). Perhaps there should be an option to disallow defection if you have 2x as many units as the city size (6 units in a size 3) or even 3x.

-Arrian

[art_vandelai]

I found the biggest cause of cultural defection is civil disorder. If you let your cities get into CD, even if you have 30 troops stationed in a size 5 city (and this HAS happened to me) the city is still highly likely to revolt.