Culture War...When do cities convert?

[Mr. T]

My primary goal with this post is to get a discussion going about how, when, and what factors effect city cultural conversion (when a city overthrows its current civ and joins a new one). I think the following variables factor into switching.
1) Distance of the city from the two civilizations capitols
2) two civs respective total culture
3) cultural production of cities close by
4) amount of garrisoned troops

I think the following may have an effect:
4) Happiness (its hardest to take over a WLT_D city, easier to snag a city in civil disorder)
5) wealth of civs and cities in region
6) total civ happiness

Is this right guys? what do you think? Anyone wann do tests? who has looked at the code and knows the equation?
these questions and more answered in this thread
(Also, the patch readme said that this part of the game has been changed).

[Rakso]

I wonder if happiness has something to do with it, especially if it's full of foreign nationals.

Bah, it makes grabbing cities to gain a foothold on a new continent (especially for a resource in a new age) very tricky, since the whole city can defect back!

[Mr. T]

trying to hold large cities on foreign continents is praticularly hard given they are bound to be much closer to the other civs capital.
Perhaps it would be good to take the capitol first with a surgical strike. hmmmm

[MarshalN]

I find it VERY difficult to convert anything that's part of an enemy's main group of cities. If the city you're trying to convert is far away from their mainland, or if detached, I think the chances are good as long as your culture is clearly superior. If you're trying to convert a city that's actually part of the main body of their empire, however, I have had very limited success doing that, happening maybe once or twice so far.

All in all..... don't count on it.

[Rakso]

Originally posted by Mr. T
Perhaps it would be good to take the capitol first with a surgical strike. hmmmm

I know, but the way the AI distributes industrial age resources in clumps on the same continents, you just have to sometimes.

Surgical strikes are ideal, but they're likely to be the big cities, and the game skews combat quite a lot in favor of the defense!

Anyone notice there isn't a single attacker combat bonus?! Hell, your Elite Cavalry is just a match for a fortified Spearman in a big city?

[Easy Rhino]

the tricky thing about culture swapping is that all of the variables eventually boil down to a CHANCE PER TURN that the city will swap.

So the timing basically comes down to luck, and this makes it hard to know what you did wrong or right.


ER

[Blackfish]

Originally posted by Mr. T
1) Distance of the city from the two civilizations capitols
2) two civs respective total culture
3) cultural production of cities close by
4) amount of garrisoned troops

I think the following may have an effect:
4) Happiness (its hardest to take over a WLT_D city, easier to snag a city in civil disorder)
5) wealth of civs and cities in region
6) total civ happiness

Add:
[7] Relative distance to capitals.
Chance to "convert" is reduced if your capital is farther away than his capital.

Query: Does the FP count as a capital in this case?

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Blackfish


Add:
[7] Relative distance to capitals.
Chance to "convert" is reduced if your capital is farther away than his capital.

Query: Does the FP count as a capital in this case?

See point 1 of his list. Dunno about FP, but I think it may have an effect.

For my rant on reversion, see:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=38366

I tried quite some things to prevent it, with little success...

[roadcage]

In the "rant" thread poster 'rah' had success with mass starvation. What I think was successful was making no ordinary workers available for the conversion algorithm to test.

[Blackfish]

Originally posted by Grim Legacy


See point 1 of his list. Dunno about FP, but I think it may have an effect.

For my rant on reversion, see:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=38366

I tried quite some things to prevent it, with little success...

DOH!

[Blaupanzer]

7)Number of foreign nationals relative to total number of citizens in the city.

In reverting specifically, there appears to be a relationship between number of ground units garrisoned in the city versus number of foreign nationals in the city. This algorithm appears to count only ground units with a-d-m stats (no planes, cannons, ships, workers, etc.) Based on experience to date, would hazard a guess that the FP (theirs or yours) does NOT play in this equation. However, I've been pretty successful at preventing reversions, so far. (Not completely, ARGH!)

[pcasey]

The rule of thumb I've found is one non bombard military unit per population point +1

e.g. 13 units in a size 12 city.

In my experience you don't usually need to bother with this sort of uber garrison unless, for example, you just bum rushed a city deep in enemy territory.

You can usually get away with a smaller garrison, but what I have found is if you put in a garrison as large as I described, you're essentially immune to reversion.

At the very least, I've never seen a city thus garrisoned revert.

Of course one might reasonably ask what else I could be doing with 13 military units...

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by roadcage
In the "rant" thread poster 'rah' had success with mass starvation. What I think was successful was making no ordinary workers available for the conversion algorithm to test.

See my reply to "rah", though.

[Mr. T]

in my latest game, I am playing the Babs (regent or monarch I don't remember). Early on the Germans snuck a city in between Babylon, Ur, and Ninveh. I Figuered big deal, it will convert in a few turns. Babylon proceeded to build Pyramids from a lucky leader and Colossus (the AI never seems to build it). Still no conversion. It just occured to me, maybe Heidelburg has a Forbidden Palace. Quite possibly the foreign city with the FP is conversion reversion immune!? If this is true how about trying to get a quick leader based FP in a captured city. Although this would mean not building a FP and saving a leader. Anyway, anybody got or lost a city with a FP?

[Master Marcus]

No, but the AI has definitely a culture cheat depending of the difficulty level, and like many other cheats that is clearly significant with Monarch next to Regent: rush build rapidly Temples-libraries-garrisons-making happy citizens are NO LONGER promises to keep cites from defection, and capturing is much more difficult. I have an average of 2 culture captures in most of my Monarch games next to 8-10 at Regent.