2 city capture beats flips?

[Theseus]

I've recently taken to making a point of capturing 2 adjacent cities in my first attack against an AI civ.

Besides forcing the AI to spread its attention, it seems that this beats flips.

Any thoughts?

[Catt]

Don't know about slowing flips - never any mention of this in many flipping threads (including posts by Soren and others).

I have long launched multiple front wars (usually at least two cities) for a number of reasons: (1) inflict multiple "production losses" on the AI civ immediately (losses ability to draft / poprush units from a number of cities); (2) spread my forces to best deal with an unexpected counterstrike (i.e., in case the AI bypasses the newly conquered cities and goes for my border cities I have a larger buffer to my cities and more time to regroup for the counter-counter-strike); and (3) provide multiple forward bases for second wave of attacks if the counter-strike is not unexpected and is largely ineffective.

In the industrial and modern ages, you do run a greater risk with multiple fronts - an AI stack of doom might take back one of the conquered cities if you're spread pretty thin.

Catt

[Theseus]

I'm guessing that your multiple front attacks are on NON-adjacent cities.

Adjacency is the trick here...

1. Your forces can support each other.

2. By nature, the number of tiles being "pressed" upon by foreign culture is lessened, for both captured cities.

Another benefit that I didn;t mention is that resources are often 2 tiles from the captured city... if you capture a 2nd city in that direction, you can often get the resource into your territory. Also, a related issue, you may find that the city with the resource doesn;t have a harbor, and a neighboring city does.

Think about mini-III: Many of us attacked America, with Washington being a huge cultural threat. I don;t remember if there were many flips for people, but the 2 city capture worked like a charm for me, at least.

[Catt]

Sometimes yes and sometimes no. If it's a land attack, I usually take adjacent cities -- for the very reasons you describe (and my previous reasons). With a very long shared border (and terrain permitting) I will often try to push the whole border back by attacking three or four adjacent cities -- see my srceenshot of the Chinese attack on Egypt in the Minitourney III spoiler thread. In addition to providing for force support and less of a city's 21-tile radius under foreign control, it has the added benefit of making a counterstrike at one's "native" or home-grown cities very difficult -- lots of "enemy" territory for the AI to muscle through. And I don't like losing native cities because of the (sometimes large) production losses that occur through cultural improvement destruction -- i.e., AI takes native city and automatically destroys temple, library, cathedral, etc. -- if the AI retakes a conquered city, I haven't lost any improvements (and therefore lost shields) because my capture of the city already resulted in destruction of all cultural buildings.

One final note on adjacent attacks (wondering if you see this also) -- oftentiems one has no real choice but to make attacks on adjacent cities -- with a sufficiently mature AI culture and typical AI city spacing, in the absence of 3-move attackers, a single pronged attack can bog down quickly without multiple targets within range -- allowing for a more concerted AI counter.

If it's an intercontinental attack, then (again map permitting) I will usually look to do the most harm to the target civ on the first turn (principally through resource and wonder capture), whether that means opening up one or many fronts.

Catt

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Theseus
Think about mini-III: Many of us attacked America, with Washington being a huge cultural threat.

The best method to prevent flips in the later game, when culture matters, is to raze all adjacent cities, that overlap with their culture. I took a 3-city beachhead in MT III and razed the 3 adjacent cities, including Washington. I rebuilt only Washington. Abe rebuilt the other 2 cities, but never could get back the big culture of the razed cities. I had not a single flip, since I use this approach. I use it regularly for beachheads and resource colonies. In MT II I razed Thebes with the Great Library and 2 other big cities, just to protect a puny luxury colony from flipping.

[Arrian]

Theseus,

I know what you're talking about. The reason capturing a couple of neighboring cities helps with flipping is the cultural pressure you have relieved. The less tiles of enemy culture are within the 21-tile radius of your captured towns, the better. Therefore, capturing adjacent towns will create a nice zone of neutral or your culture, as opposed to simply capturing one town and having enemy culture all around you.

I typically advance along a long front, capturing key strongpoints first (think spearhead), then sending forces out laterally to mop up the sides before consolidating and advancing through the middle again. Rinse, repeat, until the civ is toasted.

-Arrian