Culture Flipping:

[Cort Haus]

Colonel D. ,

I like the idea of a gradual decline into resistance & revolt, with eventual guerillas, but do you really want those pesky partisans back? So-o-o-o tedious to place 20 units round each city before taking it.

Also, the spies & diplomats were too powerful in civ1 & civ2. People went around cheaply buying up rival civs and causing mayhem, and you ended up with needing a solid wall of units at the borders to stop them sneaking in and 'flipping' your city.

I take both your points, though some ideas might be rather complex to implement, and on the whole I don't miss partisans or spies. I like the laser-guiding spotters though

[Saurus]

I think the culture flips are part of fun and In most cases the flips functions well.

But there are problems!
The situations where several military units are lost in a flip are frustrating indeed but there are more severe situations the culture concept is malfunctioning.

I have experienced a situation where a city I had built early during the ancient era, with temple, library, coloseum, university and the GW great libary built, flipped over to the babylonias during the middle ages. Just two turns before this, I had proudly been watching the top5 city view, where my city, witch flipped, was number 2 on the list . (E.G the culturally second most influental city in the whole world!!).


Now I DO understand that a city that is compleatly supressed when it comes to culture, may flip, but that
the second most greatest city in the whole world flips in favor to the only city that has higher culture (by a few culture points at most) is EXTREAMLY annoying.

If a city has 2000 culture and another 100 - yes, a flip is validated but if the flipping city had 1990 culture - then ALSO flipping? ridiculous!

-S

[miccofl]

Now I DO understand that a city that is compleatly supressed when it comes to culture, may flip, but that the second most greatest city in the whole world flips in favor to the only city that has higher culture (by a few culture points at most) is EXTREAMLY annoying.

Could you post that save? That's unreal! As a frequent user of the "Initiate Propaganda" spy mission, I find it astonishing that the AI pulled this one off. I have spent thousands of gold trying to flip far lesser cities than that with a culture ratio of over 10:1. There is a random factor involved but you got screwed! What were the opposing government types? (Although with your cultural levels so close it shouldn’t matter.)

[whosurdaddy]

I think the problem is that culture flipping is a way too common event. Culture flipping should be a once in a while unlucky thing that happens to a player, not an almost given thing guaranteed to happen to a player who has decided NOT to raze or ethnically clense
(through starvation) conquered cities.

[Saurus]

Originally posted by miccofl



Could you post that save? That's unreal! As a frequent user of the "Initiate Propaganda" spy mission, I find it astonishing that the AI pulled this one off. I have spent thousands of gold trying to flip far lesser cities than that with a culture ratio of over 10:1. There is a random factor involved but you got screwed! What were the opposing government types? (Although with your cultural levels so close it shouldn’t matter.)

I don't have a save from that exact moment but I seemed to have a save from that same game during a later time (Industrial age).
The intresting city here is named "blurba" - It is found
on the main Island where both Me and the Babylonias reside.

Take into consideration the following:


1) The city that caused my city to flip (Ur or Uruk, can't remember) has been burned to ground long ago.
There is, however, a unused irrigated areas proving a city has existed relatively close to my city blurba.

2) My city witch flipped, but whitch I, of course, took back by military conquest, still has a very high culture level - despite the fact that all the culture improvements (most of witch were producing double culture at the time of flipping) had been destroyed during the flip.
(you can clearly see that all the culture buildings has been rebuilt becouse they culture output is low as the
buildings have barely been rebuilt)

You could for instance compare the current ammount of culture points in blurba to the neighbouring city named "lisk" witch was culturally weaker than "blurba" during the same time blurba flipped. Yet currently lisk is number 2 in top 5 cities. Blurba would have been extreamly strong, culturally, currently if the flip had not occured.

-S

[Saurus]

Originally posted by miccofl



Could you post that save? That's unreal! As a frequent user of the "Initiate Propaganda" spy mission, I find it astonishing that the AI pulled this one off. I have spent thousands of gold trying to flip far lesser cities than that with a culture ratio of over 10:1. There is a random factor involved but you got screwed! What were the opposing government types? (Although with your cultural levels so close it shouldn’t matter.)

ouch.. sorry, did not allow me to attach. The saved game is 1.71MB witch is too large for attachment appearantly. Any ideas?

-S

[whosurdaddy]

Originally posted by Saurus


ouch.. sorry, did not allow me to attach. The saved game is 1.71MB witch is too large for attachment appearantly. Any ideas?

-S

zip it using winzip

[Rasputin]

one thing many seem to overlook in this debate is that the city ddnt fight youe garrisons to regain control, but the culture of the city affects your garrison and they decide to no longer be part of your armies but disband themselves and peacefully join the other civ. This is not armed aggression , but simplly your own citizens waking upto the fact yuo have abused them for years keeping them culturally repressed.

Whenever I goto war I first check my Culture rating and choose to fight those civs close or less than my own. If the nation i wish to fight is greater culturally i first spend more time building more culture before launcing attacks.

[Rasputin]

PS .. I have never lost a single city to Culture Flip, and have won 90% of my games with a cultural victory...

[whosurdaddy]

Originally posted by Rasputin
PS .. I have never lost a single city to Culture Flip, and have won 90% of my games with a cultural victory...

Thats great for you ..... just cause you like it doesnt mean its a good idea .... hey, i know people who enjoy having hot wax dripped onto their nude bodies ....

[PGM]

Culture is one of the best things that ever happened to the Civ legacy.

[Saurus]

Originally posted by whosurdaddy


zip it using winzip

Should work now

-S

[Fredric Drum]

Culture flips of garrisoned cities does not happen in the real world. NEVER EVER. It has never happened, and it will never happen in the future. It's not POSSIBLE for citizens armed with saucepans to fight heavily armed soldiers.

And Rasputin: Your theory about troops of soldiers peacefully disbanding and joining the other side is also something that NEVER EVER happens in the real world.

Mind you - I have made no comment whatsoever on the game or whether or not culture flips are a good idea for a game or not. Just stating a fact.

And I'm not going to visit this thread again, so no use in flaming or arguing against the obvious

[vondrack]

Originally posted by whosurdaddy
Thats great for you ..... just cause you like it doesnt mean its a good idea .... hey, i know people who enjoy having hot wax dripped onto their nude bodies ....

Exactly. Just 'cause many people like it or don't dislike it does not mean it's a good idea. However, just 'cause several people hate it doesn't mean it is a bad idea either.

Rasputin made a VERY good point - I can imagine very well that my troops reach and "conquer" a city or get into the vicinity of an empire that impresses them so much that they feel less and less tied to my (culturally so much inferior!) empire... and they eventually resist a local rebellion in a very reluctant fashion or not at all... wishing to be rather part of an empire that gives them entertainment and education instead of swords, sweat and bloodshed. Is it that difficult to imagine? I mean... yes, I can think of the flip mechanics been implemented in a better way, but I am growing tired from reading the same complaints/arguments over and over.

BTW - has anybody else noticed that the "most outrageous" flips seem to happen in the ancient and medieval times, where the above mentioned IBCSMSE ("Impressed By a Culturally So Much Superior Empire") scenario makes much better sense than in modern times?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Fredric Drum
Culture flips of garrisoned cities does not happen in the real world. NEVER EVER. It has never happened, and it will never happen in the future. It's not POSSIBLE for citizens armed with saucepans to fight heavily armed soldiers.

Why do you presume that they only have sauce pans? It's not just the military that has access to weapons, many private citizens have them as well. The Swiss would be a good example. IIRC, their army is more or less a militia that can mobilize and arm themselves very quickly if they're attacked.

[miccofl]

Originally posted by Saurus
Should work now

It did. Why don't you have any spies?

Anyhow, here is your problem. If you spy on the Bab city Uruk (to the SW) you will see that it has the fp and Magellan's Voyage. See the (I hope) screenshot. Ham's pair beats your ace high.

[Saurus]

Originally posted by miccofl


It did. Why don't you have any spies?

Anyhow, here is your problem. If you spy on the Bab city Uruk (to the SW) you will see that it has the fp and Magellan's Voyage. See the (I hope) screenshot. Ham's pair beats your ace high.

I know Uruk has those wonders but I don't understand what Uruk has to do with anything here!

Uruk is not really close enough to be the cause of blurbas flip and in addition the cities are buffered from each other by lisk, wich is far superrior culturally compared to Uruk. It is Uruk whic should flip in my favor and not the other way around.
Besides, Uruk is not particulary strong culturally.
It has NO structures witch are producing double culture (exept from the fp and possibly the temple) and the wonders are only producing 7 culture/turn.

Compare this to blurba wich is producing 12 culture/turn just alone from the GL) and witch was producing
DOUBLE culture at the time of the flip.

What caused blurba to flip was a city just NORTH of
Uruk. (Since, Uruk appearantly still exists, it must have been UR)


My point was to show that:

1) Blurba witch was (and despite of the flip still IS)
culturally very strong,

2) Flipped over to the babylonias




-S

[Kull]

Like a few others here, I too find the culture flip to be a real pain - at least the way it's currently implemented. But since it's highly unlikely that Firaxis is going to change things, that leaves only two options for "Flip Haters":

A) Drop Civ3 and move on (probably the option my wife would prefer....)

B) Deal with it.

OK, so culture flipping exists and you still wanna play Civ3 anyway - what are your options?

As others have pointed out, relative culture strength is THE critical factor. Thus Rule #1:

Build up your own culture so it's equal to or greater than those you oppose in war. (Also known as "pick on the weak sisters first")

A corrollary to this is Rule #2:

Don't randomly expand your civ - only wage wars of CULTURAL extermination!

That means once you start a war with the French, finish them off - take every city they own. Why? Because all those unhappy Frenchmen become compliant subjects as soon their home nation ceases to exist. This happiness provides many related benefits, not least of which is the need for smaller garrisons.

If you must go to war with a culturally superior enemy (and this WILL happen), DO NOT conquer and keep any of his cities. His day will come, but for now your goal should be to simply fend him off, and possibly improve your borders via the conquer-raze-replace process.

But what about your real goal? Even wars of extermination can be dicey so there's a few things you can do to almost completely eliminate the chance of a flip:

1) No Resistance - Stamp it out on the first turn - especially early in the war or when battling a culturally equivalent enemy. If it slows down your offensive, so be it - but plug as many troops as necessary into the conquered city on that first turn. I'm not sure what the "No Resistance" rule is, but invariably a 2-1 ratio of troops to civilians will end resistance on the first turn.

2) WLTKD - Enemy cities can NOT be allowed to fall into disorder! Where possible (the Marketplace is your friend here), put them into WLTKD as soon as the resisters are subdued.

3) The Enemy Capital - Beware the enemy's cultural heartland! This is a very dangerous place, so it's critical that you take his capital as soon as possible. If you must raze a nearby city or two in order to capture it quickly, so be it.

4) The Flip - You do everything right and the enemy city STILL flips - what's a harried conqueror to do? Well, in this case (and this one ONLY), the otherwise cheating practice of "restarting" is acceptable. Make sure you have extra units available to increase the garrison and just move in as many as it takes to keep the darn thing from changing sides. To reduce excessive replay, it's important to save at the end of EVERY turn - autosave is useless since by then the flip has already occurred.

Follow these simple rules and you too will happily discover that "City Flipping" is no longer part of your Civ3 experience!

(For those who feel otherwise, please ignore this post)

[Zylka]

[DeepO]

As it has been a while that a link to this thread was posted: There is an exact, confirmed formula, which gives you all the reasons why a culture flip happens in any of your games. Furher, it gives a breakdown of what you can do to prevent flipping. It is a long read, but the info is very good (if I may say so myself, some of the posts are mine).

Direct cultural pressure is not a reason in the sense that if you have a culturally high city opposed to lesser cities, your city is safe from flipping. What can be a reason is that you lack some tiles in your city view (the 21 tile city radius) to the enemy, or some of your citizens are not of your nationality. Without any of these two, flipping will not happen. This is than adjusted to a number of factors, culturally, happiness, or military related.

Culture Flip Formula

DeepO

[Kull]

DeepO: Thanks for the link - together with Fitz, you produced a fine piece of scholarly research. It was gratifying to get confirmation that many of my core strategic assumptions (developed purely through "trial and error" gameplay) are underpinned by solid mathematical formulas.

On that note, has anyone ever determined the formula for "eliminating resisters in one turn"? I always assumed that it was totally based on garrison size, but now I'm not so sure.

[Coracle]

RE: Culture Flipping formula.

With all I have to do in the world I am now supposed to take a great deal of time plowing through an arcane, arbitrary, and almost byzantine "formula" devised by Soren regarding some entirely artificial and unrealistic concept.

I have a better solution - get rid of it, the formula and the CF. I don't have time for "scholarly research" on an artificial concept that makes no sense to begin with.

The entire idea of CF is thoroughly flawed and false.

I have a much better idea for Soren. I will happily read a brief treatise from him on how he got the brainstorm to concoct this Culture Flipping stuff in the first place, and why any of it is in a game that pretends to be an historical simulation. I'm quite serious; I'd really be interested.

For now, all I want is a WARNING on CF status for towns/cities ranging from "no danger" to "imminent". I also want to be able to totally turn CF off in "historical" scenarios. . . before in a WW II scenario half the American tank force disappears when just-conquered Dresden flips back to Germany.

[FrantzX]

Question.

Why is it Soren's fault? All he does is AI, not game design.

[Kull]

Originally posted by Coracle
RE: Culture Flipping formula.

With all I have to do in the world I am now supposed to take a great deal of time plowing through an arcane, arbitrary, and almost byzantine "formula" devised by Soren regarding some entirely artificial and unrealistic concept.

Actually no. A brief read reveals several factors that you can weave into a successful warfighting strategy. There's no need for a calculator - a rough understanding of the underlying mechanics will suffice (the need for cultural parity with the enemy, use of WLTKD, importance of luxuries, etc).

I have a better solution - get rid of it, the formula and the CF. I don't have time for "scholarly research" on an artificial concept that makes no sense to begin with.

The entire idea of CF is thoroughly flawed and false.

Again, not true. It's clear that you have a deep personal dislike of this concept, and that's fine. It does NOT however mean the concept is "flawed and false".

For example, let's consider the Mongols. A highly militaristic people with a culture level approximating zero successfully conquered the vast nation of China which was militarily weak yet culturally supreme. And what happened? Ultimately the whole country effectively "flipped" back to China - and the same thing happened to Mongol conquests in India and Persia. And what of Alexander? Greek/Macedonian armies conquered right up to the gates of India, and yet the whole thing collapsed quickly - FROM WITHIN. The history of the world is full of similar happenings, so let's not issue a blanket condemnation of the power of culture. It's a real force, and I'm happy to see it represented here.

Now could we quibble over the specifics of the implementation in Civ3? Absolutely! But personally I prefer to focus on dealing with the "as-is" rather than raging against it. Until Soren gives us the keys to the car (don't hold your breath!), the only REAL alternative is to operate within the constraints of the model (and search for ways to modify it).

I also want to be able to totally turn CF off in "historical" scenarios. . . before in a WW II scenario half the American tank force disappears when just-conquered Dresden flips back to Germany.

At last, my favorite subject! Believe me, there's LOTS to gripe about with Civ3 and it's Scenario-unfriendliness, but this specific example isn't one of them. There's probably many ways to prevent a "Dresden-flip":

- Set all Civs to the same ultra-low culture level.
- Remove "Culture-growth" from all but one city improvement (to keep culture from growing too rapidly)
- Change all the citizens of every city to a 3rd nationality (preferably from an extinct culture, or one with a zero culture level)

These are just three examples of ways to deal with Culture in a WW2 scenario, and that's certainly just scratching the surface. The point is, don't underestimate the ingenuity of serious Scenario Designers. Guys like Captain Nemo, Bebro, Jesus Balsinde, & Tecumseh (to name but a few of Civ2's finest) will find ways to eliminate the ahistorical effects of culture and can even be counted on to twist it into an as-yet-undreamed-of enhancement. Bet on it!

[Boris Godunov]

If it is easy enough to do, I don't see why they can't add an editor option to disable flipping. Seems like an easy way to appease everyone (except those who complain for complaining's sake, who will no doubt find other things to complain about...).

I personally don't mind it in the game, as it adds an extra challenge with which I must contend.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Coracle
I will happily read a brief treatise from him on how he got the brainstorm to concoct this Culture Flipping stuff in the first place, and why any of it is in a game that pretends to be an historical simulation. ....

I think you're right overall to say that it's not historically realistic, but then Civ never was was very realistic was it? Let's see...

1. No supply lines: phalanx / spearman on top of a mountain for ever.
2. Civ 1/2 trade : Sail one ship full of dyes across the world and get a huge income for ever.
3. Build 4 chariots and take over most of the world (Civ 1)
4. Civ 1/2 :enemy settlers plopping cities 2 squares from your capital and eating all your food until you declare war.

etc etc

At least they can't do (4) in Civ 3 - if they tried the city would, er flip to you.

Can't do (3) either. Just building military and rushing every civ imbalanced the game, so they decided to limit the power of unit-only gameplay, and give some power to the builder. It's now required to build some culture before taking over the world. Is that so bad?

It's not mean't to be a historical simulation - it's a game. If all you wanna do is build units and rush, I strongly recommend playing a different game - one without culture flipping. If I was Mr Firaxis I'd happily buy you a wargame of your choice to placate you for your disatisfaction.

[DeepO]

Thanks Kull, both for the compliment and the answer to Coracle. It is hard to keep giving answers to his arguments or (personal) attacks. I agree in full with the things you wrote, we now know that it was not Soren, but Jeff's idea to include culture and culture flipping. Coracle knows this too, as it was in a response to one of his posts that Firaxis has posted this, but that doesn't keep him from argueing otherwise.

About the resistors: I'm fairly certain that there is more to it than purely the number of garrisoning troops (even if this is how you will get rid of resistors), I can only guess that it has again to do with happiness and culture. No formula is known AFAIK, but I'd be glad to participate in finding one.

DeepO

[vondrack]

Originally posted by DeepO
About the resistors: I'm fairly certain that there is more to it than purely the number of garrisoning troops (even if this is how you will get rid of resistors), I can only guess that it has again to do with happiness and culture. No formula is known AFAIK, but I'd be glad to participate in finding one.

DeepO

One thing I have observed in my last game: even if the number of garrison troops need not be the only thing affecting the end of resistance, it is certainly a prerequisite. I have conquered one of the last Egyptian cities on my continent, leaving no garrison troops in it, rushing for the very last Cleo's city that was close to this one. After exterminating Egyptians altogether, I felt no need to station any garrison in the city.... It kept being in resistance until I moved a randomly chosen unit there about 20 turns (!) later, after which it ended immediately (I think). Imagine that. The pathetic Egyptian (there was just one citizen in the city I am talking about) kept resisting 20 turns after his civ was wiped out!

[GhengisFarb™]

Originally posted by vondrack
. The pathetic Egyptian (there was just one citizen in the city I am talking about) kept resisting 20 turns after his civ was wiped out!

Perhaps he had big dreams of being the next Pharoah.

[DeepO]

Vondrack, I've seen the same happening once too. I was trying to word it, however, that it is not simply something like: there are 5 resistors, use 5 troops and they will all be gone in 2 turns... there definately is more to it. If you have a very happy (through lux+diverted commerce) city, it will stop resisting faster then when your city is unhappy. And I think culture has something to do with it as well, but this is quite hard to test.

DeepO