Rant: When will Firaxis do something about Culture Flipping

[Atahualpa]

I do not say Culture Flipping is a bad idea infact it makes War a bit more scary, however the effects and the implementation are just too harsh.
I had my half samurai army (about 12-14 units and except for 2 all were elite) placed in the enemys just conquered capital city. 2 Turns later or was it the next turn I dont know the city flipped and as the rule currently is, ALL my units were GONE!!! A WHOLE DOZENS OF MY FINEST SAMURAIs LOST TO A BUNCH OF MOBBING CIVILIANS!!!! (size 11 city)

This is completely unacceptable for anyone. I guess noboy would play on if such things happen. What a lousy death for my fine samurai army. Now I have to try and trick the random seed to avoid the situation (I always play with fixed random seed).

Firaxis do something about it. It cant be that I am losing all my units. The Egyptians did good to protect their city but it fell and they did not take steps to recapture it. But in one single turn the whole war is lengthend to about 50-75 turns (till I have the other half that is spread all around my homeland assembled and move it against the eqyptians and rebuild defense and strengthen offense *uaaahh zzzzZZZZzzzzzZZZZzz*).

Leave Cultureflipping for God's Sake, but tweak it so that it produces an acceptable situation for the player to go on with. Losing all my offensive units in the area is not acceptable.

Besides, there should be a Minimumnumber x of Units that I have to place in city y with size z so that there can be no flipping! If the whole US army would move in Bagdad would it flip and destroy all units? certainly not.

ata

[MosesPresley]

There is an old cliche: Never put all of your eggs in one basket.

[Fitz]

There is a minimum number x you can place to prevent a flip. Assuming total civ culture is equal, and there are no WLTKD or Disorder in the city, you can reasonably assume that one unit will prevent the chance of flip caused by one foreign national or one production square in another civs territory.

If you encounter flips against you that often, you may not be concentrating enough on culture.

You should do a search on culture flips, look for the thread with the slightly detailed formula (or wait for DeepO to provide a link ).

If you have 1/2 the opponents culture, you need 2 times the troops to prevent, if you have 2x the culture, you need 1/2 the troops to prevent, etc.

So 14 troops, assuming half cuture (Japan vs India that may be generous), 11 nationals, probably 3 or so squares still in their territory, assume 8 in resistance (count as two) total chance of flip on the order of [(8*2+3+3)*2-14]/(500 for way closer to his capitol than yours) ~ 6%. If we give it 100% resistance, 12 troops, and 4 x the culture it becomes 17.6% chance.

Learn to deal with culture flips and they will become less annoying. That doesn't mean that loosing 100% of your troops is acceptable though .

Personally, I get annoyed that the AI is even weaker because I keep flipping his cities and destroying all his troops, thereby making the game less challenging. But then, I play culture war from day one usually.

[WarpStorm]

First off, you should have known better. Why would you put that many units in their just conquered capital? I usually put my wounded units in to heal and one unit to hold it and move on. If it flips then no great loss.

[Bella Hella]

supposedly in PTW there will be an option to turn culture flipping off or on. personally, i love it, as i like to make AI cities flip to me and am often successful. and yeah, what they said - never put your units IN a newly conquered AI city. maybe take 1 defender with you and stash him in there, and use the city to heal wounded units. have all your other guys move on to the next city (or wait in a nearby square for backup). i learned this lesson the hard way, too.

and NEVER leave elite units in a newly captured city.

after i conquer a city, i get them started on a temple/library, and make EVERY SINGLE PERSON either an entertainer or happy (or resisting, but they shut up after a while). this seems to greatly reduce the possibility of a culture flip. some of them will starve, yeah, but i'd rather have 5 entertainers and 3 happy, starving people than a bunch of unhappy ones who will revolt and flip and undo all the work i just did in conquering the city.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by MosesPresley
There is an old cliche: Never put all of your eggs in one basket.

Ask not what Firaxis will do about Culture Flipping, but ask what you can do about Culture Flipping.

[Atahualpa]

First off, you should have known better. Why would you put that many units in their just conquered capital?.

to prevent a flip?

What sort of strategy is it to provoke a flip and retake the city everytime it flips because you do not have the culture to keep it. Either you have the culture or you have the military, otherwise it's a bit onesided, dont you think?

i learned this lesson the hard way, too.

I do not like it.


All that I am asking is that you do not lose all units. Thats just ridiculous and dismotivating to waste another minute of ones really precious time in this game.
Sarcasm or not, I hope you get the point.

Ask not what Firaxis will do about Culture Flipping, but ask what you can do about Culture Flipping.

I would accept the fact that cities flip, but I do not accept the fact that all units are gone. I do not even know what happened to them. They did not die (or did I see a death animation: NO) they just disappeared, as if they were never built. As if they did not one turn before represented all the pride and glory of my empire!
And I was stuffing elite soldiers in because I thought they may be better at preventing a cultural flip, why not?

You know what I am doing. I try to attack with another unit in this turn, this causes a different entry in the random number chain to calculate if the city flips and hopefully it stays alive. If they think they can get away with taking my whole army by doing virtually NOTHING, they are wrong. They'll meet me on battlefield!

ata

[Alex]

Coracle, you're back!

[Arrian]

When will Firaxis do something about Culture Flipping

They've done what they are going to do. It's been toned down and/or tweaked twice now. In all likelyhood, that's all the tinkering there will be.

-Arrian

[WarpStorm]

A capital city typically needs 20-30 units to prevent it from flipping.

[Cidifer]

Are you talking about needing 20-30 units to make it impossible to flip?

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Cidifer
Are you talking about needing 20-30 units to make it impossible to flip?

The number of units required to completely prevent a flip varies depending on local culture, national culture, proximity of the respective capitals, and state of resistance or disruption. However, the required garrison is never more than two times the effective foreign influence. (The foreign influence is defined here as the number of foreign citizens plus the number of overlapping culture tiles.)

[Atahualpa]

Oh my God if i had 20-30 units for attacking the Egyptians would be long history. Fighting Musketman in size 12 cities with Samurais can be quite tough. I lost only 2 when attacking their capital but all were severly wounded (then I lost all due to culture flip ).
Anyway I hope its only a matter of time, I do not like war that much, but Egyptians were getting way too powerful. And with the Republic as Government I guess I should not stay at war too long.

[Zachriel]

As an additional note.

In the Ancient Age, rarely do cities flip because culture is low (unless very close to the enemy capital). However, late in Industrial Age; when deep in enemy territory, and near the enemy capital, with megacity populations; be prepared with strong garrisons. Due to your Industrial capacity, fielding stacks of several dozen units should not be out of the ordinary. This is a typical example of use of a strong garrison during a Panzer blitz:

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm8/ad1852-France.htm

[Bella Hella]

i wasn't being sarcastic - i really DID learn it the hard way. and i DO get your point. i agree that it sucks to lose all your units during a culture flip, and that it shouldn't be that way. most people agree that 3 pissed off citizens would not be able to overcome 15 veteran infantrymen stationed in the city. but right now that's the way it is, and you just have to come up with strategies that take this into account, like making sure not to leave a bunch of units in the city.

i definitely suggest that you try making everyone in the city either an entertainer or happy (as the result of entertainers). the city will not flip (AFAIK).

[notyoueither]

I set all pop to specialist and starve the sucker down to 1 pop. Also rush buying workers helps bring it down quick, and is not so blood-thirsty.

I have yet to loose a city with all pop as specialist and only 1 or 2 unit garrison.

Has anybody else?

[Theseus]

Agreed... keep all citizens as entertainers, starve down, pop rush like Stalin... no flips.

[Tiberius]

I don't want to give advices what to do to prevent flippings, there are plenty of them already. I'd like only to say a few words about why I think flipping it's OK and maybe not perfectly, but well done.

CF it is a tool, a help for peaceful players (builders) against warmongerers. You must admit that a disappearing army is a big help So, frustrating as it is, the "vanishing units" phenomenon is there for gamebalance purposes.

... but I do not accept the fact that all units are gone. I do not even know what happened to them. They did not die (or did I see a death animation: NO) they just disappeared, as if they were never built.

They were assimilated by a higher culture. They liked so much the local music, theater and library (and girls, of course ) that they decided to desert.

This is only my opinion, of course.

[Jaybe]

Losing a large garrison to a flip is a risk you take. It may prevent the flip or they may all be lost if it flips. It is also a risk to rebase loads of bombers there so they can strike the next target. Most of the time I take these risks I am successful. On occasion, they have all gone "poof"! Such surprises/tragedies enhance the game, they do not detract from it.

If you are ahead in culture, then the risk is less but it is still there. Overall, it is the risk of CIVILIZATION.

PTW will have the option to turn CF off (I would never do that) and airbases. If airbases go poof if they are in enemy borders, then CF will still be a threat to them.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Theseus
Agreed... keep all citizens as entertainers, starve down, pop rush like Stalin... no flips.

Pop rush? We love our people! We are Caesar. We pay gold...

[Grumbold]

I think the chances of peacetime culture flipping works fine as it is now, with the exception of the loss of troops. During wartime I find it bizarre that cities should attempt to revolt independently of each other and irrespective of the war situation, but accept it is a limitation of the generalised nature of Civ.

In my "perfect" civ game the quality of the unit would count, so mech inf could suppress far more effectively than warriors or pikemen. It simply seems absurd that you need more troops to hold a single city than it would take to eradicate the whole nation should you elect to raze instead. In any attempted rebellion you would be give some options :

- ruthlessly suppress the population (pop loss, atrocity, chance for significant military losses if overwhelmed, may be vetoed by republic/democracy)
- attempt to suppress but retreat if outmatched (chance of unit damage/loss, may hold or lose city)
- retreat immediately (little damage to military, automatically lose city)

[SpencerH]

I've only had one absurd (peacetime) flip of one of my cities in my recent games so its not such a problem for me.

I usually keep conquered cities on full entertainer status until suitably pacified and I have the money to keep em.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
First off, you should have known better. Why would you put that many units in their just conquered capital? I usually put my wounded units in to heal and one unit to hold it and move on. If it flips then no great loss.

Exactly my thoughts. We've all had our first bad experience with placing a ton of our offense in another Civ's conquered city. If this is your first time having it happened and you haven't had a chance to read the culture flipping debates on this board, then chalk it up as a lesson learned. If you knew about it but decided not to heed the possibility of a flip, then shame on you.

I still agree that all the troops in a city shouldn't disappear, but either Firaxis is going to change it or they aren't.