21-10-2004 22:10									#1
	Is Culture Flipping unbalancing? Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Grrr! I just 15+ units to a culture flip in the Middle Ages! While I don't disagree with the concept of the culture flip, I do take umbrage with a flipping city destroying _all_ your units.

At the very least I feel a city should not be able to destory more units than it has population. And a few citizen ought to die the revolt as well.

	21-10-2004 23:28									#2
	Support Apolyton

It is poorly implemented, but not unbalancing.

	21-10-2004 23:28									#3
	Got spare money?

Maybe so, but it is not worth the effort on their part to chage it now.

Flips are so rare in my games as to be a non factor. I like to put armies in a captured city and I cannot recall the last fliip I had with some in a city.

Use the flip calculator to see what you need to have to prevent flips.

	22-10-2004 00:00									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

I would rather units get displaced somewhere and lose a lot of hit points. Losing armies through flippage is flipping mad and makes me flip!

	22-10-2004 00:37									#5
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Oh, Coracle?? Where are you??

	22-10-2004 00:39									#6
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

It is annoying, but not unbalancing. It would be nice if it could get toned down, but unrealistic.

	22-10-2004 00:48									#7
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

Anyone unhappy with the implementation of culture flipping should vote for Coracle in the next HOF poll.

	22-10-2004 06:14									#8
	Increase Your PM Length

Yeah I'd like to see culture flip as some kind of violent and armed civil disorder (riots, rebellion, whatnot). Angry population vs military units would be computed to see how many units get destroyed and how many get 'pushed' out with hit points damage.

Ah well, we can *itch all we want but it will not be changed or whatever.

	22-10-2004 21:29									#9
	Put an end to popups!

I like culture flipping. This may seem like heresy, but I wish they would emphasize it more. So far on this thread, there has only been a discussion of one part of culture flipping: when captured cities go back to their original empire and how all the military units disappear. I like it!! It gives me something to worry about. Should I put that whole stack of doom into the city, or should some of them sit outside for a turn or two. They are more protected when fortified within a city, but they vulnerability to catastrophic flip. Hmmm, another interesting trade-off decision.

But what about the other half of cluture flipping? What about taking a city peacefully? As someone who likes to build, I find that culture flipping is one way to expand a little or get rid of an annoying foreign city. I'd love to be able to build an economy and culture strong enough to slowly absorb my neighbors city by city without a shot being fired. We need more room in this game for evil geniuses who want to conquer the world through peace.

	22-10-2004 23:03									#10
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Culture flipping is not unbalancing. Do not garrision cities that you think will flip(ie anything that wasn't settled by you), either stations troops immediately outside them, or not at all. Alternatively raze the poor city placement by the ai and resettle with lots of free workers.

Flipping is absurd,but there are plenty of easy ways to work around it that don't involve reloading.

	23-10-2004 01:23									#11
	Got spare money?

More I think about it, if the game didn't destroy units and merely displace those, the player and AI would just retake the city. So I suppose having flipping destroying units help avoid that.

I do like culture thing although it can be unrealistic sometimes. I also wish they implemented something related to immigration. Such as if country A and country B would have a mixture of people from both in border cities, depending on factors such as economy, superior culture, and so on.

	23-10-2004 10:02									#12
	Put an end to popups!

I echo Sir Ralph, except for the Coracle comment.

	23-10-2004 17:25									#13
	Increase Your PM Length

just hunger them down to one food and then bring your own workers to populate the city. I read somewhere that if 1/2 of the population is no foreinger then the flipping chance is mostly reduced

Greetz

	23-10-2004 20:56									#14
	Inflate your Upload Space

I like this feature a lot. Sure, it can drive you crazy when it happens at an inopportune time. When you understand the dynamics, it happens to the AI more than the human player. I like the introduction of random events into the game.

The peaceful flipping point that eris makes is spot on!

	24-10-2004 07:23									#15
	Suffering from ads?

It's banana! I agree with several people here in saying it's not unbalancing, but it is poorly implemented. The results of a flip are draconian. It would be nice if there was a chance for a few units to survive!

I do like the idea behind it though.

(By the way, wasn't there a similar thing in the original Civilization? Where an opponent's city could just 'flip' over to your side because they were jealous of your prosperity, or something.)

	24-10-2004 08:11									#16
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

I don't think your units should be destroyed at all. Maybe damaged and in the red.

	24-10-2004 10:39									#17
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Then keep them outside the city Diss, btw this method doesn't let you heal as quickly so there you go as far as damage sustained goes.

	24-10-2004 22:35									#18
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Its hard to believe that culture flipping is still an issue in this game. The fact that it is--- shows that Firaxis erred in trying to placate the resistors such as Coracle with an 'off' button instead of addressing the issue. Xorbon and others have pointed out that the mechanics of the flip are poorly implemented. What is needed is a way of determining the effects of the flip so that it makes sense.

There are two ways of doing this. The first is an algorithim to determine the effects on the defending force and have the algorithem linked to # of resistors. The second way is to remove the units from the city unhurt, and to then garrison the flipped city with the best defender that the city has access to. The number of defenders would be conscripts and number of resistors present in the city (minimum of 1).

	24-10-2004 23:31									#19
	Get a bigger avatar today!

The other "fact" is that Firaxis was right all along -- Coracle is the one that was wrong (easy for ME to say, I eventually put him on my ignore list).

Firaxis wanted it simple for my tastes, but as non-Firaxis options:
If civs are at war: Some of the units caught in the flipping city should have a chance of defecting, even if it means going to a lower-cultured civ (sympathy towards the "oppressed", etc.). They would defect complete with their equipment, regardless of tech comparison. Some units might be destroyed in the flip, others damaged and placed (I-don't-know-where).

If civs are at peace: This one is simple, units in the city or its territory are returned to their capital.

	25-10-2004 04:49									#20
	Inflate your Upload Space

quote: Originally posted by Whoha Then keep them outside the city Diss, btw this method doesn't let you heal as quickly so there you go as far as damage sustained goes.

to tell the truth, I have never lost a city where I stored a large quanity of troops. This is why I rarely ***** about culture flipping, it rarely happens to me. I usually starve my cities down anyways

	25-10-2004 08:25									#21
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

quote: Originally posted by Mad Bomber Its hard to believe that culture flipping is still an issue in this game. The fact that it is--- shows that Firaxis erred in trying to placate the resistors such as Coracle with an 'off' button instead of addressing the issue.

I must admit, I play usually with it off. I'm rather a lazy gamer in most circumstances and don't want to be arsed to artificially starve my new cities' pop. down. A bit too tedius for me.

	26-10-2004 08:22									#22
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by Jaybe The other "fact" is that Firaxis was right all along -- Coracle is the one that was wrong (easy for ME to say, I eventually put him on my ignore list).

Coracle was right in respect to his claims that culture flipping (as origionally implemented) was unfair, unfun, and unrealistic. His sins stem more from flaming, posting OT, and being a real nuisance to firaxis as well as to the many posters on this site.

	26-10-2004 13:58									#23
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Coracle was right in many respects. Culture flipping was only his poster child. He also opposed culture dependant borders (it's annoying as hell to lose a resource only because your AI opponent was able to rush in a 18 shield temple), ridiculous movement rules (unlimited trains, very limited navies), the bad game interface (it still is bad - try for instance to micromanage tech prices to the last gold, or to change all cities building colosseums to cathedrals, or take the ridiculous foreign advisor screen with only 8 civs) and other details that make the game unfun. I prefer game fun over game difficulty myself, and can perfectly understand Coracles concerns. Yes, he was annoying, but partially because nobody really listened to him. He was as alone, because the other game critics had already left in disgust.

Since I see the same people at work, I do not expect Civ4 to be any better than Civ3. At the countrary, it will be much more difficult, but the price for this will be the elimination of the last bit of fun still remaining in the game.

	26-10-2004 15:22									#24
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

I think what annoys most if not all about culture flipping is the fact that you'll lose all your units stationed within the city. But if we'd let some of them survive be damaged or escape then the city would be recaptured pretty quickly since it only has a single spearman or so for defense.

The city ought to have some special defense units something like the minutemen that are created from the population of the city and have stats similar to the civs best defense unit (probably a tad worse) OR better than the civs best defense unit, but only conscript health.
After building proper defenses these units could then be converted back to city population, but only in this city.

So when a size 11 city flips it is filled with prob 6 civil defender units (ceil(11/2)) with 2/5 (assuming the civs best defender is riflemen), normal health and 0 movement (not possible to airtransport them or load them onto ships). The city has (floor(11/2))=5 size.

I don't guess however that we'd see this in another patch

	26-10-2004 21:50									#25
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

quote: Originally posted by Whoha Then keep them outside the city Diss, btw this method doesn't let you heal as quickly so there you go as far as damage sustained goes.

The problem with keeping most units outside the city is that you'll never end the resistance in any decent sized city. You need units inside the city for that. Until the resistance ends, you can't starve down the population.

And just how do unarmed civilians defeat so many fighting men and not suffer even one citizen lost? I know realism isn't the end-all but come on.

	27-10-2004 09:58									#26
	Support Apolyton

Everything else in the game that I can think of is based on historical fact and/or speculation. What would the basis of a 'culture flip' be?

Last edited by Rommel2D on 27-10-2004 at 10:29

	27-10-2004 10:19									#27
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Never liked flipping. Very unrealistic. I'd also like to hear some good historical examples that match what happens in the game.

	27-10-2004 17:14									#28
	Got spare money?

I have suffered from flipping, but just considered it part of the game, like corruption, anarchy etc. Difficult and annoying (RNG anyone?), but there we are.

Dont know whether a realistic comparision is relevant, since I am arguing that it is a gameplay element (and you can disagree with that!), but I always reckoned it was supposed to represent the sort of disorder and revolution that does happen in history, just put into the game environment we have. CIV 2 and CTP had different methods of representing this.

Losing a big army is frustrating and unrealistic, but in game terms if it changed sides too, then that could be catastrophic. Some of the suggestions where units take damage, but end up outside, or even changing sides would be less dramatic (are all those soldiers executed?). Maybe CIV?

	27-10-2004 18:32									#29
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

quote: Originally posted by Vince278 Never liked flipping. Very unrealistic. I'd also like to hear some good historical examples that match what happens in the game.

How about the Greek city-states that joined Persia during their invasion?

	27-10-2004 20:14									#30
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

quote: Originally posted by Vince278 Never liked flipping. Very unrealistic. I'd also like to hear some good historical examples that match what happens in the game.

Austria joining Germany prior to WWII? (Vienna culture flipping to Germany)