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Windwalker
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I have read the various culture flipping threads around and it seems that people are quite vehement in their pro or anti stances on the issue. However, I have a proposal for improving the "culture flipping" feature that may work to satisfy both sides, and perhaps be possible to implement in Civ 3:
The Popularity Quantity (for both cities and whole civs)
Popularity would be helped by the total culture of a civ (or city), the ratio of happy citizens to unhappy citizens in the empire (or city), the number of great wonders built by the civ (a city's popularity # would gain a special bonus if it produced the great wonder itself), and the size and quality of the military (people want to be on the strongest team!)
Popularity would be hurt (permanently) by the number of times a pop-rush sacrifice has been made by the civ (or city), the number of citizens drafted by a civ (or city), and the number of citizens in a city of foreign origin (only count the nationality that has the highest representation... note that this factor can decrease as citizens are assimilated). Also, if the govt were republic or democracy, the popularity would be hurt by the number of times the civ has declared war (when it was not declared on them).
The Popularity of a civ would be a weighted average of the popularity in all of the cities (weighted according to population, so that the popularity of a size 10 city would count twice as much as the popularity of a size 5 city).
Popularity flipping would basically be culture flipping, with the same rules (distance to capital, # of garrisoned troops can help prevent it, # of tiles in city radius, etc.), except using popularity quantity, which should make more sense, IMO. The base chance of popularity flipping is zero, so that a city can popularity flip only if a neighboring civ has greater popularity than its civ, and if the city's own popularity is lower than the opposing civ's.
Benefits of the Popularity model:
- Your core cities will almost never flip, because you've probably built up so much popularity with wonders that no whole civ's popularity can match the popularity in those types of super cities.
- Extensive use of the whip or draft would make popularity flipping more likely, which definitely makes sense, no? It also gives a decent consequence to such tactics, though patch 1.17's changes would probably have to be toned down so as to not discourage whip and draft completely!
- Culture would still be a factor, as would distance, garrisons, etc.
- Your military quantity and quality will be a factor in deciding to switch, which models local feudal lords deciding to switch to the mightier empire. Maybe if it could make this more likely if a militiristic civ is involved…
- Garrisons can still completely squash flipping, if they're large enough.
OK that was the basic change I had in mind. However, here's an optional corrolary that would make sense (but be harder to implement): If the popularity of a given city or of the whole civ ever goes negative (i.e. less than zero), then that city has a chance of just revolting (regardless of other civs), and becoming its own city-state (mini-civ), due to the extreme oppression of the mother civ. From then on, the mini-civ would act like any other civ; the mini-civ could actually conquer other cities and become a big civ, if it wanted to. It would be given the same civ-traits as the mother civ, but with a blank (or generic) AI picture. Of course, the mother civ could always reassimilate it or recapture it, as history has taught us...
In any case, I think the popularity model makes more sense than the current culture model, though it would complicate things a bit. The city-rebellion --> independence movement would be really cool, and it could simulate the founding of America (breakaway from English mother civ); however this is probably an idea for civ 4. Just felt like tossing it out there with the main popularity idea 
What do y'all think?
- Windwalker
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20-02-2002 11:30
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