Feedback wanted on ideas to remove flipping from game

[whosurdaddy]

I started another thread on this topic before, but it quickly was swamped by people for and against culture flipping arguing it out back and forth.

So please, can someone just tell me if they think these ideas i have listed below here might work (has anyone tried them before), or any other things that might work to get rid of the insane concept of culture flipping from the game.

Ok, in the editor, there is an option to edit Culture. Among the options, you can set what culture ratios are required for a civ to be "in awe of" another civ, for example. But one of the options is a delete option, for removing entire cultural levels from the game (there are six of them, 3:1, 2:1, 1:1, 1:2, 1:3). So has anyone tried deleting all the cultural levels except for the 1:1 level. I'm hoping that if i do this, then no matter how much culture a civ has, the game will always think every civ has a one to one cultural level with it, making culture flipping much less likely.

Also, has anyone tried changing the culture level multiplier under the general settings in the rules editor. I'm not exactly sure what this option does. If i set it to 0, maybe the game will think that every civ has no culture, thereby making culture flipping less likely.

Do you guys think any of these things would work, or would they make the game crash, or what?

[DeepO]

Apart from thinking that culture is one of the best additions to CivIII over previous games, I can indeed give some comments on your idea

I haven't tried the editor yet, but it was my understanding that those levels only defined how the advisors graded your culture as opposed to them. With 1:3, the advisor will say that the other Civ is in awe, etc. I don't know what delete does, but it has nothing to do with flipping, only with what the advisor says.

So, can we go back to our usual pro-contra arguments now?

DeepO

[whosurdaddy]

Bah, your right, anways I just tried that stuff out in the editor, and culture flipping still occurs amongst various civs. Oh well, I had a noble purpose ..... back to the pro and contra arguments then ..... I guess that is the only way to maybe convince one of the Firaxis people to make this an OPTION!!! FOR THE LOVE OF HUMANITY PLEASE FIRAXIS MAKE A WAY TO TURN THIS OFF.

[Proserpine]

Don't do it!

[DeepO]

Originally posted by whosurdaddy
I guess that is the only way to maybe convince one of the Firaxis people to make this an OPTION!!! FOR THE LOVE OF HUMANITY PLEASE FIRAXIS MAKE A WAY TO TURN THIS OFF.

They can't, nor shouldn't... it is a part of the game, and many things like borders and stuff wouldn't make sense if flipping was not in CivIII. My advice: learn to play with it, there have been quite good threads here that explained it well. With an open mind, I'm certain that in time you will appreciate it as much as I do. The whiners are most of the times people who do not keep an open mind, and because of their initial disgust, they become more and more fanatic in their believes.

I can agree that maybe some changes are in order (like having a chance that troops in the city are saved from destruction), but the concept of flipping is a very good one, once you think about it.

DeepO

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Culture flipping is great!

But then, I'm always ahead in culture...

I say nay to the option, too - it's an important element to the game. It's akin to making losing combat optional. Adjust your game accordingly, Firaxis has explained how it works and how the player can beat it.

[whosurdaddy]

Why do u guys care if it is an option?? Then u guys will be happy, and so will the "whiners"

Anyway, i just said this in the other thread, but i'll say it here, you guys say, "Oh you just dont know how to play the game, you should get used to playing with culture flipping then u'd have no problem."
Listen, I could design the game to have pink elephants that randomly appear in the game that can destroy whole cities, and sure ... I could prolly learn how to play the game and deal with these pink elephants so that they dont destroy my civ, but that doesnt mean having pink elephants in the game is fun or that it even makes any sense! (I hope you guys like my analogy)

[David Murray]

Maybe if you built something other than troops once in a while you wouldn't have a problem with culture flipping.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by whosurdaddy
Why do u guys care if it is an option?? Then u guys will be happy, and so will the "whiners"

Anyway, i just said this in the other thread, but i'll say it here, you guys say, "Oh you just dont know how to play the game, you should get used to playing with culture flipping then u'd have no problem."
Listen, I could design the game to have pink elephants that randomly appear in the game that can destroy whole cities, and sure ... I could prolly learn how to play the game and deal with these pink elephants so that they dont destroy my civ, but that doesnt mean having pink elephants in the game is fun or that it even makes any sense! (I hope you guys like my analogy)

I haven't responded in the other thread (yet, that is...), so I will do so here...

The whole culture concept is inherent to the game. The borders, which are among the very basic concepts, rely on it. To whom belongs a certain tile is determined based on the amount of culture influence coming from nearby cities.

If you grant cities their sphere of influence once forever, you are creating a loophole just shouting loud "exploit me!" Believe me, Coracle might stop ranting about the culture flipping then, but would rant just more about the Settler Diarrhea problem, as he calls it. The beginning of the game would be all about grabbing land, since the only way how to lose it later would be in a war (read: all you would have to care about would be "Would I be able to defend it against an armed attack?"). It would be a no brainer... just create a flood of settlers and settle everything you can. There would be only one way to victory - the diarrhea first and/or pure warmongering later.

You would end up with cities of various civs mixed and scattered all over and there would be NO way to avoid early wars, as the only way to gain control of the resources (which is yet another vital concept inherent to Civ3) first grabbed by your opponent would be to take them by force. You would HAVE TO fight. Culture flips in the acient and medieval eras help create realistic borders even without wars, leading to relatively "compact" and "closed" empire bodies. To achieve a certain level of balance of power, you can either wage war, or focus on your culture, knowing that those small enclaves stuck deep in your territory will eventually realize it's no fun being an island lost in the ocean... and eventually join the ocean. You do have a choice. With no flips, there would be no choice - just wage war. Period.

Speaking of the flips in the later stages of a game (Industrial/Modern), again, it is very justified from the gameplay point of view. The flips simply make rolling through an enemy territory, not securing your newly acquired possessions, a bit more difficult. Even if they are not "historical" and "logical", flips force you to use a strategy, which is perfectly "historical" and "logical". After conquering a city, you need to station a garrison there strong enough to keep it. Even in the real world, you simply can't smash through the defenses, leaving the conquered land with no garrison. The local underground resistance on its own would succeed in cutting your supply lines, effectively halting your further advance.

In the game world, flips represent a way to balance the power of attacking and defending civs. As you conquer more and more of the enemy cities, you SHOULD need more and more garrison troops. You should NOT be able to overrun a whole empire with the same pack of units you started your conquest with.

You would probably agree that it is perfectly okay to lose a newly conquered city to a flip, if you leave it with no garrison at all, right? No garrison, no need to stay with the agressors, let's join our homeland back!

OK, we agree on that you need some sort of a garrison to prevent a city from flipping back. How many? One? Two? Three? Should probably be proportional to the number of citizens... but do you realize that what we are now talking about is the implementation of the concept, not the concept itself?

There is an exact formula expressing how many units you need to make sure the city NEVER flips back. That is what the game designers considered appropriate to counter the natural tendency of a city not to stay with the occupants. You may think their formula is not what you would use. But again, we are discussing a certain implementation, not the concept itself.

With no flipping, you could leave your recently conquered cities with no garrison and just roll your attacking forces forward (I know, I am simplifying a bit, but there would be MANY situations you could). THAT would be illogical and unrealistic, too. As soon as you admit this, then we are discussing only the actual implementation of the concept requiring you to station troops in the city to keep it, not the concept itself.

The reason why people keep telling you "instead of asking for a button to turn it off, learn how to use it" is that they consider the concept important and justified (from the gameplay point of view). Removing it from the game would mean seriously disbalancing it. You could as well create a special unit available to you only that would be 30/30/10. It would also make the game much easier to win.

I do not think the current implementation is the best we could have. Actually, there were lots of fine ideas how to improve the flip mechanics without throwing it out of the game completely. But I do see it is important to have it there, as omitting it would make the game too easy (and, however ironic this may sound, unrealistic).

[whosurdaddy]

Ok, someone in another thread (i start too many threads, sorry!) suggested i could turn the assymlation rates up to 100% if i wanted to drastically tone down the amount of culture flipping in the game.

Problem is, it doesnt seem to be working for me, although it should as far as i can tell. I set the assymlation rates to 90% for each government type, but even after 20 or 30 turns, enemy citizens in cities which i have conquered from the AI are still retaining their old nationality, and this is even after the resistance has ended. With these settings, shouldnt the enemy citizens in my recently conquered cities be assymlating into my culture in 1 or 2 turns at the most?

[Christantine The Great]

I like it, it means I have to bring along a respectable force instead of a barely adaquate one.

[DeepO]

vondrack, very nice post! I might have worded it differently, but nearly all is in there. I do think there were ample examples irl, but as that point doesn't matter to a (more or less realistic) game, it indeed boils down to one thing: give the builder the option of a balanced empire as well.

whosurdaddy:
As to the assimilation rate: I wouldn't know how that works exactly, but I'm pretty sure it also depends on how happy the foreign citizens are. I have never seen any foreign resistor change his nationality towards me, while cities in WLTKD can be totally assimilated in a few turns. Again you should try more, and adjust your play style instead of messing with options in the editor you can only guess what function they have. One of these days you're going to make your game so unbalancing that you don't like CivIII one bit anymore, and that would be a shame as the original is quite good.
DeepO