First, I’d like to give a big thanks to forum member Mike B. FIRAXIS. Much of the credit for the information in this article goes to him.
Now on with the show:
Is there anybody you hate more in Civ3 than those pesky little citizens who dare to resist your all-mighty rule? (Well, maybe that trade advisor who’d want more resources and luxuries if she were swimming in an ocean of them, but anyway…) Resistors refuse to work the land, meaning no food, shields, or commerce come out of them (although they also don’t require any food). However, since most captured cities lose all their production and commerce to corruption and waste anyway (except for one of each), the main drawback to a city being in resistance is that you can’t rush anything. This can push your plans of getting that temple or defensive unit ASAP back several turns, sometimes upwards of 10.
HOW RESISTANCE WORKS
Upon capturing a city, each citizen has a certain chance of becoming a resistor, depending on the culture comparison of its civilization and yours, and the comparison of its government and yours. The chance for each citizen becoming a resistor is as follows:
When they are “disdainful of” your culture: 90% chance
“dismissive of”: 80% chance
“unimpressed by”: 70%
“impressed with”: 60%
“admirers of”: 50%
“in awe of”: 40%
A civilization is “disdainful of” your civ’s culture if they have three or more times as much culture as you, OR if you don’t have any culture at all (even if they don’t either). “Dismissive of” means they have twice as much culture as you, and “unimpressed by” means that the ratio is 3:4 in favor of them. “Impressed with” means that you two have the same amount of culture (unless you both have 0, in which they’re disdainful of you), they are “admirers of” your culture if you have twice as much as them, and they are “in awe of” your culture if you have three times as much culture as them. You can find out how the civ feels about you culture-wise by going to the culture advisor or the foreign advisor.
The percentages listed above are increased, decreased, or stay the same depending on the comparison between your gov and their gov:
Democracy
Communism
Republic
Monarchy
Despotism
Anarchy
If you both have the same government, the % chance of each citizen becoming a resistor stays the same. If your gov is higher up on the above list than theirs, it goes down by 5%. If your gov is lower on the list than theirs, it goes up by 5%. With two exceptions:
republic civ captures city of civ under monarchy: +5%
democratic civ captures city of communist civ: +5%
All of this (the culture and the governments) can be viewed and edited in the Editor.
The chance of a certain resistor continuing its resist that turn is determined once again by the culture and government comparison, as explained above. However, the percentages for continuing resistance based on culture are lowered by 10%. For example, if they are disdainful of you, a resistor has an 80% base chance of continuing its resist the next turn. Governmental effects are added/subtracted in the same way as with initial resistance.
The maximum number of resistors that can be quelled on a certain turn is determined by the number of military units in the city times the difficulty level’s number of citizens quelled by military. The standard for that is 1 on all difficulty levels, so in other words (if you’re not playing a game that’s had this modded) the maximum number of resistors that can be quelled on one turn is the number of units stationed in that city. You can view and modify this in the Editor under the “difficulty levels” tab (to the right-hand side you’ll see “ num. citizens quelled by military”). For example, if you change Chieftain’s setting to 2, the maximum number of resistors that can be quelled a turn is 2 per unit.
The sentence above that’s in bold is important. Assuming you’re playing an un-modded game, if you want to quell resistance as fast as possible in a city of, say, 12 resistors, there is absolutely no point in having more than 12 units stationed in the city (except for keeping the chance of a culture flip to a minimum* and for defensive purposes).
Note that unit strength does not matter. A powerful tank is no better at convincing someone to stop their resistance than a guy armed with a pointy stick. That is, except for one thing: Air units, water units, artillery units, settlers, workers, and other non-ground and/or non-combat units cannot quell resistors, just as they cannot make unhappy citizens content. Also, happiness does not matter; units in a city in civil disorder can quell resistors just as well as in the world capital of happiness. (But you probably shouldn’t have a freshly captured city in civil disorder, as it increases the chance of a culture flip.) And anything else you can think of: distance to capital, culture of the city captured, etc., doesn’t matter either.
Two last notes on resistors: They are the first in line to die from starvation and disease, so if you can’t quell ‘em, starve ‘em! That is, assuming you don’t care about losing potential future productive citizens. Also, the number of resistors in a city affects how likely it is to culture flip (see this thread on culture flipping).
CHARTS
As if it weren’t easy enough to do it in your head, here are a couple of charts displaying resistance chances:
KEY (for the order of the numbers):
conqueree is "in awe of" conquerer's culture/"admirers of"
"impressed with"/"unimpressed by"
"dismissive of"/"disdainful of"Initial Resistance (% chance of each citizen becoming resistor upon capturing the city)
Gov. of conquerer > Anarchy|Despot.|Monarch.|Repub.|Commun.|Democ.
Gov. of conqueree \/
Anarchy 40/50 35/45 35/45 35/45 35/45 35/45
60/70 55/65 55/65 55/65 55/65 55/65
80/90 75/85 75/85 75/85 75/85 75/85
Despotism 45/55 40/50 35/45 35/45 35/45 35/45
65/75 60/70 55/65 55/65 55/65 55/65
85/95 80/90 75/85 75/85 75/85 75/85
Monarchy 45/55 45/55 40/50 45/55 35/45 35/45
65/75 65/75 60/70 65/75 55/65 55/65
85/95 85/95 80/90 85/95 75/85 75/85
Republic 45/55 45/55 45/55 40/50 35/45 35/45
65/75 65/75 65/75 60/70 55/65 55/65
85/95 85/95 85/95 80/90 75/85 75/85
Communism 45/55 45/55 45/55 45/55 40/50 45/55
65/75 65/75 65/75 65/75 60/70 65/75
85/95 85/95 85/95 85/95 80/90 85/95
Democracy 45/55 45/55 45/55 45/55 45/55 40/50
65/75 65/75 65/75 65/75 65/75 60/70
85/95 85/95 85/95 85/95 85/95 80/90Continued Resistance (% chance of each resistor continuing it’s resist on a given turn)
Gov. of conquerer > Anarchy|Despot.|Monarch.|Repub.|Commun.|Democ.
Gov. of conqueree \/
Anarchy 30/40 25/35 25/35 25/35 25/35 25/35
50/60 45/55 45/55 45/55 45/55 45/55
70/80 65/75 65/75 65/75 65/75 65/75
Despotism 35/45 30/40 25/35 25/35 25/35 25/35
55/65 50/60 45/55 45/55 45/55 45/55
75/85 70/80 65/75 65/75 65/75 65/75
Monarchy 35/45 35/45 30/40 35/45 25/35 25/35
55/65 55/65 50/60 55/65 45/55 45/55
75/85 75/85 70/80 75/85 65/75 65/75
Republic 35/45 35/45 35/45 30/40 25/35 25/35
55/65 55/65 55/65 50/60 45/55 45/55
75/85 75/85 75/85 70/80 65/75 65/75
Communism 35/45 35/45 35/45 35/45 30/40 35/45
55/65 55/65 55/65 55/65 50/60 55/65
75/85 75/85 75/85 75/85 70/80 75/85
Democracy 35/45 35/45 35/45 35/45 35/45 30/40
55/65 55/65 55/65 55/65 55/65 50/60
75/85 75/85 75/85 75/85 75/85 70/80Remember that the most resistors that can be quelled a turn is the number of ground combat units stationed in the city, so if each resistor has a 50% chance of continuing to resist, and there are six resistors, you might expect three to be quelled that turn, but if there are only two ground combat units in the city, only two could be quelled.
HOW I GOT THIS INFORMATION
At first, when I found out that no one at CFC seemed to know how exactly resistance works, I decided to do some testing (see this thread). In case anyone’s interested, here are the results for the testing that I already had completed:
https://www.civfanatics.net/uploads4/resistancetest.zip
As you can see, I still had quite a lot of work to do. Then I decided to PM forum member Mike B. FIRAXIS, and he gave me just the info I was looking for: the exact details of how resistance works. 🙂
*Thanks to MadHatter for pointing this out.