City Capture Options

[DonJoel]

Oh, I wasn´t aware that this topic is hot enough for a flame war. However, feel free to go on, since your opinion is obviously always right...

Yeah, i got a bit excited. But i hate this realism is always best thing.

[Harlan]

On one hand this feature is neat, on the other hand I don't like it. Its nice to have another option on conquering a city, but completely destroying a city seems to go too far.

What would be much better would be to have the raze option destroy a random bunch of buildings, and kill a good amount of population as your army runs amok, but leave the city still standing as a burned wreck of its former self, instead of completely destroying it. You'd get a good chunk of gold for all the buildings you destroyed. Plus now you can create culture buildings that were already built and would have yielded you no culture points, and you're able to have your citizens grow faster from the smaller city.

Having a large city get completely destroyed is completely unrealistic IMHO. It just never happened in history, unless the city was razed multiple times or small to begin with. The reason is that some of the city had always fled to the countryside, and when things settled down a few weeks or months later, they'd drift back to the city and it would go on. Take the destruction of Carthage. Completely "destroyed" for a moment, but it never disappeared from the map, and grew again to be a large city under Roman control, with the same name.

The Mongols were other great city destroyers, often killing 50% of more of a city's population, but they also almost never completely destroyed them. Balkh is the only large city I can think of that they completely destroyed, and that took several razings after they rebelled. The others always bounced back, even when every single man, woman and child was killed, again because of the fleeing to the countryside factor.

Realism is one thing, I also think less than complete destruction of a city is better gameplay and more fun. Lets say you're a looting barbarian civ like the Vikings. You don't want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Instead the strategy is to weaken towns, have fun looting them, then let them bounce back so after some time you can go in and do it all over again (once weakened, they're less able to successfully defend themselves the next time, so you can come back and "harvest" the city from time to time). If razing is less than total destruction, than this could be a viable game strategy.

Also, I think challenges make a good game. Completely destroying a city completely removes the challenge of having to deal with a hostile population at all. Just as completely overrunning a weak enemy may be fun at first but quickly becomes boring, so is conquest without any management consequences (assuming you're willing to completely ruin your reputation).

Conclusion: razing is a great idea, but please tone it down from complete destruction! This way, if you want to completely destroy a city you can still do it - just leave it undefended and raze it several times.

[DonJoel]

I think that this feature was implemented so you could destroy small badly place computer cities and that sometimes annyoning advanced tribe cities from civ2.
Killing big cities with wonders in 1 turn doesnt seem reasoneable and will opt for som really cheesy tactics...

[dainbramaged13]

Originally posted by PGM

We've been told that Great Wonders can't be destroyed. What if you raze a city that has one of these???

cmon now! THIS IS A STUPID QUESTION! im sorry but hello! of course the wonder will be gone! what else would it DO! I hate it when peopel ask these types of questions...

[PGM]

Originally posted by dainbramaged13
cmon now! THIS IS A STUPID QUESTION! im sorry but hello! of course the wonder will be gone! what else would it DO! I hate it when peopel ask these types of questions...

Lose the attitude kid. If they announced Great Wonders as non-destructible, and introduced us to the city-razing concept a couple of days ago, I think some questions are in order. They will at least have to admit that the concept of Great Wonders as being indestructible is wrong, restrict the use of the razing option, or whatever. Either way, I believe that overlooking game items is not the way to go. At least not for those of us who never played the game, because Mr. dainbramaged13 has already obviously had the pleasure to do so. I love it when enlightened people share their knowledge on these types of questions with a mere peasant... (*humbly takes a bow*)

[isaac brock]

I think that you just can't raze the city with a major wonder. You can't burn the pyramids.

[Inverse Icarus]

exactly DonJoel.

a modern day bomber can fly from Nevada (central US) to the middle east and back, but in civ game turns that would suck.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by dainbramaged13


cmon now! THIS IS A STUPID QUESTION! im sorry but hello! of course the wonder will be gone! what else would it DO! I hate it when peopel ask these types of questions...

they would drag it over to the nearest city you silly goose.

[mactbone]

"C'mon you lazy slaves! We have to get the Satue of Liberty from New York to Washington D.C.!"

Hehehe, what a great image! You get a little screen showing your population all using a reeeeaaaallllyyyy long rope from D.C. to the Statue and hauling it in like a fish.

[Inverse Icarus]

Well New Jersey stole Ellis Island and had it's eyes on the Statue of Liberty...

[mactbone]

It's so obvious!!! You get David Copperfield to do it for you!!!

[introvert]

Originally posted by UberKruX


they would drag it over to the nearest city you silly goose.

No. It would be destroyed, just as happens in Civ or CivII when a city with a wonder is destroyed. The wonder goes with it.

Indestructible wonders probably means they can't be sold (as in Civ & CivII) and can't be destroyed by attacks of any sort. Or such is my guess.

[orange]

Destroying a big city should be considered genocide by post-Industrial civs.

[isaac brock]

Originally posted by orange
Destroying a big city should be considered genocide by post-Industrial civs.

Destroying a big city should be considered cool by everyone at apolyton.

[manofthehour]

here the problem with unlimited razing. Someone could just hit one city with everything they have. For example in one turn 20 offensive unites attack one city. So they take the city and then burn it to the ground. Imagen that as a sneak attack. Your at peace and than one turn later you are missing a size 20 city. An attack that you could never recover from.

That is why there needs to be a cap around 12. And the larger the city the more punishment every dishes out.

One more point. If they destory a city of yours and than 2 get revenge you destory one of theres you should be punished less.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by isaac brock


Destroying a big city should be considered cool by everyone at apolyton.

hahaha. "Didja see me Raze Yin's capital?"

[isaac brock]

thats my boy

[Blake]

Originally posted by manofthehour
One more point. If they destory a city of yours and than 2 get revenge you destory one of theres you should be punished less.

Nah, then the avenging faction would be no better than the original offender. Altough prehaps as more cities are razed on a global basis the penalty gets reduced for everyone, basically as people get used to the concept of cities being trashed they get resigned to it, and no longer put up such a fuss.

What I think is there should be a pillage city option, the invading army enters the city, pillages it (destroying a couple of pop points, some infrastructure, and gets cash $$$ value of what they destroyed), then that city becomes unusable for a number of turns (say for 10 or 20 turns it suffers 0 pop growth, and produces no production).
This city can be pillaged again, but with the following penalties:
Only once per turn.
No loot cash (everything which wasn't bolted down was stolen the first time round)
One fifth of the population tries to escape, each military unit in the base can prevent 1 unit of population escaping.
Partisans are generated in surronding tiles, the number depending on city population and garrison levels.

For example:
A size 21 city garrisoned by 3 enemy military units is pillaged.
3 population points are controlled by the garrisons
Of the remaining 18, 4 escape.
These 4 create 2 partisans outside the base and 3 population points which are randomly allocated to other bases in the beseiged nation.
17 population remains, of which 3 are executed, leaving a size 14 city.

Overall: 3 population points are killed, 1 is converted to two partisans, and 3 escape to other cities.

[Alfonsus72]

Originally posted by Daoloth
We do not know yet whether they can be destroyed in modern age. And yes, modern cities have been destroyed: Stalingrad, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, that small city the Nazis destroyed, etc. But those have really been rebuilt.

Yep, I guess you would have the option to rebuild the city with settlers or workers, if you are able to retake the terrain, and maybe you could get some population bonus at rebuilding if ruins are still on the map (they disapear with time, don´t they?).

Probably to destroy enemy cities has some very very big negative effect in the other civ´s attitude to you.

[Harlan]

"modern cities have been destroyed: Stalingrad, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, that small city the Nazis destroyed, etc. But those have really been rebuilt"

That's not even true. All those cities continued to exist, and at no time had 0 population (not to deny the horror of the Japanese victims, but the bombs dropped on those Japanese cities were small potatoes compared to the bombs today). Perhaps the only city in modern times to really go down to 0 population is Phnom Penh in Cambodia, under the Khmer Rouge. Yet even there most of the infrastructure remained, so it bounced back quickly after the insane Khmer Rouge lost power.

Blake,
We're thinking on similar lines, but I think my solution is simpler: on conquering a city you can pillage it, which means its pop goes down by 4 to 6, it loses most of its buildings, and you get a big amount of gold (more gold the more valuable buildings destroyed). If the city is only size 4 or so, it probably disappears, otherwise it takes more pillagings to destroy the city.

[wotan321]

I can see the gameplay value of razing a city during an invasion because its a pain to have to defend a city, build walls, etc just to avoid a quick recapture from my enemies who would then gain a technology from me. If I get a technological advantage, I can often use it to produce superior offensive units and go out and unleash some whoopa$$ on my annoying neighbors. But that newly conquered city is wide open for spys and recapture. Better to take it off the map immediately instead of having to starve it down to a one population city.

...then again, with all the anti-ICS built into the game, I would bet bartering or keeping a conquered city would be much more valuable than eliminating it. But I am glad the feature will be there.

[dainbramaged13]

Originally posted by PGM


Lose the attitude kid. If they announced Great Wonders as non-destructible, and introduced us to the city-razing concept a couple of days ago, I think some questions are in order. They will at least have to admit that the concept of Great Wonders as being indestructible is wrong, restrict the use of the razing option, or whatever. Either way, I believe that overlooking game items is not the way to go. At least not for those of us who never played the game, because Mr. dainbramaged13 has already obviously had the pleasure to do so. I love it when enlightened people share their knowledge on these types of questions with a mere peasant... (*humbly takes a bow*)

sorry it just seemed really obvious to me.. i was a little harsh though. sorry

[PGM]

Originally posted by dainbramaged13
sorry it just seemed really obvious to me.. i was a little harsh though. sorry

No problem. I've been surprised a few times recently about stuff that seemed obvious to me. I too think that Wonder-destruction resulting of razing is the most probable way, but you never know. I would also raise suspicions about the option to raze big cities (8/12+).

[ajbera]

How about this: razing a city of size 3 or less destroys it utterly. Razing a city size 4 and up operates similarly to a nuke strike in Civ2 - half the population is killed, all improvements (and wonders) destroyed. If necessary, a city can be razed multiple times to eliminate it. Depending on the era of the game, government, and diplomatic standings, razing causes the esteem other civs hold for you to drop, and successive razings cause successive dipolomatic penalties/esteem loss. Total obliteration of a city produces very harsh reactions.

Razing also causes emigration (nearby cities may gain a refugee pop point) and/or partisans.

Obviously this isn't perfect, but it is a system that reaches a midpoint between playability and realism.