No penalties for losing capital?

[LRotan]

Okay, so it's minor on the list of things that need\should be tweaked\added. There seems to be no penalty associated with losing your capital other than just losing a city. In Civ2, your empire usually split in half when you lost your capital. I think there should definitely be a penalty for losing it or, if there already is one that I'm just not seeing, a bigger penalty.

An example:

Lose the capital and you suffer morale\shield penalties in all cities which will diminish slowly over time or until you recapture the capital. To make it fair, I don't think you should be able to raze a true capital city and the penalty is not cumulative. By true capital, I mean their actual capital city at the time you attack, not whatever city it switches to after you've taken the capital. The only problem is figuring out a way to distinguish between the two.

There's also a thread around about civil war and revolting cities. The problem that was brought up is the civ cap that would create problems if civs starting popping up everywhere. This could also be a penalty for losing the capital, ala Civ2. You can get around the civ cap by not actually making them a new civ. You could have the cities disband and turn them into barbarian units of equal tech to the civ that the city belonged to. Or you could have the cities themselves become barbarians and do nothing but crank out raiders. This would add a new civ, I think, but one new civ shouldn't pose a problem as all similarly revolting cities in all civs thereafter become barbarians. Or lastly, you could go the easy route and just divide the cities that revolt between the rest of the civs. Give one to each, starting with the civ with the most culture and working down, until they've all been divided up. To keep them from being assimilated, have them default with a temple or library or something.

Anyway, just a possibility on a penalty. Anyone else with any other ideas?

LR

[Surgeon]

There should be a penalty but Fraxis wont do it.

[Grumbold]

The trouble is that there has been no consistent behaviour historically to model the event on. To some nations it is a catastrophe that presages collapse, to others it is ignored or a rallying cry that leads to redoubled resistance.

The Civ 2 blitz the capital manoeuvre was far more beneficial to the player than the AI. With the new AI rules it could upset too many players if their enemies invaded en-masse, went straight to the capital and caused total collapse (particularly on Chieftain-Regent). More play fun for everyone if they steal a couple of good cities but leave you a chance to fight back. Ditto when you attack them.

[LRotan]

Very good points, Grumbold. Perhaps the aforementioned idea was a tad excessive. I still believe that at least some penalty should be involved. Then tweak the AI a tad so they know it and defend their capital a bit better and put higher priorities on enemy capitals.

LR

[Grumbold]

I would hope that the penalty comes in less efficient capital placement for reduction of corruption, maintenance of trade links etc. I'll try and remember to look closely if I ever let the AI sack my capital

[SuiteSisterMary]

I agree there should be a penalty, and it should be the most obvious one of all: you lose your palace. And have to rebuild it somewhere else. Yourself. Which means you deal with the horrible corruption of having EACH and EVERY city assessed as being, say, 75% of the maxiumum distance penalty.

As soon as you relocate your gov't (by building a new palace) your problems go away.

This ALSO has the side effect of making the forbidden palace a more useful small wonder; it gives you some breathing room while you rebuild your palace somewhere.

[TheDarkside]

i dont think there should be morale penalties for the reason above, which is historically there is no consistent reaction to nations losing their capitol.

But a good penalty might be that the palace is not automatically rebuilt, the civ must rebuild his palace and until then, corruption and waste will be a problem (to simulate the disorganization of administration and power).

EDIT: whoops didnt notice that SuiteSister beat me to it

[dr.charm]

You *don't* lose your palace? I assumed that you did. Well that sucks, of course you should lose it and have to rebuild it.

Cheers,

Dr. Charm

[RayD]

Keep in mind that when you lose a capital you already lose something...culture! All those culture points for your palace, your first temple, etc... down the tubes.

At least that's what I remember from reading the manual...

- RayD

[LRotan]

Hmm. Actually, I like the idea of losing the palace a lot better. Good thinking! It would take a lot less tweaking as well. As for the culture loss, that's true. You do lose some culture, but it's not a real hefty penalty considering once you get four or five decent sized cities, they'll be producing fairly good culture of their own.

LR