No soup for you!

[AHO]

I started a thread like this a couple days ago as a fact finding effort, but now I'm really starting to become annoyed with this problem and want to know if this is happening to anyone else. EVERY time I capture an enemy city ALL the improvements are gone. I know that some of them will be destroyed in the course of the battle, but not ALL of them and not EVERY time. What makes this so exasperating is that if you're on a major military campaign and systematically sweeping across the continent, city by city, when you capture a size 11 city (I'm in the 1100's, we don't have hospitals yet) even after you quell the resistors, the people are sooooo pissed off due to the lack of cathedrals, colosseums, or even a stinking temple, that you have to take nearly the whole population out of the fields and turn them into entertainers. As a result, there are so few workers that you can't get any production, and, what production you CAN muster is eaten up in corruption at a rate of 90% because you're so far from the capital, so you can't build anything to appease them. (76 turns to build a Temple?) The starvation causes the population to dwindle, which actually succeeds in quelling the resistance, but then you basically have to start from scratch in every captured city!

OK, enough of the rant. What I want to know is, has anyone captured an enemy city that had any improvements left in it?

[RichM]

There are things that you can do to alleviate some of these difficulties. They wanted to make the game so that outright military conquest wouldn't be the easiest way to win. Capturing large, intact cities is not very realistic. In RL cities captured in war are often completely destroyed. If you want to get a city up and running you have to quel resistance and spend money. One way to minimize resistance is to have some of your workers join the city to even things out a bit and minimize the chance for revolt.

[Timeline]

Nope.

I have captured cities with major wonders in them, but never any improvements - and I think this sucks big time.

Usually the city pop dies off well before I can get them happy and working again. Size 12 cities shrink down to size 1 in no time. I might as well just raze the thing :rollseyes: - I think this needs more tuning.

I can see not being able to get shields or commerce from a recently captured city, but not being able to get them to grow food for themselves and their children?? - it's ridiculous.

[RichM]

Stalingrad, Nanking, Berlin, many examples of cities needing complete rebuilding.

[Barchan]

I've actually captured a few cities in later-game wars that have had some cool things left in them, including harbors, factories, hospitals and aqueducts. Granted, all the cultural items are gone (which, IMO, makes little sense. Not everyone shares the Taliban's views toward other cultures. Besides, intentionally destroying places of worship is a crime under the Laws of Armed Conflict....) but the amount of other stuff left seems to depend on the intensity of the conflict, particularly the amount of bombardment the city is subjected to. If you pepper the city with round after round of artillery shells, then yup, it'll all be rubble. But if you use cruise missiles (which I've found particularly useful for eliminating (yes, killing dead!) Mechanized Infantry) the overall level of destruction is greatly reduced. Plus, if you're lucky enough to only encounter a single defender or an unoccupied city, you should have a greater chance of capturing infrastructure.

But you'll still have the no shield/no entertainment/no future problem for the citizens there. I guess you either have to build them out as workers, rush build things there to calm 'em down, or let 'em starve. I usually just let 'em starve.

I agree that it shouldn't be so easy to occupy a city and get it humming at full production the next day. But when even in the modern era turns are a year each, it just seems to take way too damn long to get the city even functioning on its own, let alone begining to approach its former glory.

[Peterk]

I've captured cities with lots of stuff still in them. It seems to depend on how heavily defended the city was to begin with and how much bombing and bombardment you had to do to get it. Pretty realistic.

[Arrian]

Basically, all culture/happiness improvements are automatically destroyed when you capture a city (including cultural assimiliation). All this really means is that you must slow the pace of your conquest - consolidating your conquests is going to be a bit more difficult than in CIV II. If you're still a despot, no problem, get out that whip! A city w/11 pop = nearly instant temple/cathedral. If not, it is very expensive. Thus, if you want to go on a rampage and wipe someone out, send in settlers behind your troops and, after razing the opponent's cities, rebuild your own. Otherwise, starve 'em. That will drop the population down to a more manageable size.

-Arrian

[AHO]

Thanks for the insight, guys. I'm glad to see that other people are annoyed with this too. I can respect the historical references of Berlin et al, but come on--in every city captured in the history of the world, not a single library or temple survived? But what the heck. I'm a game player. I'll learn to win within the constraints of the rules, no matter how unusual.

[TCO]

For reference, how does the destroying of things compare to Civ2? Here is a very good description of how the system works in Civ2. How is it different in Civ3?

CIV 2 CITY DESTRUCTION (credit to Slowthinker)

Some additions to section 5 (a new Attacking cities section?):

A city can be captured (OK, sacked ) if there is no enemy unit inside (including units with 0 defense). Any ground unit except a Dip/Spy and a Caravan/Freight or air units with range 0 (helicopters) can do it. The unit may capture from both ground and sea squares.

City improvements are divided into three groups:
Group A: Temple, Courthouse, Cathedral, Hydro Plant.
Group B: Barracks, Library, City Walls, Bank, University, Colosseum, Manufacturing Plant, Recycling Center, Stock Exchange, Supermarket, Research Lab, Coastal Fortress, Harbor, Airport, Port Facility.
Group C: Granary, MarketPlace, Aqueduct, Mass Transit, Factory, SDI Defense, Power Plant, Nuclear Plant, Sewer System, Superhighways, SAM Missile Battery, Solar Plant, Offshore Platform, Police Station.
(It looks that items in group A are choosed firmly and group B and C holds remaining improvement from even resp. odd lines of rules.txt)

Subverting a city preserves all improvements.
Inciting a revolt causes a disappearance of group A.
Capturing by force causes a disappearance of group A and just one of group B or C (there is a 50% chance for a group to be selected)

The following effect is equal for both bribing and taking by force:
After succesfull capture of a city, the civ that agressor gets a part of treasure of the civ that was sacked as a spoil and chooses one enemy's advance. The formula for amount of gold taken as a plunder is here

Edited: link
Edited: only air units with range 0 (helicopters) can capture a city.

[Pyrodrew]

Originally posted by AHO
Thanks for the insight, guys. I'm glad to see that other people are annoyed with this too. I can respect the historical references of Berlin et al, but come on--in every city captured in the history of the world, not a single library or temple survived? But what the heck. I'm a game player. I'll learn to win within the constraints of the rules, no matter how unusual.

Soren stated that any culture improvements (library & temple) are destroyed once a city is taken over. You don't want an enemy civilization spreading their culture through their temple (artwork, beliefs, etc.). For the library - you have to rewrite the history books to make history look favorable to you & thus spread your culture more. Historically, Soren said this was accurate as well.

And the AI isn't much for improvements so early on in the game many cities are empty. Also Soren might have programmed a few of the AIs to sell their improvements in cities heavily under attack. Who knows? If I knew I was going to lose a city that's what I would do.

Soren also said there is a 50% chance each non-culture building is destroyed. That seems high to me. Wonders (and culture wonders) in my opinion should NOT be destroyed from conquering a city.

[dexters]

Originally posted by AHO
I started a thread like this a couple days ago as a fact finding effort, but now I'm really starting to become annoyed with this problem and want to know if this is happening to anyone else. EVERY time I capture an enemy city ALL the improvements are gone.
OK, enough of the rant. What I want to know is, has anyone captured an enemy city that had any improvements left in it?

Well, it's a design decision. If you capture a city, all the cultural improvements are destroyed. 1st, this is a gameplay descison since everytime you capture a city, its culture starts with zero. If you capture things like temples and such, you'll have to sell it and buy your own. Firaxis wisely sidestepped this potential gameplay hassle by destroying these improvements for you so you start with a clean slate. Historically, it has been demonstrated that invading armies do indeed destroy cultural landmarks of the invaded so its not un-realistic.

I'm not clear on non cultural improvements, but i think half of them will get destroyed -- maybe more, especially if you bombard the cities before taking them. But on easier levels, the AI builds mostly cultural improvements, so if you take their cities, you won't see any improvements at all.

[Oerdin]

Originally posted by RichM
Capturing large, intact cities is not very realistic. In RL cities captured in war are often completely destroyed.

In RL captured cities are sometime destroyed but many times they are not; examples include the capture of Paris & Rome in WW2. Both captured largely intact. The fact that you can NEVER militarially capture an intact city in Civ3 just goes to show how poorly thought out and unfair the warfare system is.

It should be difficult but not impossible to conquer the world. Why doesn't Fraxis get this?

[RichM]

I think at that point Bismark went to Joan and said, I'll give you a peace treaty for a peace treaty and PARIS! Oh but I guess the culture improvements would still be destroyed in that case. Never mind.

[Deathray]

It is true that some cities have been taken intact, but for the most part they are destroyed or severly damaged in war. The cases where they are taken pretty much undamaged are usually due to there being no or little resistance. Paris in WWII was a good example of this as the French army put up almost no resistance whatsoever due to a variety of reasons, the main ones probably being political instability and their general lack of preparation for the German blitzkreig attacks.

Also, I am glad that cultural buildings are destroyed, as otherwise I would have to sell them each time I captured a city. Of course, most of the time I destroy cities, use the captured workers as slave labour and build in the gaps according to my city grid.

[dexters]

Originally posted by Oerdin


In RL captured cities are sometime destroyed but many times they are not; examples include the capture of Paris & Rome in WW2. Both captured largely intact. The fact that you can NEVER militarially capture an intact city in Civ3 just goes to show how poorly thought out and unfair the warfare system is.

It should be difficult but not impossible to conquer the world. Why doesn't Fraxis get this?

The argument is false. The examples you give is two cities in god knows how many cities that were decimated. The Americans levels most Japanese cities except for Kyoto, the cultural capital of the Japanese.

And if you think about it, capturing a city with a wonder does not destroy the wonder. The cities mentioned, Paris/Rome are important cities. You can liken them to having wonders. Could they have been destroyed? sure. In the case of Paris, as stated before, The French fell, so no fighting was needed. But I'm sure Hitler wanted to capture it in tack as well.

But in the course of human history, a disproportionate amount of cities have been leveled. Far more than the few that were captured in tact.

[CyberGnu]

Dexter, Japan is not a good example. No japanese cities were concquered, the nation capitulated without a single allied soldier on japanese soil.

The reason the cities were devastated were Allied bombing raids.

But even in the European theater several cities were taken intact. Vienna, Prague, etc... It just depends on if staying in the city would cut of the defenders from the main armies.

It's hard to simulate this in the city-based game that civ is, though... Since no one really cares about country side.

[CyberGnu]

What bugs me though is that if I take a size 10 city, about 8 of them will be unhappy (after quelling the resistors). After making two thirds of the city entertainers, they inevitably starve...

Now, what are they thinking here? 'oooh, those nasty Romans burned our temple, so we're gonna starve to death just to spite them'.

Instead, how about having a new specialist, 'Concquered worker' or something like that... That will harvest the normal amount of food, but only produce half or a fourth of the normal production/income.

Right after quelling the resistance, pretty much every single one (barring wonder effects) would be a concquered worker. When you build your first temple, you can convert two conquered workers to normal citiens, and so on.

[Navyman]

How about upping the luxuries? If I am not mistaken, that is another way of making people happy.

[AuraSeer]

Historically, it has been demonstrated that invading armies do indeed destroy cultural landmarks of the invaded so its not un-realistic.

When the Romans made a conquest, they allowed the people to keep their own religion and culture. They realized that this would keep the peons happy, and this is one reason why Rome was able to amass such a relatively large empire.

When my civ army occupies an enemy city, I don't want them to go around burning books and toppling statues; that'd be plain stupid. Instead, I want them to man the walls and run the airfields, but otherwise leave everything alone. I want the people to go about their lives as normal, except that their yearly income tax will be mailed to a different address. (Maybe there should have been a new tech advance that would represent this idea.)

As with many aspects of Civ3, this was an attempt to increase realism, but it turned out just to be stupid and annoying.

[Timeline]

Originally posted by AuraSeer
As with many aspects of Civ3, this was an attempt to increase realism, but it turned out just to be stupid and annoying.

Umm, I think it was more a game balance decision, to make conquest less profitable, not an attempt at realism.

[TechWins]

Sorry but I haven't read any other posts, except for the original post, because of lack of time. In fact the only reason why I came to this thread (I only periodically check up on the 'general' forum now) was because of the catchy title (gotta love Seinfeld).

The reason why I think the AI has so few improvements in their cites is because the AI does NOT pay attention to infastructure. Ok, Yes the AI will try to build an occasional wonder. For the most part, though, the AI is so fixated on building another settler to either plop down in the middles of your well developed empire or to place in tundra in a far away continent that infastructure can not be built. What does this mean, the AI is easy as hell. Yeah the AI may have 200+ cities but they are all at pop size 2-3 with the minimal amount of infastructure. In the game that I am playing (actually I won't finish it until the next patch because of the reasons I'm stating right now, which makes the game boring for ME*) the Germans in early AD had already had to start using names such as New Berlin, New Hamburg, New Cologne, etc... because they had already used all of the other names allocated for them. To stop detouring from the main topic, you won't find many AI cities (continue to read because I know you are thinking yeah right I won't find many AI cities) WITH a large scale of infastructure. Oh who am I kidding, you won't even find an AI city with even very little infastructure.


*Ok I think the game is pretty good, but the AI is way the hell too easy (yes not hard). The excessive expansion the AI performs just decreases it chances of winning because it fails to concentrate on infastructure to the least bit. Now don't get me wrong, AI expansion is great as long as it is benefiting their empire. Too many times (more like all the time) the AI sacrifes infastructure for expansion, which largely hurts its empire. Now for those of you who still can't understand my point of view I'll put it into simpler terms for you.

Beneficial AI expansion =
Unbeneficial AI expansion =
Beneficial AI infastructure building =
Unbeneficial AI infastructure building =
AI sacrifcing beneficial infastructure building for unbeneficial expansion =
AI sacrifing beneficial expansion for unbenefical infastructure building =
AI balancing beneficial expansion and beneficial infastructure building =

[Dis]

starve them down do nothing. that is what I do

[TCO]

Anybody want to discuss the specifics of lost improvements? Is it the same as Civ2?

[Dis]

no its not the same as civ2

I always seem to lose ALL improvements. but I usually war in ancient times to conquer my continent.

so its not like I'm using bombers to carpet bomb Dresden or something. These are gusy firing arrows and destroying temples with them (maybe they are fire arrows ). Although one could make the argument that the military commanders had the town's infrastructure burned to the ground once they realized their defeat. Again this is another freature Firaxis used to prevent human power civs from rolling over civ ai's and using their infrastructure (barracks, temples) against them.

[MarkG]

my tactics

- keep the city out of disorder even if it means starving it
- rush buy happiness city improvements(if it takes pop points even better!)
- add workers/settlers of your own nationality to the city

dont worry if it starves, usually the ai has improved the terrain pretty good and growth is quick

[Kc7mxo]

Wouldn't it be nice if the manual actually gave real information so we wouldn't have to take a poll to decide if it was possible to capture a city with its improvements intact?

[Dis]

face it, manuals are a thing of the past. Black and white being an example of this. I didn't learn anything from that worthless book.

[johnny faustus]

CyberGnu wrote:

"What bugs me though is that if I take a size 10 city, about 8 of them will be unhappy (after quelling the resistors). After making two thirds of the city entertainers, they inevitably starve... "

Conquering a large city doesn't mean it will have to starve... but they won't comply with your production orders either. A city in civil disorder that is producing enough food to feed itself won't starve, but it won't grow or produce.

The only way to keep a large city large and productive is to quickly connect it to your trade empire (for luxuries) and to stop the war with its mother country (even if you're not a republic/democracy). The city doesn't want pantomimes on every corner after all.

[mharmless]

To stop detouring from the main topic, you won't find many AI cities (continue to read because I know you are thinking yeah right I won't find many AI cities:lol WITH a large scale of infastructure. Oh who am I kidding, you won't even find an AI city with even very little infastructure.

In my current game, I am the Zulus. World is full of islands, standard size, eight civs. On my island are the babalonians, english, aztecs, americans, and one other civ.

Killed the americans right off, they declared on me. No improvments in ANY of the cities they owned.

Next up, English. they settled two cities just off the coast. I crushed them and took all nine of their cities. All coastal cities save one came with a harbor, most of the cities had an aquaduct (6 of 9), four came with a barracks, and london had a marketplace.

Next up, Aztecs. 10 cities total, 3 as little one city island colonies and 7 mainland cities. One of the three islands had a harbor, others were undeveloped. The mainland I captured barracks in six of the cities, four harbors, five aquaducts, four marketplaces, and one bank.

I haven't yet turned my attention on the Babalonians, but the one city of theirs that switched to me on account of culture came with a marketplace and a barracks.

Finaly, I am positive that I seized several factories from the Germans a long time ago. The world came down to one egyptian city, with the remainder beind divided pretty much 50/50 between Germany and I. The world was one asia sized continent with a tiny two city island on the other side of the world, no land at all in southern hemisphere. Germans declared war in the modern era, and I crushed them badly. Seized eight cities and won by domination, and at least half of those came with factories and tons of other improvments.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
Wouldn't it be nice if the manual actually gave real information so we wouldn't have to take a poll to decide if it was possible to capture a city with its improvements intact?

The strat weeny guys on this board have done a very good job of testing and figuring out the details of Civ mechanics...