I am never sure what to do when I take over a city, but at least in Deity it seems that capturing a city almost always results in a culture flip, but I hate razing cities with great wonders. What do you normally do?

Depends. There was a thread somewhere about a day ago though... :hmm:

...but I hate razing cities with great wonders. What do you normally do?If you capture a city that has something you really want (a wonder), there is a tactical solution to the problem. Put most of your troops outside the city, let it flip, and simply re-take it. This actually has a hidden advantage...the population takes a hit, and you have fewer foreign citizens to starve out of existence...

A tactic which has worked for me is to cut off all connection to the original motherland, that means roads and harbors. This works best in cities that are not in the AI core, though, so the likelihood of finding a wonder is diminished.

i usually get around this problem by not garrisoning captured cities until ive captures any other cities that share a culture zone. they dont really need a garrison if you are at war with that nation anyway since the whole goal of attacking someone is to remove him from the game. this is a general rule of thumb for me. naturally there are exceptions.

stop work on all the tiles in the city to starve it down to pop of 1. then leave it to build up with citizens of your empire - this should reduce the chances of flipping. keep troops outside for a while just in case as well and make sure you build some culture improvements as well! I use these v.often and it seems to work. BUT - you can usually do without a lot of the wonders and if you are fighting a superior civ, it may be worth your while raising it anyway - otherwise you are using up troops to defend the city which could be used elsewhere. if you raise there is no option to recapture the city and so if they have to rebuild from scratch - you will have cut their production ability and deprived them of a wonder that could have give them an advantage in the future!

It depends on the situation and the size of my enemies army.If the city has a wonder that's useless yet has a tactical advantage,yet I know I can't hold it,what do I do?

I burn it down.

If the city has a tactical advantage and a usefull wonder,yet I know I can't hold it.What do I do?

I burn it down.

My #1 strategy when it come to capturing cities,something I learned from a quote from Frederick the Great:

"Never capture anything you can't hold."

When I know I can't hold anything of the enemy but is usefull,I'll burn it down so they won't use it against me.If I can't have it nobody can.

In a perfect situation, I garrison the town with enough troops to end the resistance in a turn or two, then rush out workers/settlers until the pop is down to 1. Then it gets sticky. In the original version of CivIII, if you built those workers back into the town, they'd be your nationality. I don't know if that works on later versions or not (just bought C3Complete, haven't gotten that far in a game yet, I'll let you know.)

Another good tactic, if you have the transport capacity, is to bring along a buttload of workers when you take the town and build them in immediately. If neither of these options are available to me (for lack of time or transport capacity or whatever), I put a match to it. If I can't have the Pyramids, no one can.

If I can't have it nobody can.

I like the way you think, thats usually the way I play, but I cannot resist keeping a wonder, but I usually like to take the capital, first or last, if I grab it first, I will garrisson my SOD in there, so it wont get recaptured. Or if I grab it last, they are already too dead to even try to take it back.

TeeAhr1 in Conquests they are still the nationality of wherever they came from. Ie: an Aztec city where you build a settler or a worker will be an Aztec settler or worker -- unless you have your own nationality in there and then they will pop out as your own (but of course you 'loose' that point of population)

I only raze cities if they are in the way of one of my cities being more productive by using all the tiles around it. Otherwise I usually keep them, especially if they can be useful to me later on. Although some of the otr replies up thread are good strategies because you don't want to loose troops because of an annoying culture flip.

I like smashing ****, so I'll go with option #2.

I like to build lots of workers in the city 'till it's down to one, then I usually abandon it. The workers only work at half the speed though, and 'cause riots if you join 'em, so I put all the ones I can't use into a city, then I force-produce military units really fast. Any lost pop points are made up for by joining one of the slave workers. Kind of like a concentration camp, I suppose... But it's only electronic genocide.

on anything else than Sid late game, capture

When I know I can't hold anything of the enemy but is usefull,I'll burn it down so they won't use it against me.If I can't have it nobody can.

That makes perfect sense. Trouble is, I start thinking, if I lose it, I'll get it back again later. I should learn though that I never really do. But it probably is better to raze, especially if it is an AI city that has been built in an area which will give limited usefulness to the empire (and just hope a strategic resource doesn't pop up there later). Why waste the time, effort and effects of corruption on a city that doesn't deserve it.

I normally Raze enemy cities when 1) I don't want to deal with all the corruption and waste that the city would make, and would not help out in the long run, 2) I can't hold the city, 3) I'm in a bad mood and/or the enemy civ made me mad.

Doesn't razing cities affect your reputation? or is it attitude?

I typically capture, that way I don't have to waste production on settlers to replace that city. But I don't know a whole lot and am still learning.

Doesn't razing cities affect your reputation? or is it attitude?
Attitude .

Depends on the tactical situation, as others have said.

But let me introduce a new tactic to deal with the same challenge: if I can't hold a city in enemy territory, sometimes I'll give it a weaker civ not at war with my main enemy.

Example: I'm playing the Age of Conquest scenario. I'm England. I took Brest from the French. No way I could hold it, so I gave it to the Incas.

Eventually it'll flip back to France, but in the meantime the French now have a new interloper to deal with, sending out scouts, making a nusinance of themselves.

And if they're not already at war, the French won't immediately start a war with the Incas to regain their city. For some reason, they respect Incan ownership over Brest.

Plus, all my units in Brest got a free ride back to London!

It's good if you're behind in techs. You will get some of them for a city.

If you capture a city that has something you really want (a wonder), there is a tactical solution to the problem. Put most of your troops outside the city, let it flip, and simply re-take it. This actually has a hidden advantage...the population takes a hit, and you have fewer foreign citizens to starve out of existence...

Except when the flip happens after signing peace again...

Always raze cities belongin to culture beasts, otherwise capture.

I almost always capture cities unless I expect them to be useless or nearly useless. I like an expansive empire. :D

You're forgetting just bombing the stuffing out of said city with artillery, bombers, whatever works for you. Pretty soon you have a one pop city.

I do both. depends on the location.

depends
normally I capture, but on my current game I razed a few early in the war due to the civ I was fighting having a decent number of attack units and I had few spare garison units to move into cities after capturing and I needed to keep my military mobile, but once I took out most of their offense I went back to capturing

I only raze in time of knights. Before I have enough culture, after I bomb and there's only 1 resister. And even then I rarely raze.

Border cities which are one tile away from my city get razed, except if they have wonders. Cities which have access to a luxury or a resource get captured, no matter what. Cities with Wonders get captured, except if the wonder is obsolete. Capital Cities are always captured, because I get a kick out of having Kyoto, Washington, Delhi, Zimbabwe, Babylon, Paris, London and such all in my civ.

If the city is worth something, I'll keep it. If its not, I'll set it alight and run with the gold. It can depend on who I am playing with, like the Mongols for example. I always conduct lightning raids in the aim of wasting cities and taking the loot with me. A malicous streak comes out of nowhere playing as the Golden Hordes :aargh:

Rep or Attitude Hits?
Does it help reduce/eliminate the attitude hit if you accept the new city you've taken, then abandon it instead of razing it? If that is so, then do you need to wait a while or can you do it immediately?

I've been holding cities taken in my current game to use as advance bases for further attack and one turn unit healing (have Sun Tsu's AoW). Abandoning the ones in the rear that don't fit my ring city structure and rebuilding as I go along.

Does it help reduce/eliminate the attitude hit if you accept the new city you've taken, then abandon it instead of razing it? If that is so, then do you need to wait a while or can you do it immediately?
If you abandon it immediately, you will get the attitude hit. The majority of citizens must be native in order not to get the attitude hit.

If you don't want to ruin rep., capture and abandon

A. Capture + Abandon hurts attitude.
B. Razing hurts attitude.
C. Razing does NOT hurt reputation.

It's good if you're behind in techs. You will get some of them for a city.
afaik, any deal which involves, among anything else, one city on one side and something else on the other, will be refused by the AI (in C3C).

for example, if you ask:
Peace + whatever + City
for
Peace + whatever or Peace + City
they will refuse, i think.

what would work would be:
Peace + whatever + City
for
Peace
when they are really desperate for Peace ^^

EDIT: aw, didn't see that i answered to such an old post =D anyway, it can be useful so i'll leave it.

still, i have a question: what is the difference between attitude and reputation exactly ? what influence both (apart from razing) ? and how much do breaking treaties etc influence your rep (is it a scale or a whole, and if it's a scale, how much is each kind of break worth) ?

Attitude = What other civs think of you. (Furious, Annoyed, Cautious, Polite, Gracious)

Reputation = The willingness of other civs to engage in per-turn deals with you

still, i have a question: what is the difference between attitude and reputation exactly ? what influence both (apart from razing) ? and how much do breaking treaties etc influence your rep (is it a scale or a whole, and if it's a scale, how much is each kind of break worth) ?
Here's what influences attitude: AI attitude (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=44999)

Basically if any deal where your partner is receiving something per-turn (there are exceptions) is broken and it's not your partner's fault, it harms your rep. Breaking a deal wholly ruins rep, although some broken deals only harm some deal-making possibilities (for example, I don't believe breaking a MA will prevent you from signing ROPs).

If it has a low population seize it.If it has a medium like 6,7,8 raze because theyare not worth taking over take large city with few because if they do flip nothing much will damage your empire

I tend to decide on capturing or razing based on how far the city is from the rest of my empire. Then I send the captured population (workers) back to safety with an escort. Although I have to be careful about integrating foreign nationals into my cities, especially when I'm still at war with their mother nation, if I spread them out evenly enough it will help me lever a little bit more production and I'll be less likely to go over the optimal number of cities.

Other decent uses for those captured workers if you don't need them back home..... build an airfield on the enemy continent so your helicopters can rebase to them with foot soldiers on board. These won't necessarily be as powerful as your armoured units, but can be good in a pinch until you can get another transport laden with reinforcements over there. The airfield can also help you put air units closer to potential targets. Airfields also have no maintenance cost except for those units you use to garrison it. You can also use captured workers to build outposts and radar towers.

Some people are saying that you should not garrison captured flip-potential cities. How do you protect them? Do you only apply that when said city is quite a bit behind the front line?

Capture! Even if the city I take is obviously at a high risk of flipping, I'll still take it, because I might be able to rush a Barracks or Airport or something else useful to a military operation. If it flips, I retake and then RAZE IT. I'd have lost a few units, but it rarely flips on me and it's usually worth the risk to rush an airport in the middle of AI territory! Of course, if the AI put the city in a crappy location and I think I could position it on another tile nearby, I'll capture it, use it for a Settler, abandon it, and settle on the better tile to get a better radius, even if it's just 1 or 2 over.

When Nationalism comes, I usually can afford having 20-30 drafted rifles, for figting resistance in cities and preventing flips. So, I try to hold them if location suites my city building plan.

afaik, any deal which involves, among anything else, one city on one side and something else on the other, will be refused by the AI (in C3C).

Yeah I meant Vanilla and even there it's not possible with the last patch. But in the 1.07 you could sell your cities for techs & gold without war.

I had kicked the Americans off my continent (Persia) and they had only one city on an island about 20-25 tiles off the coast.

While I was off fighting the Iroquois, Washington (30 tiles from their only city and inland) flipped back to them! So I redeclared war and retook Washington, burning it to the ground. New Washington went up that turn 1 spot away on the coast.

That was something I've never seen before. I guess those Americans didn't like being in so much war!