I have seen alot of people thinking the best way to capture a city is to occupy it, thinking it the most humain way and thus the best. however, lets look at pros and cons. (ill excluse enslave from this.)

reasons for extermination
-tons of loot cash, plus i usualy find myself with a much bigger surplus from an exterminated city.
-Citizens are much happier, barely any garrison is needed.

reasons for occupy
-you get more people. WTF? All that means is you get more buildings. No, you get the oppurtunity to build buildings. But ocuppying criples your econimy.No building money availble, the population has no use. so in theory this population is good, in practise, no.
-Unhappy citizens. Because we all love a challenge.

IN a game as armenia, I have around 40 territories, from greece to egypt. I exterminated all the populated cities i captured, which fuels my econimy like crazy, im finding myself with over 20000 dinarii from some settlements by extermination. I have a very wide definition of populated settlement. I devise this table.

-under 1000 dinarii: occupy
-between 1000 and 2000: enslave
-over 2000 dinarii: exterminate

If you occupy settlements, you will suffer in your military. Dont worry about losing population from settlements, because they can still build the things they could before.So try it, next time you capture corinth, do what the Daleks do best: EXTERMINATE!!!!!

What do you people say?

I have seen alot of people thinking the best way to capture a city is to occupy it, thinking it the most humain way and thus the best. however, lets look at pros and cons. (ill excluse enslave from this.)

Who the hell is this "a lot of people"?! Humanitarism in a computer game? Enslave for the early game, exterminate for the late game.

reasons for occupy
-you get more people. WTF? All that means is you get more buildings. No, you get the oppurtunity to build buildings. But ocuppying criples your econimy.No building money availble, the population has no use. so in theory this population is good, in practise, no.


You will make the money that you didn't get by exterminating back in a couple of turns through tax money on those that are still alive.

That said, the happiness penalty of not exterminating is too harsh, and I usually do it.

You exterminate in cities where you're not planning to do heavy recruitment. Since your core cities should be the only ones with infrastructure to recruit good troops, exterminating is definitely better than occupying. More population means more unhappiness especially due to the culture difference when newly captured. And the population will grow back anyways :lol:

You will make the money that you didn't get by exterminating back in a couple of turns through tax money on those that are still alive.

That said, the happiness penalty of not exterminating is too harsh, and I usually do it.

Actually, from my experiences, an exterminated city can make more money. Im not sure though.

I exterminate the first city I capture from a nation I'm at war with for the first time, as an example (though that doesn't really mean anything to that nation in game). Or if the city overthrows the garrison, I'll exterminate the populace upon capture, again as an example. If the city is fairly docile or I have a massive army assaulting it I will simply occupy. But in most cases I enslave, so I can have my home cities (they generally have family members as governors) will grow in population, so I can advance them more.

As for known trouble-making cities, I exterminate. Rarely occupy, and 80% of the time enslave.

Actually, from my experiences, an exterminated city can make more money. Im not sure though.

I'm inclined to agree. Most of the time, newly captured cities can't generate that much money since you need to pacify them by lowering taxes and building happiness structures. And your army really wouldn't be babysitting these cities anyway, so the garrison is not that big. Exterminating is easier for waging a war.

I always occupy and start levying people to make them calm down in the beginning. but once you´ve gt territory and prosperous cities enough, plunder is the best answer!!!!

I always occupy and start levying people to make them calm down in the beginning.

In the beginning I prefer to enslave to boost the population at home (my core cities) so that they get bigger and allows access to better troops faster.

but once you´ve gt territory and prosperous cities enough, plunder is the best answer!!!!

I'll say yea to that:D

reasons for extermination
-tons of loot cash, plus i usualy find myself with a much bigger surplus from an exterminated city.

You're right that the income shown will generally be higher for exterminated cities. This does not however, mean that the city is making more cash. Military expenses are diveded throughout your cities dependant on their population, so when you exterminate the military upkeep cost will drop significantly in the city. You are not saving money though, because the upkeep total isn't changed. If you don't exterminate a city you will notice a that your other cities increase their income, because they now need to pay a smaller part of the upkeep.
Bottom line, there is no expenses of running a large city (besides needing a large garrison). Population does not cost upkeep by itself. Generally it is a very bad idea to look at the income for seperaqte cities. Rather you should look at the finances screen to see the big picture.

That said, I think extermination is preferable to occupying when takin large cities, mostly to avoid the unhappiness problems.

Just a thought..

Sometimes after exterminating, certain cities would still be in disorder (happiness below blue). In these cases, I move my army out of it after exterminating and let it revolt. Then, I take it again and then exterminate (again!). Nets more dinarii, extra experience for my soldiers and reduces the population even further for easier pacification.

It will cost some men though, so I only do this when I have men to spare (usually I use obsolete units) and/or secure front.

Comments?

Comments?

I have one. Its even better when playing as romans, because the senate offers 10000 dinarii to take back rebel settlements.

Thanks SB, forgot about that :goodjob:

i always exterminate, unless the pop is under 1000, because then you cant build any units in there. Also, exterminated cities seem to ahve huge food surplus, and have as high as an 8% growth rate. In one game as the Scipii, Carthage would grow to about 25000 people every 10-15 years or so, rebel, i would put down the rebellion, and then exterminate the pop, putting it back down to about 4000 inhabitants. At this point, she pulled in about 3000 denarii a turn, plus my initial pilliaging surplus of about 15000 denarii; it gave me an easy senate mission to boot.

That´s like an eternal goldmine... But surely don´t such constant rebellions have an effect on other cities? :confused:

yep. I had about two legions in N Africa always busy putting down rebellious cities, often Gladiator Uprisings, so they had crack troops. It IS a goldmine, however, but it can be real pain in the butt too, cause its only the real big cities that rebel. When I was raising my horde in preparation for an invasion of Egypt - the egyptians were so good and so powerful that i took 15000 men into Egypt, just to secure the job. We'd been at war for a while, and 4000 men task forces werent getting the job done; they'd get worn down before any real gains had been made - I wanted the best men to do the job, but with cities rebelling everwhere, it took quite a while, and the Egyptians pushed me back past the Gulf of Sidra, before my Grand Army of the Republic ( go ahead and laugh, but thats what it was) was ready to march. Yea, the momentum from that push took me around the Mediterranean all the way to Antioch, and then everything east of there to the end of the map

I agree extermination is a good way to go.

yep. I had about two legions in N Africa always busy putting down rebellious cities, often Gladiator Uprisings, so they had crack troops. It IS a goldmine, however, but it can be real pain in the butt too, cause its only the real big cities that rebel. When I was raising my horde in preparation for an invasion of Egypt - the egyptians were so good and so powerful that i took 15000 men into Egypt, just to secure the job. We'd been at war for a while, and 4000 men task forces werent getting the job done; they'd get worn down before any real gains had been made - I wanted the best men to do the job, but with cities rebelling everwhere, it took quite a while, and the Egyptians pushed me back past the Gulf of Sidra, before my Grand Army of the Republic ( go ahead and laugh, but thats what it was) was ready to march. Yea, the momentum from that push took me around the Mediterranean all the way to Antioch, and then everything east of there to the end of the mapIn what scale do you play? How many men does a full division of Triarii have?, for example?

a triarii has 41 men in mine. wait... maybe its 42. i forget, but its one of those two.

Now, when i installed it on my friend's pc and played it, the units were like 80-90 a piece, and his pc is better than this one. Inversely, on my crappier pc, i had size 20 units.

So 15000 men is... a lot of armies! How many were there in each army?

somewhere around 700 a piece. The sad thing is, that I needed them all. The Egyptians have some mean units, especially those Egyptian Axemen or something to that extent, they just carve a hole right through your line, even Cohorts. Now, this Grand Armee had a wide variety, only a few were Urban or Praetorian Cohorts, it was mostly Legionary and Early Cohorts, with of course archers axillia, a mix of auxillia and light axillia, and a host of mercs. But yea, it took a few minutes to move these boys around; i positioned them such that when the Egyptians engaged them, they wound up fighting about 4-5 times their number, they moved in large clumps close together.
Oh, and i had an army of only onagers... just in case.

in case you haven't noticed from my posts in this forum, i obsess with having LARGE armies, i find it better to overcompensate than to undercompensate.. the thing i hate the most is what I call Crecy syndrome: when you have bested the enemy, but no longer have the momentum to exploit it. When Edward the Black Prince won the battle of Crecy, he could very well have conquered all of France, he had beaten them that bad, but he didnt have the manpower or hte means to exploit France's weakness in time.

a triarii has 41 men in mine. wait... maybe its 42. i forget, but its one of those two.

Now, when i installed it on my friend's pc and played it, the units were like 80-90 a piece, and his pc is better than this one. Inversely, on my crappier pc, i had size 20 units.
My pc takes 80 men, and I think this is by far the best number to play it with.

I used 40 men per, haven't upgraded my pc when I played

Crecy syndrome, eh? I should call it Phyrric victories...

Once, I was obsessed with winning with very minimal casualties :p with an occasional desire for bloody expensive victories that cost me more than it's worth :lol: now I'll settle for a justifiable number of casualty..40's a good number to me :D

Enslave for earlier game, exterminate for later, but only key unnacessary cities, because if you exterminate a lot, youll find yourself with lots of money but your advancing speed will go for a stall, because you wont be able to retrain your damaged units, finding yourself in danger of counter attacks, or make the necessary improvements to retrain those better units you have. Also your income will be lower, because less population means less income.

that not true, less population mean MORE income, for some weird reason.

that not true, less population mean MORE income, for some weird reason.

Nope, thats a wrong ideia, you see an huge city of 20000 or more inhanbitants lose money every turn in the campaign map, but if you go to the city details, you ll see that the city is supoorting a great part of your expenses, upkeep is distributed accordingly as city size, so by having larger cities you ll win far more income in general. Trusting you make markets, roads, farms, ports and mines to provide that income of course.

Playing as the greeks, ive reached as far as 60000+ gold income per turn with cities reaching as far as 50000 and 60000 in population, of course you can argue that this was in part because the area and cities greece ocupy, but ive made many games and this always apllies.

Small cities in islands tend to have an income of 1000 or less, so you can think that city is better economicaly speaking then even your capital, but the only thing it means is that it as no contribution to your upkeep whatsoever and that you should develop it asap.

that not true, less population mean MORE income, for some weird reason.
I explained the reason for that earlier in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3983459&postcount=10). ;)

I explained the reason for that earlier in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=3983459&postcount=10). ;)

Other forums like RTW heaven, have it explained on detail.

:beer:

My pc takes 80 men, and I think this is by far the best number to play it with.

I like playing on huge, the body count after each battle is just too much :D

I like playing on huge, the body count after each battle is just too much :D

Agreed! Seeing a whole town's streets filled with bodies does something to the mind :)

Agreed! Seeing a whole town's streets filled with bodies does something to the mind :)


:clap: :clap::clap::clap:

Aren´t you guys a little sadistic? How can you think about corpses without having burned the city´s buildings to the ground?

how do you adjust the unit sizes in the game? I always thought hte computer did it according to what your processor could take.

And now i understand the whole money thing. Still, when I exterminate a city, i get more gold per turn after that.

The biggest city ive ever had was like 28000 people, how in the world did you keep 50000 under control? My cities, even if I fill them to the max with soldiers, lower to least taxes, and have games going, decide to riot and take over their own city again at like 25000 or so.

how do you adjust the unit sizes in the game? I always thought hte computer did it according to what your processor could take.

And now i understand the whole money thing. Still, when I exterminate a city, i get more gold per turn after that.

The biggest city ive ever had was like 28000 people, how in the world did you keep 50000 under control? My cities, even if I fill them to the max with soldiers, lower to least taxes, and have games going, decide to riot and take over their own city again at like 25000 or so.

To keep a 50000 city under control is a real challenge:
-Have your city with a governor or maybe two in case one dies, build awesome temple of whatever faction -you have, build the best government building, capture the "Statue of Zeus Wonder" in Corinth is a must for this also, a similar one is the pyramids, but it only works for egypt populations, Colossus and Babylon Gardens tend to give an hand to order to as the trade increase generated tend to give more hapiness but this is discussable.
-Always garrisson in a full pack. Build a fort outside the city walls and have a full pack on it as also (the good troops should be in the fort of course) the citizens dont seem to mind if they are good troops or just mere peasants.
-Build sewers
-Build an academy to increase the good traits of your managing leader in the city. Most long stationed governors tend to develop traits for city order and managing quite incredible: +25% game order, -20% building costs, -20% unit recruitment costs, +20% hapiness, are some that pop to my mind. I tend to forge the two types of leaders, military ones and city building ones. (to avoid your leaders from being assassinated have a spy, assassin and diplomatic go with every leader, this helps a lot).
-Other factions have different hapiness/order building like taverns, sacred groves and things like that, in the bottom line just build them all.
-For cities without governor always put them on "growth build" if you want to increase the order level asap - but in this set up you receive less money from the city.

Spy on Rome, this is a good role model city, see what building it as, how many units and so on.

For adjusting unit sizes do to the options, choose the advanced options botton (or is it custom botton, cant remenber but its something there) bellow the 3 initial windows displayed and a all new bunch of new options will be revealed to you - terrain, building, unit detail, shadows, grass, and so on, one of these is the unit sizes going from very small to huge. you have been playing on "default" the all time.

To adjust unit shapes in the field you have the keyboard keys - "»«" "?" , ",""." and you can also use the right mousse botton wich is a a lot more effecient especially during the fight itself.

If you exterminate the city, you will still win more money after it because you ve just conquered a new city! and new city means new citizens, meaning new taxes and thus more money on end of turn, as extermination only pays off on high level population cities, big and developed (markets,roads,farms and ports at least for sure) even with the extermination the money increase will be significant, still again, you would win a lot more if you had made enslave for example.

Also:

-Build watchtowers over the main roads and hills of your territory, this avoids the appearence of rebels on the fog of war zones, and if rebels appear propmtly kill them (or buy them, some rebel armies have good leaders and troops on it), because they lower the order bar a bit and cut off land trade. The same goes for rebel navy.

Aren´t you guys a little sadistic? How can you think about corpses without having burned the city´s buildings to the ground?

he he :D :cool: I see you are a wiper, nothing must remain, if you had the option, you´d probably spread some salt over the fields to keep it from rising again like Carthage.

Aren´t you guys a little sadistic? How can you think about corpses without having burned the city´s buildings to the ground?

:lol: I like the way you think.... ;)

he he :D :cool: I see you are a wiper, nothing must remain, if you had the option, you´d probably spread some salt over the fields to keep it from rising again like Carthage.
:lol: I like the way you think.... ;)
"Burn their homes. Salt their lands. Nothing survives. -The Western Paladin"

Yea too bad me generals cant tap with two black and pick off whities

What on earth do you mean :confused: ?

Western Paladin picks off white creatures, does he not?

Oh yeah, I confused him with the Eastern, I´ve got two seventh edition Eastern Paladins (they pick off the greens) but I don´t use them anymore...