i recently took a city, it was a capital of some civ or another, and when i checked to see what buildings it had, i saw that it had hanging gardens, but that the hanging gardens were not only not giving the city culture (this was after the resistance of course) but the city did NOT have an aqueduct, was the aqueduct destroyed when i took the city? or was the requirement simply waived for the AI (unlikely)?

thank you for your input

Yes, buildings are destroyed when a city is captured:

All buildings that give culture (except World Wonders and Academies) are always destroyed.

All National wonders are always destroyed.

All World wonders and academies always survive, but no longer give culture

There are a couple of other buildings that are always detroyed (barracks, and I think one or two others).

All other buildings have a chance of being destroyed, but may survive.

Aqueducts are not always destroyed, but do have a probability of being losst when a city is captured.

edit: Most of my questions got answered by previous post

How is the "chance of being destroyed" determined ? (full random)

PS: Long lurker, first poster - Hi everyone.

The chance of being destroyed is defined in the CIV4BuildingInfos XML file as iConquestProb. For an Auqeduct for example its 66% - it has a 66% probability of surviving city capture. Most non culture/wonder buildings have a 66% chance of survival - with a few exceptions like barracks as I mentioned.

Aren't national wonders kept if you haven't built them yourself or has that been changed?

Aren't national wonders kept if you haven't built them yourself or has that been changed?

I HAVE captured National Wonders. This was in Vanilla.

You're not supposed to be able to - though I think this was bugged in some of the early versions of the game. It is also possible to get a national wonder by culture flipping a city, rather than by capturing it.

All military buildings are destroyed (walls, barracks), along with the others mentioned.

thanks very much, i thought it was odd and wanted to see if i was facing a glitch or if the city really did lose buildings

All buildings that give culture (except World Wonders and Academies) are always destroyed.

Shrines are also preserved.

Shrines are also preserved.

Yes, shrines are considered wonders, and corporation HQ are wonders as well.

I also noticed that all military buildings are destroyed (except military academies): barracks, stables, walls, castles, drydocks, airports.

Do the destroyed buildings turn into gold, handed out to the captor, or is this just some crazy theory in my head...?

Do the destroyed buildings turn into gold, handed out to the captor, or is this just some crazy theory in my head...?
I think that there is a gold value for each building thats destroyed, so if capture a city and get a lot less gold than you thought you would, it probably kept a lot of its buildings. The more gold you get, the more buildings got destroyed.

I have no idea what the gold value is for these destroyed buildings, but I imagine someone does.

Variances in gold captured from a city are based solely on population and random chance; it's completely separate from the building destruction mechanism. Relevant function (from Python\CvGameUtils.py) in spoiler.
def doCityCaptureGold(self, argsList):
"controls the gold result of capturing a city"

pOldCity = argsList[0]

iCaptureGold = 0

iCaptureGold += gc.getDefineINT("BASE_CAPTURE_GOLD")
iCaptureGold += (pOldCity.getPopulation() * gc.getDefineINT("CAPTURE_GOLD_PER_POPULATION"))
iCaptureGold += CyGame().getSorenRandNum(gc.getDefineINT("CAPTURE_GOLD_RAND1"), "Capture Gold 1")
iCaptureGold += CyGame().getSorenRandNum(gc.getDefineINT("CAPTURE_GOLD_RAND2"), "Capture Gold 2")

if (gc.getDefineINT("CAPTURE_GOLD_MAX_TURNS") > 0):
iCaptureGold *= cyIntRange((CyGame().getGameTurn() - pOldCity.getGameTurnAcquired()), 0, gc.getDefineINT("CAPTURE_GOLD_MAX_TURNS"))
iCaptureGold /= gc.getDefineINT("CAPTURE_GOLD_MAX_TURNS")

return iCaptureGold

Destroyed buildings simply disappear.