To raze or not to raze...?

So from the sounds of it, we are going to have to limit some if not all gameplay options on our scenarios. This mod is being completed at a frantic pace right now, so let's get these finalized.

Are we only going to allow one speed and difficulty? I'd vote yes to both of those... but for now, let's start with:

City razing.
Allowed, not allowed, or only allowed for small cities (under X number of people)?

Please vote, and tell us why you voted the way you did. Right now as far as I know this is wide open.

Those of you who feeling strongly one way or another, make your case.

I voted no and I want to describe why I did so:

In the Mod only the biggest and most important cities will be represented. Therefore also the smallest cities in the game (under size x) would represent very large metropolises or even whole areas with millions and millions of inhabitants. It is very, very improbable that the whole population of a state or a country becomes extinct, even in the most devastating (maybe nuclear) war. In fact the only two cities which were attacked with a nuke still exist today and have many inhabitants. Furthermore even the most terrible conflicts and wars in our recent past (WW I/II) didn't manage to raze completely a city or annihilate a whole nation. Naturally they had disastrous effects on the world and a terrible number of people was killed, no need for discussions .
But basically the fact remains that cities (or the big areas they represent) can be reduced and devastated, but not "razed" in the sense of completely wiped off the map (or the world).

I hope my explanations are comprehensible .

Lg

I voted no and I want to describe why I did so:

In the Mod only the biggest and most important cities will be represented. Therefore also the smallest cities in the game (under size x) would represent very large metropolises or even whole areas with millions and millions of inhabitants. It is very, very improbable that the whole population of a state or a country becomes extinct, even in the most devastating (maybe nuclear) war. In fact the only two cities which were attacked with a nuke still exist today and have many inhabitants. Furthermore even the most terrible conflicts and wars in our recent past (WW I/II) didn't manage to raze completely a city or annihilate a whole nation. Naturally they had disastrous effects on the world and a terrible number of people was killed, no need for discussions .
But basically the fact remains that cities (or the big areas they represent) can be reduced and devastated, but not "razed" in the sense of completely wiped off the map (or the world).

I hope my explanations are comprehensible .

Lg

I agree with Lord Wolf for the same reasons.

Although there is something called "ethnic cleansing". I'd suggest to include that into the mod. But even there no whole cities are razed. "Only" certain ethnicities are driven away.
I'll write a suggestion into the "features" thread.

Good points, I tend to agree.

Maybe we could modify the raze option to something like, "commit genocide", that would cut down the population hugely and knock out almost every building. The city could either then be return to the old owner, the invader, or it could become barbarian (failed states). We could even give this option to the invader.

Either way I don't think the cities should disappear, and when this happens someone should retain cultural influence over the area. A civ committing genocide should have to have major repercussions, including perhaps becoming "a criminal in the eyes of the world" like defying a UN resolution.

I have played mods where the AI razes whole countries, I'm sure we all agree that is stupid. So if we do include any kind of razing, we would have to make sure the AI only does it under certain circumstances. (perhaps including but not limited to; being involved in a world or nuclear war, already being a world criminal, and really hating the other civ.) Doing it at all would result in a risk of other nations declaring war on you (peacekeeping/humanitarian mission function maybe?). Obviously that risk would increase the worse it gets.

But I think we would benefit from some option that allows for something other than occupying the entire population. We could model it on how Rome: Total War's "put them to the sword" option works, which I've always preferred to civ's city razing.

ianinsane said:

I agree with Lord Wolf for the same reasons.

Although there is something called "ethnic cleansing". I'd suggest to include that into the mod. But even there no whole cities are razed. "Only" certain ethnicities are driven away.
I'll write a suggestion into the "features" thread.

Click to expand...

Perfect, please do that. I posted above before I read this!

for the moment I am undecided...
genocidal warfare and ethnic cleansing in Africa and former yugolsavia aswell as the truly brutal no holds barred fighting on the eastern front in WW2. and that you should have the ability to raze cities.
If a civ does that however they should get very large -diplomcacy points for doing so from most other civs ingame.

On the other hand I do like the ethnic cleansing idea...

I am very unsure.

I believe we should allow razing for cities that aren't as developed or smaller in comparison to other cities. When you do raze a population center, you will get massive diplomatic penalties according to how big the city was and so-on. But once you raze a city, after your military units move off of the tile, a cottage will be built where the city was. And slowly the cottage will grow to a town and back to a city, to simulate rebuilding and re population. The city will have a "New" put in front of the old cities name and go back to being a population center.

so basically you "pillage" the city to one population and destroy all its building?

I think you should still raze the city, but it will grow back if you leave it alone.

difficult to code though(?) and slighty annoying. If i raze a city I want to kill em all

but im not gonna push the issue

I would only want to see generic CIV city razing under a certain small population size. I like the idea of some sort of modified/limited ethnic cleansing. Here's my problem with generic razing: compared to other events in CIV, it is totally unrealistic once one enters the middle ages and especially in later ages once one has 'cities' which effectively represent entire states or small countries. In generic CIV terms, it takes longer to build a cottage, a road, or a mine than it does to raze a city of millions of people which has stood for 1000s of years. It also takes longer to pillage a fully-developed cottage (i.e. town, 3 turns?) than it does to raze a city of any size, which doesn't make much sense to me.

Once upon a time, I saw a mod (sorry, can't remember the name) which allowed a slow-motion type razing. I think you needed a unit (an engineer or somesuch) who would do the razing, and it would take X number of turns to accomplish, during which time a certain portion of the buildings/population were destroyed; meaning that the city's former ruler would have time to counterattack and retake the city and still have something left to salvage.

In terms of realism for 2009, complete-razing seems untenable to me. But ethnic cleansing is very much a realistic event. But how to do this in CIV? If there was a way to cleanse a portion of the population which is not desired (e.g., different religion, different ethnicity, as shown as a percentage of the overall city population) that might work. Obviously, this should take a while to accomplish, should have some functional limit on amount cleansed per year or per turn (say, one population point per turn max depending upon number of units participating, and cannot reduce a city below size-1?), should have a very-heavy diplomatic cost, and should even have an unhappiness cost for one's own otherwise-loyal population (like the diminishing cannot-forget-your-cruel-oppression slavery effect). I would think it should require some amount of military units stationed in the city to carry it out, during which time they cannot be doing other activities (including healing, including defending or attacking -- if they do another task, then they don't count towards the cleansing effort during that particular turn).

If cleansing occurs on a slow timetable, it becomes something which opponents can attempt to stop (via intervention, UN resolutions, etc, which they would need to get some sort of diplomatic credit for) and something which the oppressor can choose to stop later on (e.g., like building a wonder, you can choose to stop building it).

I voted no, because I want some variation of the ethnic cleansing feature instead.

VeteranLurker: brilliant. It would be perfect to have this take a few turns to happen, giving other civs a chance to intervene and limit the damage.

Boy this thing is really getting better every day boys. Keep your brains churning and keep posting your ideas as you have them.

Why not have certain "Homeless" or "Displaced" people appear and head straight for the nearest city if a city is "razed"? We know that units with a similar AI can be created (see Immigration mod), so why not? It would allow for a city to be (almost) destroyed, maybe down to population 1 or 2, and still have a certain realism. I think razing completely is, as has been said, unrealistic.

I love the idea NikNaks... refugees! These could even occur to a lesser degree when a city is invaded without ethnic cleansing (like the Iraqi refugees to Syria).

I thought for sure the site would have deleted me .

I like the idea of immigration, possibly a (not) random event would appear to the owner of the nearest city saying something like "Refugees from [city name here] are pleading to allow access to your city."

Also, what if, when you capture a city, you are allowed to:

Capture: Giving said player control

Abandon: Turning the plot to a town improvement and causing immigration

Re-Locate: Turning the plot to a town improvement and giving the player a free settler

I agree that razing cities is impractical and difficult but without some supplement situations such as this would occur: city is making troops, I want them to stop, I capture city but can't afford to hold when all I want is the productions stopped.

Amogos said:

I agree that razing cities is impractical and difficult but without some supplement situations such as this would occur: city is making troops, I want them to stop, I capture city but can't afford to hold when all I want is the productions stopped.

Click to expand...

Isn't that like in reality? US invades Iraq, can't culturally hold it and many cities go on producing hostile units...

Then there should be a penalty for re-locating, the US, in your example, can't control the cities because they aren't allowed to, being a free country, forcefully re-locating people would cause an uproar. That is just one of the small set-backs with freedom quite uniquely.

However Canada re-located there own citizens back during the war with Japan, admitently not whole cities though, so more thought on this is necessary, because I would hate to not be able to somehow eradicate cities.

how about razing only for citys suffering a direct icbm hit not tactical nuke

No! Its unrealistic what civilization now a days would raze a city/country? It just doesn't happen anymore.