Noob question. Annex/Puppet/Raze

I get so tired when I play military games. I don't want these stupid cities, but if I want to heal my troops and keep advancing, I need to puppet them. I want to run a scorched earth campaign, but it just doesn't work.

I wish you could just liberate every city... allow them to be their own city states with no allegiance.

I also want airports. What happened to airports?

Raze (after annexing/puppet):
Pro: When the city is burnt to the ground, IT WILL NOT INCREASE THE CONQUEROR'S UNHAPPINESS IN THE LONG TERM. Can be reversed before city is burnt to the ground.

I would add a major pro to this option - You can sell the buildings inside the city for gold while beeing razed. Option when suffering gold and not caring about policies - often term when going militaristic.

To sort of zombify this thread, one thing I noticed in my current game that sort of stinks about puppets is that I cannot build religious buildings in them since they require purchasing via faith. I think THAT ought to likely change. I've been puppeting like mad but it chaps my hide to not be able to get a monastery going in these puppets...

Out of curiosity, does anyone Annex a captured city that has been already captured in the past that used to belong to another civ that's still in the game?

Reason I ask is when I'm playing a science or culture game and see a civ getting too wild and powerful, I sometimes take a small force and try to cut his lawn a little bit. If I capture one or two or more of his already-conquered cities, I will actually annex that city(s) just to let the city get out of anarchy and then directly gift the city to the civ that originally lost it. I figure it helps the balance on my continent to try to make all the major powers fighting among themselves forever until I win the culture/science.

Why annex before gifting? You can gift the puppeted city (during rebellion or after). Annexing permanently increases your social policy costs and you incur extra unhappy after annexing and before selling. Also, you should never annex while the city is in rebellion; you can't do anything in the city during rebellion except sell buildings that have maintenance cost.

Annexing does not shorten the rebellion period, so if you're going to annex, wait to annex until after the city is out of rebellion and you can afford to rush-buy a courthouse.

Here is my experience regarding this topic specifically puppeting, especially early on in pre-Renaissance era. Stepping back a bit to bring it into context, Standard game, Standard speed, King difficulty, playing as Germany (BNW), on Continents. Early war with Austria just to capture her settler as I needed a worker in Ancient Era. Shortly after in Classical Era, Austria proposed peace and offered their second city in the deal. If the city was bad I would have decline and continue with the early war which is painful but that is for another discussion. The second city, 4 Population, only has one-ring (two farmland, three marsh, and one deer) and has not expanded cultural borders. I can see on second-ring are better with at least one unique lux I don't have. Given that I decided to accept the peace deal along with the puppet city.

Looking back not sure if this was a good idea and here is why. The puppet city is far from my capital for starters. What is worst it has zero buildings which means zero culture so the puppet does not expand its borders. It builds a market, library, then monument. By now, game is in Medieval Era and I am approaching to take the capital city Austria, which has that unique lux that the puppet city has. I could not annex, even now, because of lack of happiness and to build a courthouse would take too long.

also puppets arent counted in the national wonders requirements

There was a good article a while back about how annex/puppet/raze is the archetypical example of Civ 5 offering the player only bad choices!

joncnunn said:

G&K prefix added to this thread as the original timestamps make it obvious it was G&K.

Click to expand...

Browd said:

For cities you don't raze right away, you should puppet -- at least until the inhabitants are no longer in revolt.

Click to expand...

Caveat for BNW: One of the ideology tenants (I forget which one, and at what level) gives free courthouse -- but only if you pick annex upon conquering.

That's Iron Curtain, an Order tenet. In that case, if you puppet, you never get the free courthouse.

But, as you note, that is only relevant to BNW -- since this is a G&K thread, the "traditional" puppet-then-annex approach still holds.

or you can always go Police State that gives you happiness from Courthouses. Then again, Autocracy does seem to give the most happiness anyway

In conquest games with Autocracy, I annex most cities, except those with very few resources. Having a bunch of large puppet cities late in a conquest game causes a lot of unhappiness. If you annex them, you can grow their happiness using faith to the point where they don't count against your happiness at all.

..or you can starve or avoid growth in those conquered cities