Liberation Bonus vs. Warmonger Penalty

I derive great pleasure out of reducing or removing my warmonger penalty through liberating cities. But I have a question about the mechanics of liberation:

Is a warmonger penalty for capturing a city applied before the liberation bonus is applied? And if so, would a city that says "Minor warmonger penalty if captured; Minor liberation bonus if liberated" have no effect on warmonger penalty?

You first have to capture it before you can liberate it of course. But if you choose to liberate you dont puppet/annex, so i think no warmonger bonus is added. So the net result of capturing the city and liberating the city would be; less warmonger penalty than before ( must have some penalty before the bonus can have any effect)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk