Kuriotates and Cities

One of the issues with Kuriotates is when they go to war - if they capture a city, that city then immediately becomes one of their city hubs unless there are no other hubs left?

Having a dialog box for this option would be nice because it can seriously impede the city placement strategy for a Kuriotate civ... or is that the point?

Agreed. I think this did not always happen but it sure did in my last game.

You get the option when founding a city, but not capturing it I guess. Then again, how often do you capture a city before you've settled your limit? I guess a very crowded map would lead to that pretty often...

What happens if you raze? (I'm not suggesting this as an alternative, I'm just curious)

It gets razed end of the problem, and you are still allowed to build another hub, much like if one of yours was razed.

It depends on how close the other civs are to you and how big the landmass is. If it's a smaller landmass, as it was in this case, I wanted to get my third city further down the coast - closer to where the Sheites were at the time so I could annex their civilisation later and crush the doviollo for reagents - the plan was to have two of my cities up in the north, and then have a slew of settlements taking up the space between them and my third city which would provide a buffer for the settlements pushing up against enemy territory to prevent them being lost to culture wars.

I don't play curiotates often, but if I did, I'd happily hold off building my third + city hub until after I'd cleared a few civs off the board - That way I'd spread the influence of my empire further to nab more resources - while defending them culturally.

Futher, if you hold off signing open borders with others - your third city hub can be very useful in blocking off large swathes of land from their settlers - which you then colonise with your no-maintenance settlements before people tech to sea travel.

Kuriotates are surprisingly suited to a sprawling land denial strategy - although that would rely on better control of the city hubs.

Shouldn't be too much work to give them the option - it's not going to be that much more complex than the prompt when you found a city. Just prod Kael about it when he's got 10 minutes

I recall that option was in for a short time, but was removed for 2 reasons IIRC.
First, it was causing OOC errors in multiplay which could never be isolated.
And second, the idea of a potentially large city with a number of buildings already built being forced to become a settlement didn't sit well(thoughI never understood that argument as at some point, you are bound to run out of city hubs and force some capital you have captured become a settlement).

I wonder if it would be possible to allow captured cities to remain standard cities. That would alleviate the second concern, and make more sense overall. I mean, essentially you are importing a people and culture that doesn't have the same cultural value as your people, so wouldn't necessarily accept being forced into a Super city ideal, though being crushed down to a settlement... thought in that thought, perhaps all captured cities should automatically become settlements... you know, being subdued and all...
just a thought...

Cheers!

BlazeRedSXT said:

I wonder if it would be possible to allow captured cities to remain standard cities. That would alleviate the second concern, and make more sense overall. I mean, essentially you are importing a people and culture that doesn't have the same cultural value as your people, so wouldn't necessarily accept being forced into a Super city ideal, though being crushed down to a settlement... thought in that thought, perhaps all captured cities should automatically become settlements... you know, being subdued and all...
just a thought...

Cheers!

Click to expand...

From a flavor perspective I'm in agreement that it's a bit out of character for the gentle boy-king to subjugate conquered people into rural serfdom, but from a balance perspective I'm hard pressed to give the 'Tates more advantages. Played well they're a real powerhouse as it is.

I think it should just have them reduced to city ruins, or a crappy settlement, maybe having a brutal side to the rule!

Well, reducing captured cities to ruins.. that would mean a scorched earth trait, and Diesel is right about that being out of character.
I'm not terribly sure how unbalancing allowing captured cities to remain standard cities would be really. The super cities are nice, but you are limited to a fairly low number(2-5, depending on map size, and 5 is really not many considering just how big a Huge map really is). Once you hit that number , you are limited to settlements anyway(for new built cities).
The major liability to them is that Domination or Conquering on large or huge maps is really difficult because you can't(easily) strategically place forbidden palace or winter palace, making maintenance really a pain(Though I suppose settlements don't have a maint cost, but waging wars across the world is tough).
What if we dropped the cap of super cities so that 3 was the Max, and captured cities had a pop up of only settlement or standard cities? That would make the core of the Empire solid and Sprawling, but leave them room to grow.
Actually, had a second Idea. What if settlements were expanded a bit. Put them back into the City Maintenance count, but allow them to build a limited number of other structures. For example, you could build an Archery range, OR training yard, OR stables.A small settlement should be able to support a single "conscription" type. A market isn't unreasonable in a settlement, nor a Pagan temple. Maybe a Forge. Perhaps allowing them Wonders(some of the most ragged little villages have sustained only because of some particular Holy site or war monument, so its not unreasonable), and with the Settlement building hits, it would be risky anyway to try to build one there. Just thinking out loud here...

Cheers!

I think making all captured cities into settlements makes the most sense. I have never played with the Kuriotates, so I don't know exactly what their settlements can build, but it would make sense to give them a small, exclusive list of a certain group of buildings on top of what they already get, like you mentioned (i.e. yard OR range OR stables).

I think settlement makes sense from a balance and RP prospective. The upside to capturing cities is you will at least get to keep the existing buildings, which is going to be better than most settlements. Maybe if the captured city has a wonder, it becomes a standard city?

I've been playing a bit with the Kuriotates this month and the uselessness of settlements is just depressing. If there is no resource I need in the area I just assume burn everything to the ground, less trouble to defend and less pop to support.

Enemy settlements automatically becoming cities completely defeats the idea of expanding slow and scouting for the best city locations. You may as well build all your cities asap, even if they're in kind of weak locations because unless you are going to try a spear assault right into the heart of your opponents territory to take one of their better cities and hope you can still hold out against the culture crush while you try and conquer the rest of their cities that you want you're going to be left with just as poor a location, but without the culture and buildings that you might be able to have built in your own back wash city.

Is this whole mechanic pretty much set, or is it open to alteration?

I agree that it would be nice to get a popup asking whether a captured city should be a settlement, but I don't understand how that can seriously impair Kuriotates expansion. If you don't want a city you capture, just raze it - since settlements are usually rather useless, you're not losing anything important. Of course this does conflict with the Kuriotates' flavour, but it works quite well. I often play Kuriotates and I always choose to either burn conquered cities or gift them to an ally if one is present.

Thonnas said:

I've been playing a bit with the Kuriotates this month and the uselessness of settlements is just depressing. If there is no resource I need in the area I just assume burn everything to the ground, less trouble to defend and less pop to support.

Click to expand...

I think that is the point. I don't believe Kuriotates are meant to have settlements everywhere. Just a bustling core empire, with "colonies" to grab resources they need.

The core cities are such a powerhouse that they don't really need additional cities. When playing the Kuriotates, I use the agriculture civic for the entire game and get my population up to 30+ in all of my super cities. I never change the philosophical trait as the +100% great people is a huge benefit. All three of the cities have multiple great people in them in addition to a holy shrine and an Alter of Lunonatar level VI (consuming 7 great prophets) and academies in each city (consuming 1 great sage each). The core cities produce so much that I seldom need to expand beyond this point. When I do go to war, I generally burn most of the opponents cities that I conquer keeping a couple of tolken settlements if they are near strategic resources.

On strategy, are the settlements allowed to build obsidian gates?

no but i think they get them for free if you build the nexus

Yeah, the Nexus is very powerful for the Kuriotates. Once you have it, you can essentially build a cost free base of operations and portal for your troops, where ever you want. Your troops can heal faster there, move in and out at will and generally be a huge nuisance to any enemy.

Excellent :>