Pillaging?

What's with all the love for pillaging while waging war? If you know that you are going to overtake the city in three or four more turns (or less or more), isn't it wiser to allow the improvements to remain, thereby allowing your use of them when you march into the city?

You pillage to buy time if your entire force isn't present yet or if you need to increase your attack force because you got to the city and can see that it is more heavily defended than imagined.

Pillaging buys time by not allowing they city to build units in an acceptable timeframe. You destroy the production increasers and roads. This means no resources and only shields from the starting tile if you cover the hills and forests with your units (i assume if an enemy unit is on a tile the city can't work it....has this changed in civ 4?)

majorjsh said:

What's with all the love for pillaging while waging war? If you know that you are going to overtake the city in three or four more turns (or less or more), isn't it wiser to allow the improvements to remain, thereby allowing your use of them when you march into the city?

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I dont know, especially against the AI which builds mucho cottages. Those are worth 20g+ usually, for each stage. If he has lots of improvements, its probably a bigger city which will take upwards of 8 turns to convert. At which point your borders wont even stretch to most the tiles anyway, plus the population could take a hit as well. Get the money now, use your workers to build improvements during peace.

Exception is resources, leave those be of course so you can utilize them immediatly.

Also, if the civ isn't right next to you, the maintenance costs of taking over civ can make it not worthwhile in the earlier game. In the game I'm playing now, the Incas kept giving me **** for not being Buddhist and they had one city on my border and taking the rest would have stretched me too thin at that point in the game.

So I took that one city and sent my Jaguars running around the rest of their empire destroying stuff. They sued for peace and were so weakened another AI charged at them soon afterwards and they never bothered me again. Plus I got a ton of gold out of it, which let me keep running higher research while I was at it.

Even if you have plans on taking the city eventually you may find yourself in a position not to take it, but in a position to make it much easier down the road to do so. Not just production but if you can kill his commerce it means you're going to tech faster and get the appropriate military upgrade techs before him, making for an easy victory.

majorjsh said:

What's with all the love for pillaging while waging war? If you know that you are going to overtake the city in three or four more turns (or less or more), isn't it wiser to allow the improvements to remain, thereby allowing your use of them when you march into the city?

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IMO, the AI does pillaging in a rather stupid manner. It pillages all the squares around the city it is trying to take. Did the same in previous civs.

Occasionally I will go on a pillaging rampage. I use the cheapest units I can, or horse mounted units if available. I send them as far back into the other civs territory as possible, even to cities on the far side of the map, to pillage.

This accomplishes two things - it slows the AI from getting units to the front lines, and also slows down how fast they can build.

Pillaging roads doesn't give you any money but it slows enemy troops down a lot. Very useful against mounted units in particular. Pillage mines as well; it will ruin the city's production and prevent them from creating nasty surprises in their defenses.

majorjsh said:

What's with all the love for pillaging while waging war? If you know that you are going to overtake the city in three or four more turns (or less or more), isn't it wiser to allow the improvements to remain, thereby allowing your use of them when you march into the city?

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If you really enjoy facing half-again as many defenders as you would otherwise I suppose leaving the improvements alone becomes acceptable.

If you can't take that city immediately, within one or two turns at the latest, you need to immediately start trashing it. Failure to do otherwise only makes your conquest harder. Remember that at higher difficulty levels the AI has a large production advantage and can pop out units much more cheaply than you can. Deny them the resources to produce those units or you may end up paying very dearly for your "wisdom".

You could also starve them out by spreading out your units on each square. They can't get resources from tiles you're on. Mines & forests are definitely first priority.

Pillaging is a lot more useful in cities that you do not plan to take, but either way it's pretty handy.

majorjsh said:

...isn't it wiser to allow the improvements to remain, thereby allowing your use of them when you march into the city?

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Yes, IMO.

Mike Lemmer said:

You could also starve them out by spreading out your units on each square. They can't get resources from tiles you're on. Mines & forests are definitely first priority.

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Uhm, this is not completely accurate. You may prevent the city workers from working that tile, but the resource tiles are still made available to the nation as a whole. (ie, Iron, Copper etc.. any bonus resource) They must be pillaged to deny the resource to the Civ. Alternatively if the city is non-coast and non-river then you can pillage the roads instead which will serve the same purpose. If the city is coast or river tho you can't cut the supply line this way and must instead pillage the resource tile directly.

Besides - if you had enough units to really crash the production of the city just by occupying the tiles around it you'd have enough to take the city and be done with it. With just a few units tho you can methodically crash that city's production - and far more effectively and safely than just parking them individually on mines and what-not... since if they get kicked out or the AI stomps on them then the AI immediately has re-use of that tile.

Those saying that it's always better to leave the tiles alone ignore the fact that you can't even be sure how many of the surrounding city tiles will be yours once the city -has- been taken - since the enemy cultural wall is almost sure to deny you at least some of them.

If you can take the city "real soon" by all means, leave the tiles alone. If it isn't going to be "soon", as-in, 4 turns at the latest, then tear those city tiles down around their ears and the reconstruction time be damned.

Mike Lemmer said:

Pillaging roads doesn't give you any money but it slows enemy troops down a lot. Very useful against mounted units in particular. Pillage mines as well; it will ruin the city's production and prevent them from creating nasty surprises in their defenses.

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That's peculiar, because I saw somewhere, perhaps it was the civilopedia or the manual where it mentions pillaging targets, seemingly for their lucrativeness, as though pillaging them gives the pillager various rates of coin. Could make a partisan strategy viable to some degree if it's so.

majorjsh said:

What's with all the love for pillaging while waging war? If you know that you are going to overtake the city in three or four more turns (or less or more), isn't it wiser to allow the improvements to remain, thereby allowing your use of them when you march into the city?

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I would say yes. But pillaging is good when you aren't planning on capturing teh city, just intent on denting your neighbours power (say when they have decalred war on you and your not ready to ocupy their land or something).