New Ability - Sacking Cities

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TheLastOne36

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I was thinking, Many times in history, people don't attack/seige/capture cities only to conquer it, but sometimes they just want money, gold, etc.

So what if when you capture a city, you have an option to "sack it" which will give the city back to it's original owner, but will also destroy the temples, forges, markets, banks etc in the city, give you tons of money, bring a little bit of your culture to the city, and tons more?

So what do you guys think? How could we make this a function without abusing it? Also could we make this a mod?
 
I like it, but isn't this already built into the game with the gold that you receive from capturing a city?
 
bestbrian said:
I like it, but isn't this already built into the game with the gold that you receive from capturing a city?
Click to expand...

When the Holy Romans sacked rome in 1527, Did they Capture or Raze Rome? The Answer is neither. That's why i made a topic about it. :p
 
This would be sort of like the 'Ransom' option in the Viking scenario, except the city would have to be able to be attacked again after a period of time.
 
Sounds Like it would work. But the Holy Romans never sacked Rome. The Vandals and Other groups did.
 
OH well if it is on wikipedia!

Yeah "sack the city" would make a good additional option.

*I am not disputing that the Holy Roman Empire did sack Roma, in fact I am sure I read somewhere else about it, I am merely commenting on the reliability of wiki!"
 
I think they had a mechanic similar to that in Civ1 and Civ2 for the "barbarians." If they managed to take a city of yours they would demand a large percentage of your gold or they would take over the city. Barbarians were a much bigger threat in those games. They would upgrade over time and come at you in waves of 4 units at a time and later like 9 units at a time. They wouldn't be called barbarians all the time either. There were pirates with frigates, rebels with musketeers and cannons, fanatical terrorists, and geurilla uprisings. I'd like to see the older mechanics brought back with respect to barbarians. But yeah...having a sack city option would be cool.
 
I'd forgotten that you could buy off barbarians ("Give us x amount of gold or we shall mercilessly sack the city of y"). Also, the AI would do this as well. Pretty cool feature; they should bring it back.
 
so what reasonable reason is there to stop somebody sacking the city first with one unit and then capturing it with another?

It would be kinda silly to make it so that "if you sack city ??? you can't capture it for X turns....

maybe if each successful attack against a defender or your unit retreats you get some money and have a chance of destroying a building in the city with the odds improving if your unit deals more damage but the capture options remain the same as old....

since otherwise every player would just do the same thing every time that they captured the city.... which isn't in my mind very good
 
What? Why would you sack it and then capture it? Once you have sacked it, it has nothing worth while, you may as well have captured it in the first place. Each city would require its own stockpile of gold, rather than representing a percentage of the civs cash. You might have gone in on purpose to sack/pillage a border city to destroy culture producing buildings. Or you might have gone to destroy progress on a wonder, although I think this should be carefully balanced, maybe this isn't an option but there is a chance of it.

But I also think that sacking a city should take time (like capturing) (longer for the more buildings you wish to destroy and the size of the city), as should razing, (and capturing tiles and destroying certain improvements).
 
A good way to implement this would be a variation on an old city razing mod from warlords. Basically while a city is in revolt you can pillage it like an improvement, destroying population as you pillage, and increasing the revolt time in the process. When you pillage it down to 0 it is razed.

The variation would be, to make each pillaged pop have a chance of providing, gold, beakers, ect... with an amount based off of how much pop was left (the final pop providing pretty much nothing). That way you could take an enemy city and "sack" it, but not raze it, then give them back the defiled carcass until its ripe for the picking again (either gift it after peace or just leave it unguarded and let them retake it).
 
I like this a lot. Another cool (and historically apt) effect of this, or city capturing in general, could be to carry off enemy population as slaves! Say for instance that you take two population points from a city. These two points would then temporarily attach themselves to one of your units, which must lead them back to a city of your own. Once brough back to a city, these two points become available for work at reduced food expense - or could be sacrificed for production without any unhappiness penalty for your native population. Adding too many foreign slaves to a city would possibly have the same effect as being under cultural pressure - the city might actually revolt in their favour! There are many possibilities here.
 
Titus said:
I like this a lot. Another cool (and historically apt) effect of this, or city capturing in general, could be to carry off enemy population as slaves! Say for instance that you take two population points from a city. These two points would then temporarily attach themselves to one of your units, which must lead them back to a city of your own. Once brough back to a city, these two points become available for work at reduced food expense - or could be sacrificed for production without any unhappiness penalty for your native population. Adding too many foreign slaves to a city would possibly have the same effect as being under cultural pressure - the city might actually revolt in their favour! There are many possibilities here.
Click to expand...

Whipping the pop into workers (or anything else for that matter) would seem to be the same as carrying them off into slavery.
 
meece said:
so what reasonable reason is there to stop somebody sacking the city first with one unit and then capturing it with another?
Click to expand...

How about a massive happiness penalty?

A city you've just sacked is liable to be pretty pissed off at you, I'd imagine.
One could extend this to an increased chance of spawning rebels, a revolt period extending several times the usual and a long and residual culture or happiness hit, of a magnitude decent enough to outweigh the immediate benefits of sacking said city.

Does this count as reasonable?
 
Scilly_guy said:
But why would you do it anyway???
Click to expand...

Well, the OP posited 'tons of money' which is probably the way to go.
Or some other similiar reward. Maybe unit experience as well, if one wanted.

Additionally it could easily be utilized as a strategic move.
 
Ok but if the city has a stockpile of cash which is slowly built up, and you did not receive exp for sacking the city, or capturing it, then there would be no benefit to keep sacking it turn after turn, unless you wanted to keep knocking back their production, which is possibly a good reason to.
 
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