Installing a new governor is always a bad thing

[Wardog]

I think it's better to sell everything inside and abandon the cities you conquer.

It's almost impossible to manage them. On my current game I conquest chinese cities and although Im not fighting with their mother country anymore the citizens keep demanding more and more luxuries to forget my "opression". Also, when I start a war against another nation different from the chinese they are the first to go in disorder. The production in AI cities becomes very low when you conquest it. No matter if the size of the city is 25. Soon it will be 15.

So apart from having a city in a strategic place on the map to put your military, or to keep it for a certain resource, is it worth to maintain foreign cities?

[kemal69]

It depends on many factors I think, including the size of the city, the distance from your palace vs the distance to the foriegn palace.

If the city ise of a large population I usually reduce it by artillery bombardment before taking it (this is if I want to keep it) and then quickly build temples and such to start your culture off. Keep strong units to garrison the city. And I think this is strong relative to the AI not just your own tech.

There are many threads in the strategy forum about how to get round this problem, including by adding workers to diffuse the foriegners, you only need to hold it for a while and the populations starts to defect and become <insert yuour civname here>.

[TheNiceOne]

Wardog, why not keep the city and starve it down. Not very nice, but effective.

* You keep the city with all remaining improvements. Important when on the offence when you need a place to heal.

* If you starve it down by turning every citizen into taxman each turn, it means an average of 20 gold pt during the 20 turns it is starved from 25 to 15 citizens, in addition to the 1 gold and 1 shield you get from this city if its completely corrupt.

* When the population is low enough you can stop starving it and let it grow with your citizens instead.

[warpstorm]

In addition to the starving tactic The(SotSo)Nice One suggests, I like to use the cities as a launch point in my blitz attacks. If you don't keep the cities you have to build new cities to keep the road/rail net on your side (if you raze or abandon they get the benefits too).

[JoeM]

I always install a new governor without fail. Don't see the point in not having another city. Useful for repairing troops, rushing new ones and prevents other civs from claiming the territory.

What do you lose?

[Fr8monkey]

What I do is bombard the city to 2 or 3 peeps like kemal; but behind the attackers I have piles of settlers and defensive units. After I take the city, move in the units, set up your defence and add 1 or 2 settlers. this deversifies the population (less hostility) and makes the city big enough to produce things. Then poprush a temple. After that I build in this order: Library, Courthoust (if corruption is really rampant), barracks and collisium.

[SirJethro]

IMHO if you are so unsuccessful with taking cities and installing governors, instead of resolving that it is always a bad idea, maybe you should address your play.

I rarely have problems. Sometimes I starve, but only when necessary.

[DaDoo]

I always install new governor and I have no problem with the cities at all. Having the city starve from 25 to 15 is pretty regular as far as I know since while you are still at war with their home country, majority of the nationals will be unhappy. Many ways to deal with this. 1) you can rush a temple. Might not help too much but it starts off your culture in that city, which is always good. 2) connect that city to the rest of your empire through road/harbor/airport and capital. Once connected to the luxury resources, that will calm a few more people. 3) Make lots of entertainers, even if they starve. Why not? I don't think anybody expected newly captured cities to be productive from the getgo. Depending on your government of choice, you might even want to station a few more units of troops inside the city to enforce martial law.

Let the governor to manage happiness even. It works.

[warpstorm]

...and don't forget to station a few troops near the city in case it doe flip back (rare if you've done the stuff mentioned in this thread and have a culture lead).

[connor]

If they are nice, I am nice, but if they revolt, then STARVE them. I do the same with my own cities when they revolt. I know this somewhat conflicts with my Civ3 morality thread, but I don't put up with revolt from my cities.
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To secure peace is to prepare for war.

[Wardog]

Thanks a lot for the suggestions.