[NOT A BUG] Policy culture requirements dont decrease when cities are razed

In a long war, I captured and turned too many cities into puppet states. Later I annexed a few so I could raze them. The policy culture cost went up when I annexed and remained the same after they were razed. To me it seems like Culture costs should be based on the current number of cities and # of policies that have been purchased so far. (Free policies from wonders/other policies shouldn't effect this)

I remember some people saying that it was quite the opposite and there was an exploit where you could just go razing everything and then just get a ton of policies at once. If this is changed it was a rather nice exploit fix.

Not a bug imo. When razing a city is the same as annexing it until it's destroyed. This temporarily increases the culture points needed, but drops down again once the cities are destroyed. This is likely a gameplay mechanic to "halt" policies for an active warmongering civ.

Dusk said:

Not a bug imo. When razing a city is the same as annexing it until it's destroyed. This temporarily increases the culture points needed, but drops down again once the cities are destroyed. This is likely a gameplay mechanic to "halt" policies for an active warmongering civ.

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I believe this is incorrect -- I was playing a game last night going for a culture victory, and participated in an AI war to pass the time. After capturing/razing 3 cities, my culture requirement went from ~2700 to ~5400, and did not drop after the cities finally burned to the ground. I did not puppet or annex the cities prior to razing.

This seems to penalize players going for a culture win if they start a war to deter other civs from reaching victory conditions -- if you go after someone looking to win the space race, and destroy their high production towns, you are penalized in your own victory condition, when the reverse is not true (someone going for space could destroy someone building utopia project, and not have it delay their victory).

I'll upload some saves when I get home tonight.

Is it possible (I haven't checked) that if you, say, raze one city and then build a new city shortly afterwards, the cost of the next policy would not go up? Perhaps the exploit fix is just stopping the threshold from going down, but for it to go up again it needs the right number of cities.

I plan on running several tests when I have time:

1. If culture cost is linked to max # of cities ever had
2. If culture cost of next policy will be matched to the number of cities currently held (IE, does it drop back down once I obtain my next policy)

I agree that there is the possibility of exploitation if razing cities lead to an immediate decrease for the next policy, but it seems that culture players are being severely penalized for participating in warfare, even if it's defensive to eliminate a warmonger on your own continent. Perhaps if the culture required slowly dropped from current setting to what it would be given current city count, to prevent multiple rapid policy obtainment?

False alarm. Turns out I was suffering from a combination of Civ-related sleep deprivation, boredom, lack of attention (paying more attention to the war than my policy counter), and wishing the game was already won.

After walking back through my quicksaves, it appears that I actually finished two policy trees, and that policy requirements WERE dropping back down after the cities finished burning to the ground.

Its funny, cuz I have would have no idea what you are talking about if a friend of mine hadnt lost his lunch over the culture hit from too many cities. Because my game (deluxe edition) never ever mentions a culture hit, anywhere. It NEVER displays a culture cost for cities when I hover the cursor over my culture counter (like it does in his game), it just tells me how much I have and from where. Just another example of some weird stuff.