Does razing make the game too easy?

Alright, so anyone who's conducted early wars and not wanted to see their economy crash is familiar with city razing. When you're Julius Ceasar stomping the ancient world with praets, you simply can't keep every city you take...and some of the cities the AI builds are in stupid places anyway.
But...fast foward about 5950 years...

So last game I was playing, I had conquered my contient early and was trying to catch up in tech with the other continent. Because I had more land I eventually caught up and of course my GNP and manufactured goods was much higher. I didn't check the victory page for a while, I forgot to, and then suddenly I look and Catherine's about 25 turns from a cultural victory!!! That saddened me because a similar defeat happened in one of my earlier games (gotta remember to check that screen regularly). So I thought the game was pretty much over. (I'm playing monarch, epic, as Washington). Sure, I've got SEALS but only 25 turns to make em and send em over. So I decide to at least try. I drop science to 0% and rush buy SEALS and transports. I already had battleships. I make a nice little stack of about 12 SEALS and sail em over to Cathy. On the power graph I'm significantly behind her, but I declare war anyway. With just 3 turns left before I lose the game, I declare war from outside her borders and sail to her nearly legendary city, I forget what it was called, and in one turn I take it. My battleships bombard the city defences to 0, and it's defended by about 4 infantry, 2 sam infantry. My SEALS have the pinch upgrade, most of them. So they take the city, about 3 of them surviving, and I raze it.
Cathy's navy pillaged my seafood after that but I sued for peace. I had to repeat that invasion twice, once against the Dutch and once against Gilgamesh. I finally won by space race. Is it just me or does this seem cheap? When the allies won WW2 they invaded Berlin and held it. They didn't make it into Berlin with just 200 soldiers, wounded ones at that. If my military had been truly better than Cathy's, to the point where I could have actually taken the city and held it, that would seem satisfactory, but I didn't. Her military was bigger than mine, she was more powerful. All I did was a sneak attack. Because ships can move like 6-7 tiles ina turn and her border only extends 3-4, and because she only had 6 units defending that city, I won the game. It seems really cheesy that a bunch of men armed with assault rilfes could burn a whole city to the ground. I mean, oddly enough, in this game nukes can't even obliterate a city - in fact nukes don't do a whole lot of damage when you've got bomb shelters. So why can a couple of marines instantly obliterate a city?
So I know I can turn off city razing. Maybe I'll do that, but the problem is city razing makes sense in the ancient age. The Romans did raze Carthage, after all. Or perhaps razing should take some time - more than just one turn. Anyway, if city razing was turned off I would have lost that game, probably. Also, if razing is turned off, early warfare will be more difficult. This game is a good example, I did take control of my continent fairly early, and that meant I rushed my nearest neighbour with axes and catas. In that early war I think I captured 2 of his cities and razed the other 4. There's no way I would have been able to afford to keep them all.

"no city raiding" might notch the game up one difficulty level, now that I think about it.

You know, even if you lost the city to Catherine, you would've -severely- crippled that city's cultural output, considering most buildings tend to get destroyed during the invasion.

true, but would the culture count have been reset to zero? All she had to do was raise the culture slider to 100% and she would have been mere turns to a culture victory. Also, she was doing indeed that. I could see her research rate and I could see she had the culture slider at 100.

Okay, does anyone know the answer to this? If I take an AI city and then they won it back, would the culture start at zero? What if I gifted it back to them? And since I'm on that...I can't remember, if I capture a wonder does it produce culture for me?

Milly said:

You know, even if you lost the city to Catherine, you would've -severely- crippled that city's cultural output, considering most buildings tend to get destroyed during the invasion.

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Probably not by enough to count. Wonders aren't destroyed and religions and corporations will still be present. So will nearby cottages. If she is 10 turns from victory, it might become 20.

No razing could make for a very exciting finish. It would mean that going for a space victory means building a VERY strong invasion fleet against potential culture wins.

It also gets pretty exciting if the culture candidate is a vassal of a strong military civ with nuclear weapons.

Culture doesn't zero.

They take it back, or you gift it, either way they get their culture back.

And no, captured wonders give no culture, though they do give their normal benefits.

-abs

noto said:

Okay, does anyone know the answer to this? If I take an AI city and then they won it back, would the culture start at zero? What if I gifted it back to them? And since I'm on that...I can't remember, if I capture a wonder does it produce culture for me?

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No it won't start at zero. They will keep their old culture. And their wonders won't produce culture for you - but you do get the other benefits.

If a player recaptures a city the culture carries on from where it was when she last owned the city. So if it was at 45,000 before then that is where it carries on from. Of course she will have lost all her cultural buildings and they will have to be rebuilt but she could raise the cultural slider and use corporations (which are not destroyed by capture). So a cultuarl victory can still be gained and you've only slowed it down. But that means you need to capture the city earlier and destroy the buildings before she gets close.

Also you can use espionage to destroy some buildings and to stop them being rebuilt. Spies can change civics. A corporation like Sids Sushi can be displaced by a competing corporation although that is easy to replace. Cottages used to provide commerce for the cultural slider can be pillaged by troops, bombed by carriers and guided missiles and blow up by spies. There are lots of ways to slow down a cultural victory without razing a city.

You are too hard on yourself. Your quick invasion to shut down the culture victory was great. I would be congratulating myself on snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and here you are worried it was too easy. Building an invasion fleet and sacking a nearly legendary city all in 25 turns is not easy. Further, anyone who has won a culture victory knows that it is a total gambit. It is often possible to win earlier than many other victory types but foreign invasion is always the fear. You expertly exploited the risk Cathy took.

i definately think city razing should not be allowed under some circumstances - for example the govermental civics. it seems stupid to me, that running democracy and emancipation, you can still commit mass murder on amazing scale with absoilutely no repercussion.

i think it should not be allowed under modern civics, or there should be severe punishments for doing it.

I don't know how to load a save on this website. I saved the game just before the invasion if anyone wanted to check it out. It's kinda funny. I think I saved it just as the boats hit her border, so any of you could relive those glorious moments. How do I upload a save?

thanks for the tips on the effects of capturing a city.

noto said:

I don't know how to load a save on this website. I saved the game just before the invasion if anyone wanted to check it out. It's kinda funny. I think I saved it just as the boats hit her border, so any of you could relive those glorious moments. How do I upload a save?

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When replying, scroll down to "Attach Files" and click the "Manage Attachments" button.

turn off cultural victory?

'No city razing' is definately an option.

I try to play games with options on that give me the most potential 'difficulty' or 'subtlety'. The ones that cause the most problems and complications.. like no city razing (is it realistic to completely wipe out all habitation in a city of millions of people? Even Nagasaki is lived in, nowadays), permanent alliances (Boy, can that screw you.. or win you the game), etc, etc.

If you turn on everything.. 'no razing', 'permanent alliances', 'require complete kills'.. I guarantee it'll make for a much more interesting experience.

I reckon city razing is realistically impossible if it's over about size 5. I'm not sure I am convinced that a city of a few hundred thousand people can just be obliterated that easily.

That said, I love razing so enforcing this could be less fun to play... I guess the "no city razing" option is probably the solution for anyone that feels strongly.

@ sarkun "you can still commit mass murder on amazing scale with absoilutely no repercussion."
Depends on how mass the murder has to be, but in my experience voters don't really care that much about people in different countries / with different skin colours. How often do civilian casualties in Iraq become headline news? Also, think about incidents like Mi Lai and Abu Ghraib: sure they causes some consternation in the elite press but did any American cities go into full scale revolt because of it?

On topic: it does seem strange to be able to raze cities of >100.000 people with one wounded marine. I don't know of any examples in post-medieval history of cities being completely razed. Considering the amount of trouble the nazi's had to go through to kill 6M jews imagine the difficulty of killing everybody in greater New York...

Maybe a sort of pillage action where one unit can kill one population point per turn would be more appropriate? With a substantial chance of producing a partizan (eg a rifleman with guerilla and woodsmen and % defense in cultural boundaries?) This could also significantly increase War Weariness to reflect the unpopularity of massacring other people?

Instead of invading and destroying the city, couldn't you have sent a large number of spies and caused a city revolt each turn? I've done this a number of times to push back a AI culture victory for 2-20 turns while my spaceship made it to Alpha Centari. While annoying since you were on different continents, it has the benefit of not causing war. You just need to be careful that the AI doesn't get a great artist.

vanatteveldt said:

Maybe a sort of pillage action where one unit can kill one population point per turn would be more appropriate? With a substantial chance of producing a partizan (eg a rifleman with guerilla and woodsmen and % defense in cultural boundaries?) This could also significantly increase War Weariness to reflect the unpopularity of massacring other people?

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Something like this might be a good idea. It could be as simple as X population points per turn dependant on your military presence in the city, or you could complicate it and involve citizens turning into partisans and/or unhappiness/diplomatic penalties for genocide dependant on what government you and the other AIs are under (for instance, under theocracy, slaughtering infidels wouldn't bother people as much as if you were under something else).