A little Xmas present: peek into city before raze/keep-decision

[Belisar]

Very nice.
For me, this is one of the most annoying interface problems in the game and related to the issue that you can't abandon cities
This is the only reason for me to use WB, if I don't want a city anymore, I delete it.

 

[Nials]

Good find even if it doesn't always work. Thanks for the tip

Merry Christmas!

 

[DMOC]

Even if it doesn't always work? When wouldn't it? (I've never tested this out but I plan on having this idea in the back of my head the next time I capture a city.)

 

[Nials]

I have yet to actually test it ingame but my understanding is that you have to time it so you hit F10 right at the moment you capture the city but prior to the raze/keep options appear.

 

[Levgre]

another tip is, even without a ton of espionage points, you can still see what buildings are in a city with a spy. Go to the "sabotage building" option, and you will have a list of all the buildings in the city that you can sabotage.

The one limit, is a building won't show up there unless you have enough points to sabotage it. But that happens with much less points than city visibility.

 

[obsolete]

The one thing I wish they would make out better is the Stables. They seem hard sometimes to detect. This is only because the game INSISTS on filling in a lot of townhouses in the city for FANCY-LOOKS, which actually don`t have much to do with gameplay but clutter.

 

[Joshua368]

The one thing I wish they would make out better is the Stables. They seem hard sometimes to detect. This is only because the game INSISTS on filling in a lot of townhouses in the city for FANCY-LOOKS, which actually don`t have much to do with gameplay but clutter.

Well it'd be silly if a city consisted of a barracks, library, and marketplace with no actual houses.

 

[obsolete]

Then add the:

HOUSE +1 Pop

Everyone knows a city has houses, we don`t need to see them. There shouldn`t be stuff in there that had no real function of indication.

 

[carl corey]

Don't you think having the option of simply going into the city after you captured it and before you decided what to do with it is simpler than modifying the graphics?

 

[obsolete]

It is less button clicks to just look at it, versus going inside it. But if there is an inside city view icon added, I wouldn`t complain. Obviously, it was Firaxis`goal to allow you to see in detail what each city had without having to go inside that city.

 

[Levgre]

that would be stupid, imo, if they limited houses. Semi-realistic cities are needed for flavor. If anything I'd wish the city graphics were bigger, with more houses, like when you got to huge sizes the buildings started sprawling into surrounding tiles.

 

[Gliese 581]

that would be stupid, imo, if they limited houses. Semi-realistic cities are needed for flavor. If anything I'd wish the city graphics were bigger, with more houses, like when you got to huge sizes the buildings started sprawling into surrounding tiles.

The new col game has this to great effect. To bad they messed up on the vitals. Well we can always dream of a patched/modded bright future..

 

[Airefuego]

It should be obvious when looking at the wonders built, and what they popped. You know the merchants wont be in there, and you know they also threw their GP away when the GA starts.

Kudos to you if you can keep track of this and get it right!

So - if, as you claim, it's 'obvious' which buildings and great people are in a given city, then there should be no problem with having a look around inside before you decide to keep/raze.

Why should a player have to zoom in and squint at half-obscured buildings, and then scroll back through 2000 years of event logs of G People being born, in order to make the raze decision?

Why should this sort of tedious micro-attention-to-detail be required when the player's armies are ALL OVER the city, with obvious and immediate access to knowledge about the city and its contents?

Come to think of it, if I've had a spy embedded in an AI city for 10 turns, who then triggers a revolt and immediately jumps back to my OWN CAPITAL - how can it be argued that I should not have immediate access to every bit of 'obvious' knowledge about the city right there on the screen? Has my spy lost its memory as well as my troops all wearing blindfolds?


The trick outlined by the OP sounds to me not just useful, but entirely justified.

 

[Jeff1787]

The trick outlined by the OP sounds to me not just useful, but entirely justified.

Amen to that!!