Abandon City?

[winddbourne]

Perhaps a better option would be a new unit, call it the "Hobo" or something, that represents one population point. Build a hobo and you lose one population from the city. Then the hobo moves to a different city, one you like, and joins up.

If you built enough hobos the city would eventually reach population size zero, and . . . poof, no more city. As suggested it would take a long time to build enough units to totally get rid of a size 10 or 15 city, but . . . it has two advantages.

One, you get rid of the city, freeing up land for your other cities to grow into. Which opens up a number of strategic options, plus allows you to get rid of badly placed cities that want to join your civilization.

Two, you don't actually lose all those people. If the hobo also carried with it a random religion from the city, and/or a percentage of the cities culture it would be even better. Of course hobos would be Strength 0 units. Perhaps prone to being captured, like catapaults or workers in Civ III.

It's a rough idea, but . . . it would allow you to get rid of (or move) a city, without taking a total loss on it, or somehow peacefully destroying a huge city in one turn with no risk.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Perhaps a better option would be a new unit, call it the "Hobo" or something, that represents one population point. Build a hobo and you lose one population from the city. Then the hobo moves to a different city, one you like, and joins up.

This is, of course, exactly how Civ3 worked. I liked the mechanism, but it certainly contributed to micromanagement and it was deliberately eliminated. It's hard to see the people who decided to eliminate it, now deciding to reverse that decision.

 

[winddbourne]

It is similar, in Civ III you lost population for building settlers and workers. The big difference here is that you don't HAVE to lose population to build workers or settlers.

In Civ III the micromanagement aspect came largely because every time you built a settler or worker in a city you WANTED to keep, you then had to relocate all it's people to make sure you were still working the best squares.

Here, you only build a hobo if you want to get rid of the city or need to cheaply grow up a newly founded metropolis. The micromanagement only comes into play when YOU want it to. Where before it was a standard part of the game that you couldn't get away from. If you wanted to grow your civilization, you had to lose population in your cities, and then try to micromanage things back into place.

Your right though, that it is unlikely firaxis will hit on this idea, unless a large number of people scream for it.

 

[Howitzah]

Random dispersal, maybe?

Say you could disband a city but the penalty was, you couldn't direct where the population went.

 

[DaviddesJ]

In Civ III the micromanagement aspect came largely because every time you built a settler or worker in a city you WANTED to keep, you then had to relocate all it's people to make sure you were still working the best squares.

I disagree. In Civ3, a very important part of good play was to systematically build workers in some cities in order to transfer population to other cities (with no intention of using them as workers). That's the micromanagement that would be reintroduced if this mechanism were restored.

I do understand your point that separating the "transfer population from one city to another" function from the "build workers to create improvements" would reduce the problem, in some ways.

 

[KingCruz]

Heheh, Hobo. I wonder what that would look like in the Civilopedia
"...One that is destitute and unemployed..."
Attributes:
Can only travel on Railroads

 

[Arkimedes999]

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[Shigga]

How about including an "abandon city" option that will only work with a pop of 1 or 2. Meaning you'd have to starve the city down to two. This city will only cost you which can be seen as a form of "penalty" for abandoning. But here comes the better part:
PLUS: The pop of the abandoned city will be distributed by percentage on other cities at random. That would also get rid of the possible anti-culture-flip exploit. To make it clear:
You've got a city you want to abandon with a pop of 2. Let's say, 51% belong to your civ, 49% to the other. Consequence of abandoning would be: One of your nearest cities would get +1 pop (random pick) as well as one of the nearest cities of the opponent.
Now let's say there's a city with 2 pop running 24% your ppl, 76% belong to your adversary. Abandoning the city would mean the adversary would gain either +1 pop on two of his nearest cities or a +2 on a single city (random pick).
As you all know through using hanging gardens, a pop boost can be a bad thing (sudden unhappiness or starvation), but it's not so bad as to pose a serious exploit vs AI. What do you think?

 

[XxtraLarGe]

I like the refugee idea. The Soviet Union abandoned several cities during WW2, and I think they even razed/pillaged them just so the Germans couldn't.

I'd make the refugee make work like this:
Cities can be immediately abandoned
You get 1 refugee for each population point
Refugees can only join cities, they can't found them
Refugees add unhappiness and unhealthiness to a city regardless of city size
Any captured refugees become workers

How about including an "abandon city" option that will only work with a pop of 1 or 2. Meaning you'd have to starve the city down to two. This city will only cost you which can be seen as a form of "penalty" for abandoning. But here comes the better part:
PLUS: The pop of the abandoned city will be distributed by percentage on other cities at random. That would also get rid of the possible anti-culture-flip exploit. To make it clear:
You've got a city you want to abandon with a pop of 2. Let's say, 51% belong to your civ, 49% to the other. Consequence of abandoning would be: One of your nearest cities would get +1 pop (random pick) as well as one of the nearest cities of the opponent.
Now let's say there's a city with 2 pop running 24% your ppl, 76% belong to your adversary. Abandoning the city would mean the adversary would gain either +1 pop on two of his nearest cities or a +2 on a single city (random pick).
As you all know through using hanging gardens, a pop boost can be a bad thing (sudden unhappiness or starvation), but it's not so bad as to pose a serious exploit vs AI. What do you think?

 

[bug9133]

Question: How do you make your own maps?

Question: How do you get to alpha centari

 

[GeT_Kane]

Question: How do you make your own maps?

Question: How do you get to alpha centari

Use worldbuilder to create our own maps.

 

[Raider62]

How can the abandon city feature still have not made it in the patches. Hello Fireaxis don't you read these forums???

 

[mrt144]

How can the abandon city feature still have not made it in the patches. Hello Fireaxis don't you read these forums???

They read. Populism is stupid though. If most, nay, many people wanted something unbalanced (oh wait, this is one of those things) you think they should hop to it and make it happen?

How far are you willing to go in saying that the company should impliment user ideas simply because a bunch of them like it?

 

[Raider62]

It was a good feature. It should be an option. Maybe someone can make a mod using the raze city after conguer ability...

 

[Poocho]

I agree that abandoning a city should be an option. I was just playing a MP game where I conquered an enemy city that I wanted destroyed, and then I accidentally chose to keep it--since that's what I usually do. The problem with it isn't that it's stealing tiles from one of my cities, but that it's too poorly-placed to be a useful city, and it drains my economy just to keep the stupid little population 1 city alive!

I'm still at war with the civ I took it from, so I can't just gift it over and recapture it unless I want to stop the war for 10 turns. Also, since I'm still at war with their mother civ and all of the city's population are of that civ, I see no difference between razing the city as soon as I get it and simply abandoning it now.

The only thing it seems I can do is try to get as much money out of it as I can to take a nibble out of the fortune it's draining from me.

It seems the best hope I have for a quick solution is to hope the enemy civ sends any unit up there to take it. I'll gladly step out of the way and roll out the red carpet for them to march through all of my land and troops and take it. I'd even rather they profited from it than for it to continue sucking my funds.

Sorry, I don't ususally get this annoyed. It just seems like such a simple problem to fix.

Just my thoughts,
Poocho

 

[DaviddesJ]

I wish the game would let you raze a city on the same turn that you capture it. That would avoid the problem of accidentally razing cities you wanted to keep, or accidentally keeping cities you wanted to raze. It seems not unreasonable to see what's in a city before making that decision (as opposed to trying to figure it out by zooming in to look for buildings!).

 

[Micromegas]

How about making this another espionage mission, one you can use on your own territory? There could be several possible penalties and opportunities attached to it, like a certain chance of unhappyness through out your empire (growing if there are enemy spys present, that could also give the opponent the choice to make that scandal public, thereby increasing unhappyness even more, perhaps even cause anarchy and/or raising his happyness for a period of time) and, as the best outcome, to put the blame on someone else, decreasing his relations worldwide for a time.

just a random idea.

 

[Menzies]

How about giving it to your neighbour, declaring war and then nuking the hell out of it [for fun] and then taking and razing that hopeless hole, just for fun!!!

 

[Pariah]

When a foreign city joins your civ due to cultural pressure, you are given the option to disband it. About the only time "disbanding" is allowed in Civ4 (as opposed to "razing").

Do you get a worker or settler if a defecting city is disbanded?

 

[Gooblah]

Question: How do you make your own maps?

Question: How do you get to alpha centari

Question 1: Enter Worldbuilder by creating a game, either through Play Now! or the Custom Game screen (assuming you want specific Civs). Enter the Options menu through a button onscreen or ctrl-o, then click on World builder, or you can just use ctrl-w.

Question 2: Alpha Centauri is the focus of the Space Race Victory. Build the Apollo Program Project, enabled by Rocketry, to be able to start building spaceship parts. In Vanilla and Warlords, you can only build the parts, and once you have all of them, your spaceship will launch. The first spaceship to launch will give that Civ a victory. In BTS, however, you can customize your spaceship, and the victory goes to the first Civ to reach Alpha Centauri. Thus, you can customize your ship for more speed, launch it later, but still win the victory!

Hope this helped!

On topic now, I think the options should exist. I would envision, in the Domestic Advisor, a button near each city name saying "Disband". However, you gain diplomatic demerits for "abandoning your people" and some unhappiness in your cities for the same amount of turns as the Slavery civic. A 50% chance of getting a Worker from the city would exist, but if foreign culture existed in the city you disbanded, the Worker be randomly assigned to a Civ based on how much culture of the Civ exists in the disbanded city.

For example, I play as Rome, and want to abandon a city with Korean (13%), French (5%), and German (10%) culture in it. That means there is a 72% chance that a spawned Worker would stay with me, 13% chance that it would be Korean, 10% it would be German, and 5% it would become French.