An evil but good way to hold a city

[Hunter]

Ok... First off I in no way support the real world version of this but I sure do support it in game.

Also if this has been said before I’m sorry, I just got my computer running again and so have not been following the threads to much.

Here it is:
So you’re minding your own business when suddenly your forced to go to war, or maybe you just want your neighbors land. You will have to take cities and cultural conversions can be such a pain. So what do you do???? Well you could burn the city. But hey... that would be naughty. So what I recommend is to change production to workers and make everyone an entertainer. And of course you will want to protect them from their former oppressors by severing all roads that don’t connect to your empire. "Well hold on there" you say "wont that lead to starvation?” Why yes, yes it will, but its the best for every one involved.
You get workers, the city becomes less crowded by dropping to one (its natural selection which is natures way) and is easily converted to the correct way of thinking (that is to say converted to your culture). If the enemy takes the city he could, at one population, by accident burn it down making him/her look bad which can help you make alliances. Once the population hits one then treat the deserving survivor to hurried production of things like cathedrals thus making them more supporting of your understandable domination of their people. Of course you will want to help them feel safe by having around 3 of your best defensive units in the city.

This I think is just a nice way to make them love your leadership. Its win, win for everyone.
:vampire:

 

[AlanH]

Agreed, except for one thing. Not entertainers. Make them taxmen and get gold while you starve them. And if you are running a minimum research program at 10% science you can turn it off entirely, take the 10% to profit, and make one of the foreigners a scientist to continue research at the 40 turn rate.

Also note that you have to keep revisiting the city every turn to ensure that they are doing what you want, because as they starve your well-meaning governor will assign them to work the land, defeating the object. This happens whatever settings you use for governors - I never turn them on, for instance, but it still happens.

 

[Hunter]

Very good points (especialy the one about the "well-meaning governor ") and I like the tax idea better I will have to try it. My only fear is that tax men may allow for more riots.

 

[Puppeteer]

Originally posted by Hunter
My only fear is that tax men may allow for more riots.

Specialists won't riot: only working citizens will riot. So if you have a captured size 12 city with 1 scientist, 11 taxmen, no luxes, no lux tax and no happy buildings it won't riot because there are no unhappy citizens.

 

[sir0x]

Yea! Nice strategy
I must try it later

 

[Rik Meleet]

This is actually a very old and proven tactic. It's usually described in ways as: "I put <city name> on a starvation diet".

It has disadvantages though; the workers are not your nationality; but keep their old nationality and thus work half as fast. Also you might get a rep hit and a city smaller than 6 citizens are easier to capture through a counterattack. Also you're not building up culture by building workers.

Alternatives: Start a temple and put all citizens as taxmen/scientists or even pop rush your temple (decreases citizen-numbers also, but has worse hit rep). This decreases your city in size and increases it's culture.

 

[Flavor Dave]

You also could starve the city, and have it build explorers. They're nice to have, for pillaging foreign lands. And they're cheap.