Annexing in CEG3.5.3/CAT seems broken

[gdwitt]

See this thread for a background.

I took 2 cities from the huns and received the promised unhappiness.
There was no option to build a courthouse.
I annexed the cities and happiness did not change for the better.
I was able to take control and build what I wished.

IOW, there does not appear to be any penalty to annexing other than policy cost.

A related issue: When I have a puppet and press the button to see city, I cannot see what building are in it which is the most important decision in deciding to sack it.

Another bug: When I took one city, my city showed 0 health. I lost all my units in the city when a nearly dead Impi took back the city. The city health jumped to 50% for him and I had to storm it again with my army, losing 4 more units. Why does the AI get this instant city health bonus?

Of these three issues, the puppet is the most pressing.
I can use IGE to work around the other two issues.

 

[Lissindiel]

Another bug - sometimes game doesn't ask me what to do with a captred sity. It just puppets it. And there is no "Raze" button, so I'm stuck with 3 american sities in the middle of nowhere, unable to destroy them.

 

[WileyNg]

Another bug - sometimes game doesn't ask me what to do with a captred sity. It just puppets it. And there is no "Raze" button, so I'm stuck with 3 american sities in the middle of nowhere, unable to destroy them.

I posted it before as well but no one respond.
Sometimes it didn't ask me what to do after conquering a city. The city goes immediately as "annexed".
That time I was using Venice so I turned out having multiple annexed cities in my empire.

 

[Myrion]

Opening and closing the science screen is said to bring back that menu to choose.

 

[Thalassicus]

Yes, the lack of a popup box is a known issue in the unmodded game which will be fixed in Firaxis' official fall patch. You can work around it by pressing F6 twice to open and close the tech tree. I think it's a problem that happens when we press escape to exit the tech tree.

Occupied cities produce more unhappiness than cities with a courthouse. This is set by UNHAPPINESS_PER_CAPTURED_CITY in Ceg/Cities/CEC_Data.xml. Courthouses can also provide other benefits with late-game policies. I don't know why you might be unable to build a courthouse in an occupied city. I don't think the mod changes that part of the game.

 

[stackpointer]

This was supposedly fixed in the hotfix: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=507531

When pressing escape, the tech tree now uses the same close logic as hitting F6 or the close button. This was previously causing the pop-up system to fail in-game. After the error occurred, no more pop-ups would be shown until it is cleared by reloading, or by hitting "F6" multiple times. This would be most noticeable when capturing an enemy city and the player would not be able to choose to annex, puppet, or raze, as it would just annex it automatically.

 

[lockstep]

This was supposedly fixed in the hotfix: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=507531

The hotfix indeed fixed it for me.

 

[gdwitt]

I haven't seen a courthouse in any version of CEG or CAT posted in the past month.
Taking a city gives me four options and I cannot remember the bottom two.
I like the popup as the array of option.
But annexing a city does not cause any extra unhappiness so I do it right away.
I think there should be a big unhappiness penalty.
I get the happy hit when I take the city not when I annex it.

I could not spy a courthouse in IGE which I always use plus CEG/CAT and infoaddict.

 

[Volver]

I've encountered this bug frequently. A few observations:

- When I chose Wrath, it's been doing what the tooltip says: occupies, kills half the population, spikes my unhappiness, then burns down in however many turns are necessary. Choosing this I enter the city screen to sell off buildings, and it lets me auction them all off immediately, but I don't any gold for doing so, just the maintenance reduction. Unsure if this is by design.

- Mercy spares the population as it says and puppets the city. No resistance period. I then have the normal option to annex. Doing so seems add the city to my empire as if it were mine all along - no courthouse, no "occupied", no extra unhappiness. Also, choosing this option restores the city to half health.

- Force kills half population and puppets like it says, but suffers the resistance period. Choosing this also leaves the city at zero or essentially zero health. It and its garrison are completely vulnerable. It's disheartening to lose a level 6 or 7 or 8 unit you've had since the Classical era next turn when the scrub partisan resistance unit sweeps in from the capital and reclaims it, despite one's best efforts to clear out the area of enemy units before capture .

- A few times I've chosen wrath and then for whatever reason changed my mind and stopped the razing. THIS results in the expected occupied cities consequences: resistance lingers for however long, policy costs go up, the courthouse is available on the build list, and I suffer extra unhappiness until its built.

- Occasionally I don't get the option screen upon capture. When this happens, opening/closing the tech screen DOESN'T prompt it to appear. The city puppets with no population loss and no added unhappiness, nor does it resist or ever build anything. As if the city fell into some no-man's-land, off the grid. The solution to this is saving and reloading the game, and upon reentering I'm greeted with the expected unhappiness and a puppet with its pre-capture population intact. It still doesn't function (build) however, and then I just have to take the policy hit and annex it, which it does like a mercy or force puppet with no courthouse or occupation, as if I built it.

This seems to happen much more frequently with capitals, and failing to save/reload after it does will cause all subsequent captured cities to be treated this way. I exploited this once to go on an unhappiness-free conquest binge. The next time I loaded up that game I found myself with a 160 happiness deficit (doh).

It seems to be improved since the patch, not failing to give the capture options nearly as often. The no occupation/no courthouses for annexed cities is the same though.

 

[stackpointer]

Thank you for your extensive bug report regarding this issue. This is exactly the type of report that is especially useful for solving bugs.