Bulldozer

[Queebada]

Hey, I'm wondering if its possible to do the following:
Abandon Cities (like in civ III)
Sell/demolish buildings. (Demolishing the UN could be handy sometimes methinks)

Or are there any modes that would allow me to do this?

 

[lymond]

No, not really. You can capture cities with wonders like UN and raze them though. You get gold for captureing cities.

Don't know any mods with this feature, but they mod about everything imaginable, so who knows....

 

[Choggy]

I think it would give the player too much of an advantage - you could (for example) prevent the AI from ever getting an AP diplo win by razing cities that get the AP religion. Also, it's a bit 'gamey' - you just massacring you own population for no good reason!

 

[Queebada]

What about getting x amount of settlers for abandoning cities equal to the population number. (So a population 6 city would give 6 settlers.

 

[Ghpstage]

What about getting x amount of settlers for abandoning cities equal to the population number. (So a population 6 city would give 6 settlers.

This would make it even more abuseable, people would just settle an early super food city to grow while building warrior escorts to disband when grown for an extreme super REX!

 

[Choggy]

That's definitely over-powered! I'd just find a site with plenty of floodplains farms and voila - one mega settler-farm.

I think you'd need a severe happy penalty in the rest of your cities if you did this, something along the lines of 'Please don't kill us!'

 

[Queebada]

Or how about this: if a city is disbanded then cities round about it jump up in population. It could work like this: say a pop 3 city was abandoned nd there were 3 cities within say a 6 tile radius then tney gsin +1 pop instantly. This could include forgien cities depending on the culture level.

 

[Choggy]

But then you'd make slavery/drafting overpowered by using this as an easy way to replace whipped/drafted population.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I don't really understand why Civ IV made it so cities weren't abandonable, to be honest.

What you could do is declare war on someone and leave the city undefended. Hopefully, the AI will take it and you can take it back and raze it then.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I think it would give the player too much of an advantage - you could (for example) prevent the AI from ever getting an AP diplo win by razing cities that get the AP religion. Also, it's a bit 'gamey' - you just massacring you own population for no good reason!

But the AP victory itself is gamey. :3 And some people are psychotic and would massacre tons of people for idiotic reasons. :S

Maybe a "depopulate" feature. It costs a certain amount of resources and turns while a city slowly loses size and eventually goes away. However, in the meantime you must pay maintenance for it. It would take much longer to depopulate a large city than a small one. A size 5 city should take 20 turns, but a size 20 city should take like 200 (!) so depopulating those becomes infeasible.

Other suggested requirements:
-- Requires at least 75% culture owned so you can't just depopulate captured cities like that.
-- Requires Communism, Fascism, or being in the Police State civic.
-- Minimum of 3 pop, and existence of 50 turns.
-- Buildings are sold back to you as gold at 1/4 their hammer cost, gold is collected once every 4 turns but at least one building is removed per turn.
-- Requires 100 gold/pop (25 gold/pop if in Police State), if you want to stop, you must pay 200 gold per/pop of the original city at the time
-- +1 unhappiness in all cities while this is going on per city. "We no longer feel our homes are safe." +10 in the city being destroyed.
-- May not contain the Palace, AP, or UN. So you can't just self destruct that.
-- May not offer cities being depopulated in trades or war concessions. If it is cancelled, you must wait 50 turns to offer it up.

So this would make it a bad idea, but still one could if they insisted. But hey maybe that stupid city that you misplaced and blocked off other cities can finally be dealt with!

 

[Turquoiside]

A size 5 city should take 20 turns, but a size 20 city should take like 200 (!) so depopulating those becomes infeasible.

Unless you whip/draft that large city back to oblivion before you disband it.

Although I hate it when I keep a city and it then turns out it was better off razed, this isn't something that needs changing imo. Even it was to be changed, getting rid of a bad city is already decent justification; you certainly don't need bonus Settlers or Gold from it.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Hmm, alright, fair enough. Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to disband a city that is too old as well? (That'd require less prereqs for obvious reasons)

I guess the main thing is just that it's a bit weird how you can't get rid of stuff you build.

 

[Choggy]

But the AP victory itself is gamey. :3 And some people are psychotic and would massacre tons of people for idiotic reasons. :S

True, AP is gamey. Strangely enough, a few days ago I was thinking about exactly what the OP suggested as a nerf for the AP (have only recently upgraded from Vanilla to BtS and think it's the worst part of the game). However it'd need to be done carefully otherwise it could be exploited. [/QUOTE]

Maybe a "depopulate" feature. It costs a certain amount of resources and turns while a city slowly loses size and eventually goes away. However, in the meantime you must pay maintenance for it. It would take much longer to depopulate a large city than a small one. A size 5 city should take 20 turns, but a size 20 city should take like 200 (!) so depopulating those becomes infeasible.

You can already depopulate a city with whipping though? In fact there are times when depopulating for the sake of depopulating is beneficial for maintenance costs if a city has grown too quickly.

Other suggested requirements:
-- Requires at least 75% culture owned so you can't just depopulate captured cities like that.
-- Requires Communism, Fascism, or being in the Police State civic.
-- Minimum of 3 pop, and existence of 50 turns.
-- Buildings are sold back to you as gold at 1/4 their hammer cost, gold is collected once every 4 turns but at least one building is removed per turn.
-- Requires 100 gold/pop (25 gold/pop if in Police State), if you want to stop, you must pay 200 gold per/pop of the original city at the time
-- +1 unhappiness in all cities while this is going on per city. "We no longer feel our homes are safe." +10 in the city being destroyed.
-- May not contain the Palace, AP, or UN. So you can't just self destruct that.
-- May not offer cities being depopulated in trades or war concessions. If it is cancelled, you must wait 50 turns to offer it up.

I like the idea of paying gold to raze a city (you could justify it by saying that the razing units are being paid extra as mercenaries to carry out genocide) . Not too sure about the turn rules though..after all you can capture an enemy city and raze it one go. I think that a civ-wide happiness penalty would be essential though. Something like 20% of the population of all your other cities go unhappy for 10 turns?

So this would make it a bad idea, but still one could if they insisted. But hey maybe that stupid city that you misplaced and blocked off other cities can finally be dealt with!

I dunno...misplaced cities don't really penalise you, they're just sub-optimal. You can always run down a poorly placed city by giving all the useful BFC tiles to other surrounding cities.

I think this is an idea with legs...how to fit it in without unbalancing the game is difficult though.

 

[Archon_Wing]

True, AP is gamey. Strangely enough, a few days ago I was thinking about exactly what the OP suggested as a nerf for the AP (have only recently upgraded from Vanilla to BtS and think it's the worst part of the game). However it'd need to be done carefully otherwise it could be exploited.

People have suggested "inquisitor" units. Sounds like a good idea to me, but it would be a bit more complex.

You can already depopulate a city with whipping though? In fact there are times when depopulating for the sake of depopulating is beneficial for maintenance costs if a city has grown too quickly.

Which is the main thing I overlooked. Basing it on size would just cause people to whip the city down before destroying it. Maybe it could be based on time it existed and culture for cost and time it takes to destroy the city. It's only natural it's harder to destroy a city that's been rooted.

I like the idea of paying gold to raze a city (you could justify it by saying that the razing units are being paid extra as mercenaries to carry out genocide) . Not too sure about the turn rules though..after all you can capture an enemy city and raze it one go. I think that a civ-wide happiness penalty would be essential though. Something like 20% of the population of all your other cities go unhappy for 10 turns?

I was just thinking about something where they "redevelop" the area and reimburse the population to move, but I guess this is just however you view it.

I dunno...misplaced cities don't really penalise you, they're just sub-optimal. You can always run down a poorly placed city by giving all the useful BFC tiles to other surrounding cities.

I think this is an idea with legs...how to fit it in without unbalancing the game is difficult though.

Yea, it's gonna be hard to balance... I'm not an expert by any means. Though I suppose it'd take a cruel as hell ruler to wipe out a city because they messed up the plans.

Basically, I want this feature to be infeasible so it doesn't affect strategy too much, instead it's just something for the especially OCD or bored to play around with.

 

[Choggy]

Inquisitor units? Would they be invisible like spies? (as in 'Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition'?).

Sorry. I'll get me coat...Taxi!

 

[nfw]

LOR has an inquisitor unit.

Wouldn't it be better to have 1 single junk city with the AP religion than none at all. You can always defy any resolution you dislike but can't be the target of a holy war.

 

[God-Emperor]

Caveman 2 Cosmos has an abandon city/destroy buildings feature, accessible via a keyboard shortcut - I don't think there is a button for it so it can be easy to miss. (C2C has just about everything. It's one of the major points of the mod as its team uses the "more is more" theory of content.)

 

[rah]

I don't really understand why Civ IV made it so cities weren't abandonable, to be honest.

What you could do is declare war on someone and leave the city undefended. Hopefully, the AI will take it and you can take it back and raze it then.

I think I tried this once and when I took the city back, it didn't give me the option to raze it.

 

[Queebada]

Perhaps the city was still in resistance?

 

[capnvonbaron]

Another way to "depopulate" a city:

1) Run caste system
2) run so many merchants/scientists/artists that the city starves down.