`Capitals cannot be destroyed. Live with it and move on.`

[Socratatus]

What?

No.

WHY can`t capitals be destroyed? Explain yourselves, Dev.This is what it said about capitals in the civilopeadea.

I was also somewhat surprised by the rude tone. We PAY the Devs for the game. We PAy their WAGES and they talk to us like small children? maybe there are some small children here, but that`s not the point.

Give us a decent, polite reason and don`t tell us to `live with it and move on`.

End Rant.

 

[FeiLing]

I also think they should change every rule every time someone doesn't like it immediately via hotfix.

Like in Tennis? Why the <snip> would there be a net in the middle? That's super annoying, I mean were supposed to play the ball to each other, why put such a stupid obstacle there?

Moderator Action: Inappropriate language removed.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[SolDelta]

No, you can only mostly genocide an entire race, salt their fields and randsack their trading posts.

Oh, and nuke the city into oblivion without any hope of recovery.

 

[Vidszhite]

Capitals can't be destroyed because they all need to be owned for a domination victory. Destroying capitals would also make it so that the conquered can never get their original capital back, and so that no one else can conquer that city, in case someone else is after domination too.

Not to be rude, OP, but you are getting your pantsu in a bunch over relatively little. You aren't paying the devs' wages, the publisher does that. All we do is help the publisher recoup its investment. You are entitled to a good game, which we got. Your are not entitled to have your ass kissed. The tone you're complaining about is hardly rude and more on the side of humorous, which is common in the civilopedia. Deal with it and move on.

 

[Teaf]

I think you need to dismount from your soap box with a triple twist double back somersault. This question comes up time and time again and maybe they are just sick at answering it. There are huge core parts of the game that are detrimental on having conquered capital cities stay around, and maybe they just want it to be that way.

 

[sonicandfffan]

Besides the domination victory conditions, capitals are holy cities for religions if that civ founds a religion, it wouldn't be very good for the religious game if you could just eliminate the holy city by razing.

 

[EgyptRaider]

Capitals can't be destroyed because they all need to be owned for a domination victory. Destroying capitals would also make it so that the conquered can never get their original capital back, and so that no one else can conquer that city, in case someone else is after domination too.

Not to be rude, OP, but you are getting your pantsu in a bunch over relatively little. You aren't paying the devs' wages, the publisher does that. All we do is help the publisher recoup its investment. You are entitled to a good game, which we got. Your are not entitled to have your ass kissed. The tone you're complaining about is hardly rude and more on the side of humorous, which is common in the civilopedia. Deal with it and move on.

this formulates it pretty perfectly....

 

[Greizer85]

"Sire, I'm pleased to report that after 200 years of violent struggle and untold hardship we have finally captured vile Carthage from its perfidious owners!"

"Excellent my lad; see to it that the sowing of the salt and the burning of the buildings is started immediately. Oh, and don't forget the looting and the pillaging. First pillage, then burn of course. C'mon, run along now. The sooner we do this the sooner we can get home and retire with the luscious ladies."

"Umm, sire... There is a slight issue here. You see, Carthage cannot be razed."

"(stares at him dumbfounded) ... What do you mean it can't be razed? We just razed Syracuse, didn't we? Damn fine job, too. The rubble's so fine you could use it to lay roads on. Why would this city be any different?"

"Sire, it's because it's the capital of Carthage."

"(stares at him some more, looking increasingly confused) ... Why would that matter a fig? We'll burn the bureaucrats along with the rest! In fact we'll reserve the hottest fires especially for them! (serves them right for not renewing the mortgage on my summer cabin, he thought to himself)"

"Sire, it's because... Be-because... The gods ordained it?"

"Gods ordained it, eh? I see. And what if they ordained you a nice bout in the Libyan salt mines, too? So that I could see what your successor thinks of this issue? Eh, lad, what do you think about that idea?"

"Sire I will get the torches and the oil asap. Pardon the delay! Burn it is; burn and then pillage. Or was it the other way around? Anyway, haste is of the essence. See you back in Rome sire, hope you get good loot, ta-ta!"

"That's more like it, run along now. (mutters to himself) 'Gods ordained it'... The loons they hire these days! I've razed twenty capitals myself back in the first, second, third and fourth centuries. Why would the fifth be any different? If it is it doesn't make any sense, that's for damn sure."

 

[Evie94]

What?

No.

WHY can`t capitals be destroyed? Explain yourselves, Dev.This is what it said about capitals in the civilopeadea.

I was also somewhat surprised by the rude tone. We PAY the Devs for the game. We PAy their WAGES and they talk to us like small children? maybe there are some small children here, but that`s not the point.

Give us a decent, polite reason and don`t tell us to `live with it and move on`.

End Rant.

awesome sense of humour you got there champ

 

[Jdoug312]

Like stated earlier, it was a joke. Definitely one the OP missed though, I guess.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Right.

Designing all of our strategy games by committee is a surefire way to get mechanics that mesh well together and provide interesting gameplay.

Maybe they treat us like children because a room full of us has the game design skill of a child?

 

[ElliotS]

Right.

Designing all of our strategy games by committee is a surefire way to get mechanics that mesh well together and provide interesting gameplay.

Maybe they treat us like children because a room full of us has the game design skill of a child?

Hey, I resent that. When I was a child (Junior High) I designed a game that's better than the majority of Adults. (Because most adult's don't design games.) Now that I'm in here they need to speak to us like grown-ups or I'll tell on them.

 

[Greizer85]

So many white knights around here it seems. Looks like a Diablo forum that I frequent. Maybe you should ride off into the sunset and go start a kingdom of your own (just make sure the capital cannot be razed! ). Now Civ V is a grand game but this is one of its flaws. If a mechanic leads to a situation where capitals cannot be razed, then maybe you should re-consider that mechanic before you commit it into the game? That's why the 'deal with it' clause is there I suppose: the devs know that the no-raze rule makes zero sense so there's no real argument; but it would break the game to remove it at this point so it stays for the foreseeable future. They inherited Shafer's decisions after all... Not a position I'd envy!

 

[PhilBowles]

Capitals can't be destroyed because they all need to be owned for a domination victory.

This was the case in vanilla, when the coding didn't allow votes to be 'destroyed' for the same reason (if a civ or CS was conquered, the owner of the capital/CS got the vote). That issue was resolved in G&K, so clearly the game can accommodate changing victory conditions in its current form.

As it is, this rationale for keeping the "capitals can't be razed" rule makes as much sense as a rule that you can't destroy any civ because you need to be influential over all of them for a culture victory. The domination victory could easily be coded so that destroyed capitals don't count towards it, exactly the way culture victory now works.

I think you need to dismount from your soap box with a triple twist double back somersault. This question comes up time and time again and maybe they are just sick at answering it. There are huge core parts of the game that are detrimental on having conquered capital cities stay around, and maybe they just want it to be that way.

There's very little in the game that's contingent on having original capitals stay around - in fact the domination condition is the only one. A civ that has its capital conquered gets a new capital, which functions identically except that it can be razed if captured. If a civ's wiped out, you can liberate it by freeing any of their cities (which then becomes their capital until and unless their original capital is restored), not just the original capital. There's a diplomatic modifier for capturing an original capital, but that remains entirely unchanged if the captured capital is then destroyed.

By and large it's not clear why you'd often want to raze capitals, and in reality this was done sufficiently rarely that exceptions have become notorious (Carthage, Persepolis). Moreover you can always imagine the city's persistence as a situation where a capital is destroyed but rebuilt on the same spot because of its national importance - this happened to London after its Great Fire, to Lisbon after its earthquake etc. But it makes no sense in the current version of Civ V for there to be no option to do this in the rare instances you'd want to.

Besides the domination victory conditions, capitals are holy cities for religions if that civ founds a religion, it wouldn't be very good for the religious game if you could just eliminate the holy city by razing.

This is a fair point, however does anyone know if a civ that loses its capital and then founds a religion will get its holy city in a razeable capital? I suspect this would have to be the case, unless it's a condition of founding a religion that you must be in possession of the original capital. You'd lose religious pressure, and yes it would be bad for the religion, but is there anything that actually requires a surviving holy city or would break the game if it wasn't there? It's perfectly reasonable that a religion would suffer if its holy city was destroyed, and many would argue that being unable to wholly eradicate a religion is another minor issue with Civ V (and let's be realistic - the capital thing is a very minor issue).

 

[Greizer85]

It'd make domination easier though, since you could quickly snipe the capital and move on to the next civ. But given how easy it is to defend cities in Civ V, maybe that is a moot point. And if you think about it from a realism pov -- how much steam do you think Russia would have left with Moscow razed to the ground, or China without Beijing, etc? With their top brass and government infrastructure effectively wiped out... Exactly.

 

[PhilBowles]

It'd make domination easier though, since you could quickly snipe the capital and move on to the next civ. But given how easy it is to defend cities in Civ V, maybe that is a moot point. And if you think about it from a realism pov -- how much steam do you think Russia would have left with Moscow razed to the ground, or China without Beijing, etc? With their top brass and government infrastructure effectively wiped out... Exactly.

In reality you'd never have any such thing as a "domination victory". Civs that lose their capitals are generally under occupation - the Japanese didn't take Beijing and leave the rest of China alone in the 1930s. If not, they'd suffer as much from having their capital lost and in enemy hands as they would having it lost and destroyed. In Civ V, in any case, the capital is usually buffered from enemy territory by surrounding cities, making it difficult to approach without going through the rest of the civ anyway.

I've had games where I've aimed to take a capital, and to do so I've incidentally had to wipe out most of the civ's cities to get there.

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: This thread is a rant, rather than something looking for discussion. Thus closed.