capturing a city - return control to previous owner?

[asmodeus81]

I remember reading in Sullas walkthrough before the game came out that he returned a city to the control of the civ that originally controlled it, and it was an option when he captured it.

In my last game I'd finished securing control of my section of the world and the resources I required, and was getting bored of just building. The Greeks on the other side of the planet had spent the entire game building up huge armies and slowly conquering the Germans and Americans to their south. I restationed most of my military over to America and started taking the ex American and German cities from that base, but I never had the option to return control to the original country - even in a city that had 85% German culture.

I ended up giving one of the cities to the Americans by going into diplomacy and giving it as a gift, but I wanted to be doing proper liberation of cities, so I ended up keeping the rest for myself. I guess there must be some type of time limit on it? Has anyone else had the option to return control to the original builder of the city?

 

[Yzman]

I think it has to be something like this.

America is at war with Greece. You are allied with America. America loses a city to Greece. While that was is still going on, you can recapture it and you will have the option to return it.

 

[spa]

You can give any city you want to the AI whether or not they had it or not. I'm pretty sure what Sulla meant was that after he captured the city, he opened up the diplomacy screen with his ally and picked the city out from the list of all his cities to give as a gift.

 

[Yzman]

No, there is an option to give it back to an ally that originally controlled it. I have had it happen in my games, it happens on the same screen that says, raze, install governer etc. It happens in the scenario I described I am pretty sure.