City Conquest Rules

[MechatronicJazz]

One thing we have to keep in mind is that we dont want to encourage building a city and then granting independence only so that you can come back 200 years later and keep all the buildings the independents have built there. (i.e. Russia)

Actually, that wouldn't necessarily be a problem, as long as there's still a trade off of some kind to balance it. A lot of large empires had regions that were semi-autonomous or drifted in and out of control, so granting independence to cities to allow them to develop without paying for them could be made into a valid strategy. It just depends whether it would be easy enough to balance.

 

[ngazi]

The problem with bombardment is in real history very little of warfare consisted of bombardment, as interpreted as artillery and missile barrages. Walls and forts are everywhere because there were no high explosives and sapping effectiveness was limited. Bombardment in Civ should be interpreted as besieging, but it doesn't make sense that only "siege units" can do it.

Based on thinking of bombardment as siege time, buildings generally do not become destroyed and unrecoverable during the initial siege. They may become ineffective during the siege, but even if it was to be sacrificed for material, it could be restored. If the defenders were to lose though, it is possible the building would be unrecoverable. If the city were besieged or retaken, it would be interesting if the build is destroyed but cost reduced.

But in general I think the vanilla mechanic makes sense enough.

 

[Leoreth]

The idea is that it's more an abstract sense of fighting occuring around the city, with more bombardment being indicative of a prolonged siege that would in turn lead to more damage to the city.

 

[Pavel Chichikov]

I don't follow... do you plan to remove razing entirely?

 

[Enyavar]

I don't follow... do you plan to remove razing entirely?

That was never up for discussion, I hope. This thread was/is dedicated for people voicing their ideas which options should be in the conquest dialogue besides the keep/raze options; because we felt there should be other options too.

If Leoreth already made a decision which ideas he wants to think about further, he hasn't told us yet. So read the thread and post your own 2 cents worth of new ideas, and maybe it's an idea that Leo picks up.

 

[Leoreth]

This thread isn't really about razing. Actually I think I have been pretty explicit in the OP about what problems motivated starting this discussion.

 

[Leoreth]

Okay, I started looking into this. My initial assumptions turned out to be correct. The decision to convert significant culture to the new owner whenever a city is conquered has basically ruined how city conquest works otherwise, especially when recapturing cities. Because the base rules already have exemptions in place when recapturing one of your cities, in which case the city loses neither population nor buildings. However, the game uses city culture to determine if you are the legitimate owner recapturing the city, i.e. you still need to have the most culture in the city for it to count as reconquest. This is generally a good rule in my opinion because it naturally stops applying over time as the new owner adds their own culture, but with the culture conversion rule it immediately stops applying because usually the new owner already has majority culture.

Over time this might actually have a significant impact on areas where cities change hands more often. I considered whether I should change this rule but it's quite simple and elegant and it's hard to come up with something better. So instead I will replace culture conversion entirely, and come up with a better solution to enable control over some recently conquered territories.

By the way, this is also why culture garrisons are much less important in DoC than usual because the amount of garrison units required to keep a city pacified also depends on the culture differential.

 

[Leoreth]

Yes, I am thinking something similar. Instead of culture being immediately converted on conquest, the new owner will receive a share of all existing culture but that share will decrease over time. This is different from the current rules in that the conqueror will also continue to receive a share of new culture generated by other civs after the conquest. That might even be a good effect because it prevents the new city being smothered by a high culture neighbouring city better. And of course you now need to invest more into culture buildings right away so they can go into effect before the effect wears off.

This new rule makes it easier to revert the culture conversion once the city changes hands again. I am still working on the implementation details, and design decision such as how long the conversion will last before it has expired completely.

 

[Leoreth]

I looked into the building destruction rules a bit more, it seems there are three types of buildings:
1) always captured (wonders)
2) always destroyed: as far as I can tell, military buildings (e.g. barracks), defensive buildings (e.g. walls) and culture buildings (everything that produces culture per turn)
3) everything else has a 66% chance of being captured instead of being destroyed

I think we can introduce a more nuanced system here, for example culture buildings should have a chance to survive (especially where culture is only a secondary attribute, like libraries) and there can be different tiers where advanced buildings are more likely to be destroyed than basic buildings.

 

[Tigranes]

Settlers settling in captured city and adding buildings is the most brilliant idea. Very realistic and balanced if we teach AI to use it...

So great to see this implemented. But who can tell if AI learned how to use it and not abuse it (i.e. constantly train settlers for buildings in one city neglecting the other tasks).

 

[Leoreth]

I didn't mess too much with the AI because of the dangers you mentioned. The AI will never train settlers for buildings but if it has settlers left over but no current intention to settle somewhere it will consider it (based on the building value compared to the settler cost). Especially because before the AI would actually sometimes disband settlers it didn't currently need so it's good that it has another use for them now.

 

[Leoreth]

So with the latest update I have exhausted my to do list for this feature, but I expect there may still be bugs or balance issues with it, so please keep an eye out for what is going on during city conquest.

 

[Tigranes]

With the new city conquest rules and Viking UP doubling the effect of sacking it is possible to accumulate 3K long before 1500. With intense raiding 1250 can be possible and pretty historical: consolidation of the last of the 3 Viking kingdoms, Sweden, under Birger Jarl . This new deadline for 3rd Viking UHV can also pave road to the future Sweden civ being born in 1250.