Conquering cities, trading maps and contacts

[Gonzalo84]

I just got Conquests and now that I'm playing a regular game (not an scenario) I got surprised when my warriors and archers just razed cities instead of conquering them. Also, even though I had sold Map Making to China and Greece, there was no option for map trading at the following turn. I have also established embassies but "military alliance" or even Contacts don't appear at the negotiations table.

 

[qummik]

Map trading is moved to Navigation and communication trading to Printing Press.
If conquered city has no culture and is size 1 it will be razed.

 

[Renata]

If you have an embassy you should be able to make alliances -- unless you and the civ you were talking to had no contacts in common, perhaps.

Gummik's answer about when cities get razed isn't quite the whole story; there are a few limited situations when you can keep a town that's size 1 with no current culture:
-- if the town was originally yours, you can always recapture it
-- if the town has a citizen of a nationality other than that of the civ you're at war with, you can always capture it (typically this happens when one civ capture's another's towns, then you capture them from their new owners)

Can't remember if there are any more.

Renata

 

[JMK]

If you have an embassy you should be able to make alliances -- unless you and the civ you were talking to had no contacts in common, perhaps.

Gummik's answer about when cities get razed isn't quite the whole story; there are a few limited situations when you can keep a town that's size 1 with no current culture:
-- if the town was originally yours, you can always recapture it
-- if the town has a citizen of a nationality other than that of the civ you're at war with, you can always capture it (typically this happens when one civ capture's another's towns, then you capture them from their new owners)

Can't remember if there are any more.

Renata

If the town has a Great Wonder.

 

[Tomoyo]

IIRC Great Wonders don't calculate into this. You can auto-raze a city with a Great Wonder in it...

 

[CuthaLion]

And contacts can be traded if you know an advance but I can't remember it now

 

[eddfire3]

Its printing press

 

[Dachs]

Navigation also lets you go into ocean squares w/o sinking, right?