Conquest/domination - to raze or to keep?

[Si_Lurker]

I started focusing on conquest/domination victories on pangea maps.

Generally on standard maps, 2-4 highly productive cities is enough to build enough military to be able to conquer anyone.

Herein comes a dilema - what to do with conquered cities:

- If I keep them (razing and resettling close by with more appropriate layout is generally good), I incure huge monetary penalty and I have to crank out defenders and workers in order to maintain them. For the greater part of the game, even cities from the first neighbour you conquered will just be rebuilding themselves (forge, granary, lighthouse, courthouse, market, grocery, library, culture/happiness) without significantly contributing to your military or economy.

- If I decide to raze them, without claiming the land with my cities or cultural borders, others will resettle the area (on continent maps, you can usually seal the coast with cultural borders and backsettle latter) and I will have to reconquer cities built by opponents latter, thus delaying victory.

What is the best approach here, what do other warmongers do?

 

[cckerberos]

Unless a city is in a useless location, I will usually keep it (in fact, sometimes I play with the razing cities option turned off). That's not always the best choice from a financial standpoint (though I disagree about how long it takes for a city to become productive again) but I like it.

 

[Tremo]

Ask yourself a few ' yes or no'-questions;

- Does the city have any valueble resources you don't have yet?
- Does the city have sufficient culture (low culture cities are near useless, have little resources and take too much effort to build up)?
- Has the city developped well? (population, size, etc)
- Does the city have already contructed tile improvements? (Makes it way easier to strengthen it after conquest)
- Does the city have the same religion as you? (makes it easier to take over)
- Does the city take up a strategic location? (*See below for explanation)

If you can answer at least 3 (or 4 depending on your standards for conquest) of the above questions with 'yes', it's usuall worth it to take it over.

*Strategic city location;

Taking over a city in the middle of f'ing nowhere has no use. Period. It'll be isolated, have high maintainance costs, population will be unhappier and it will take longer to build stuff. Just raze the thing.

However, certain positions on the map have high strategic value. For example, you can force a bottleneck so that your enemy HAS to attack that town first, before he can move on to the others. This works both by exploiting the terrain (usually a peninsula is the best terrain to create a bottleneck) or by exploiting the other nations (by taking over a city with different nations on the other sides so they have to either attack that city or go to war with your neighbours to bypass the city).

Next, there is the strategic planning takeover. This is basically a distraction for the enemy. once you take over a city close to their border, it will almost always be their first target to take back. Make use of that knowledge! Build up the defense of that city for a few turns while ammassing troops at a different location on the border of your enemy. Once you notice large groups of enemy forces approach the city you just captured, it's your cue to invade. They'll have a part of their forces tied up in attack the city you just took, so that leaves less troops to defend their more important cities. And those are the ones you want to take over.

While all of the above is a litle bit simplified, it's basically the gist of it.

 

[Gufnork]

Cities are also very useful as resting spots for your military. Any damaged units heals much faster and are much safer inside a city, so keeping some just for that purpose are useful. And most cities will pay for themselves unless you pillage it before you take it.

 

[khumak]

It doesn't take much to convert a newly built or conquered city into a positive income source. If it's a coastal city just build a harbor and you're done. If it's an inland city it's harder to get it profitable but eventually it's still worth it. I tend to use Universal Suffrage once I have a reasonable amount of income coming in and just pay cash for the first few buildings in my new cities so it only takes about 10-20 turns before they're positive (not including time spent in revolt when you first conquer them).

 

[秦始皇]

Seems I always raze holy cities to make up personality...

 

[Speciou5]

I'll only raze if it is beneficial for me, or if I can't hold the city. If I had to pull a random number out of thin air, I would say I only raze about 5-10% of the cities I take. The majority of the time I only raze cities if i'm in a close war with an opponent, I have taken a side city I probably can't defend without incurring large loses, and I already have taken other enemy cities taken for my troops to rally and rest at.

Also, you are playing as a warmonger on continents? That must be annoying

 

[Shillen]

I'm playing a standard pangaea map on noble difficulty now. My goal is to conquer or dominate the world. So far I've taken out 2 civs by 600AD, having about 30 cities already. I can turn my science slider down to 0 and still make negative gpt. But the money I'm getting from taking cities is making up for it easily. I'm not behind in techs at all.

 

[Strobe]

yeah i find than shillen, if u start a rampage u have to keep going to fund it !!

 

[Shillen]

Nah, if I wanted to I could turn it around. Stop building military, disband some of my extra workers/units, emphasize commerce instead of production. Build granaries, markets once I get the tech (few more turns), courthouses once I get the tech (probably 15 turns). In about 25 turns I could have a good economy.

 

[Strobe]

Does depend how early and how many cities you take though. I will chop rush if someone is close, especially if they get a religion then sometimes I get on a roll, if the money keeps comin I keep going.

After a while I start razing as getting economy back on track would take longer than 25 turns. What circumatances cause you to start serious war and then what prompts you to stop ?

I found at first I need to keep low cities but with a bit more skill it aint too hard to have more cities and catch up on tech later.

Note I'm only on prince at moment as I am learning quite a few bits.

 

[ToadFaerie]

If I don't want the city, I will often give it to another Civ that I am friendly with. Sometimes I give it to an ally that I brought into the war, and sometimes it's an ally that is at peace with the civ I just took the city from. If it's one at war, it's almost guaranteed that they won't get defenders there, so the city gets taken back; keeps both of them busy for a while. If I just want to forget about it, give it to the peace ally.

 

[Shillen]

Well I've continued my game a bit. I destroyed another civ and then called it quits on warring for a bit, which turned out to be a good thing. My economy was in dire straights. I finished my research on currency and code of laws. Markets were useful but courthouses were the huge income boost. Due to the way I conquered outward in a straight line at first I had a couple cities with 15 maintenance cost. So a courthouse effectively saved me 7 gold each in those cities. I also emphasized food in most of my cities to get them to grow. At the end of my last war my score if I won on the next turn was 59000. I spent 20 turns in peace, growing my empire and fixing my economy and now it says score if I finish next turn would be 70000. So it was useful. I'm at 50% of the land now with 70% of the population, so domination is close. I'll finish researching guilds and then dominate the world.

 

[Tennyson]

Everything else being equal (no resources/wonders/etc issues) I tend to keep the cities next to my existing cultural border and raze the ones beyond that. Even if the area is resettled, my newly captured cities will be pumping out enough culture to dominate their city tiles and probably one tile beyond.

 

[Minsc]

I try to keep as few cities as possible that will maximize the area in my cultural borders. There are several reasons for this. I keep cities to help with domination vicotry since you need to control as many land squares as possible. Also, especially relatively early, barbarians and other civs can be annoying when they pop up in the territory you just cleared. I find the biggest drawback to keeping cities is not financial, but that the civ I am fighting will often take back the city I just captured. That pisses me off to no end.

 

[Padmewan]

If you play with raging barbarians on, how long would it take to get the barbs to "settle" the area and pose a hazard to AI civ's attempt to settle there?

Preventing AI resettlement is annoying, but if your goal is elimination coming back and taking those cities out later shouldn't be too hard, since they are probably going to be as unproductive as they would be for you... in fact, I wonder if allowing the AI to resettle actually harms them strategically?

This was a problem in Civ3 and I think they kept it because, really, if you want to conquer the world, you probably have to do it by being EVIL.

 

[llib_rm]

If I plan to eliminate the other Civ as a conclusion to this war, I never raze cities. More often than not I am at war to gain resources or territory without having the resources to wipe them out and hold onto the captured cities. In these times I might raze cities to weaken the other Civ for next war. In Civ III I used to raze cities to push back the cultural border, but that strategy does not seem to be too effective in Civ IV. I also have a settler or two prepared before I go to war in case land becomes available I can immediately settle on once peace is declared.

 

[anton_z1]

I usually raze bad located cities, but i keep all the rest. I offer all the crap cities to people which i think should go to war. Nothing help relations better then frictional borders