Delete City

[Vercingetorix10]

How do I delete a city in Civ4 Vanilla? Is it the same in Warlords and BTS as well? What about Colonization? I made a booboo and couldn't hold onto a city and want to raze it before it falls... Can I sell off improvements or anything else to salvage it? I'd really like to know how I can do this so that I can have some degree of damage control...

 

[catfish99]

Well, you can go into Worldbuilder and kill it...but once you build it in the game it is there (unless you go back to a previous save).
If the city lies along a border, and the bordering civ has some culture, you can gift it to them and get the diplomatic bonus. But you can't raze it (unless you lose it in war and get it back later). Nor can you sell any improvements.

 

[mariogreymist]

You can gift it to your neighbor in the diplomacy screen, and gain some goodwill. It's better than letting it get culture flipped and getting nothing for it.

 

[Deckhand]

You also can't destroy any buildings. You can whip the population away creating units. I don't suppose it is very populous if you want to delete it.

 

[Willem]

But you can't raze it (unless you lose it in war and get it back later).

You can't do it even then. As soon as you develop any culture in the city, you'll never have the option to raze it again.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You can't do it even then. As soon as you develop any culture in the city, you'll never have the option to raze it again.

You can, however, probably gift it and then take + raze, since cities given willingly clear out culture. Completely impractical though.

The lesson here is that civ IV penalizes you for founding cities in inappropriate places. Personally I don't find this feature out of place, and I think it fits both realism (there are some questionably placed cities in real life, too ) and gameplay (judgment on expansion/conquest must not be taken lightly in no-reload gameplay, while the game gives you worldbuilder and reloads if you're willing to bend the rules or cheat).