Does razing make the game too easy?

[Florian]

Also, think about incidents like Mi Lai and Abu Ghraib: sure they causes some consternation in the elite press but did any American cities go into full scale revolt because of it?

There's a big difference between an isolated atrocity carried out by soldiers who are then held responsible and punished by their nation, and a national-level policy decision. Also, razing a modern city would involve a LOT more victims than My Lai.

 

[vanatteveldt]

I know, that's why I said "how mass the murder has to be". I just reacted to the statement that implied that a modern democracy would never tolerate its soldiers to commit atrocities.

 

[noto]

Instead of invading and destroying the city, couldn't you have sent a large number of spies and caused a city revolt each turn? I've done this a number of times to push back a AI culture victory for 2-20 turns while my spaceship made it to Alpha Centari. While annoying since you were on different continents, it has the benefit of not causing war. You just need to be careful that the AI doesn't get a great artist.

Hah...never thought of that. Annoying to me? Are you kidding? Imagine how annoying that would be to her. But I wasn't nearly that close to launching my spaceship at the time.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Actually I like the Idea of a "Pillage" action.

If you want to Raze a city (you should be able to do this with Any city that has a high enough value of foreign culture)

Then every turn the city spawns some units that immediately attack any of your units in the city (0% chance of retreat since they are attacking from within the city... the "units" each repeatedly attack until they are dead)

Each turn the pop drops by X (3 or 1+pop/5 etc.) and the units spawned depend on the population before the drop.

The War Weariness can be multiplied for that situation.

 

[gsfgf]

Plus, I think it's kinda silly that it takes four units to pillage a town all the way, but only one to raze any city. It should take at least as many unit-turns as there are population to raze a city. I do kinda like the idea of old-school civ style partizans appearing when you raze.

And maybe they should add a UN resolution against razing. That's pretty realistic. I know that if in RL, the US burned Baghdad to the ground, the UN would complain a lot.

 

[Dirk1302]

Just play immortal + and you'll find it's not to easy to raze that city at the last moment apart from the fact that the immortal ai would have reached cultural vic some 30 turns before.

It's not the fault of the comp that you can do these things, just means you're on a level you're comfortable with or that the level you're currently playing on is too low.

 

[noto]

I don't think a higher difficulty would matter, besides, I just increased from prince to monarch like last week. As I pointed out, Catherine's military was at least twice as big as mine. If I was playing on emperor maybe it would have been 3 times bigger...but it wouldn't have mattered. I didn't need to defeat her entire army, all I needed to do was find her 3 high culture cities and invade the one with the weakest defence. I was also playing america, so I had SEALS. The problem with this is it seems cheap. I can sail SEALS in transports and battleships right to her border and hit end turn. Then the next turn I declare war. Even if she garrisonned her culture city well, given that she had like 12 cities she would only have at most 1/6th of her military in that ONE city. So even if I only have 50 units and she has 100, she'd only have 16 or so in that ONE city. If all my 50 units hit it, it will fall. So I declare and sail up to the city. In the same turn my battleships reduce the defence and the SEALS take it. Regular marines could have taken it too. Maybe the problem is not only city razing, but the whole sneak attack by sea thing. If I see the AI sailing towards my border, I can use my brain and anticipate the need for units in my city that is about to go legendary. Can the AI make the same anticipation? Probably not.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Couldn't you just bypass no city razing by gifting the cultured up city to another AI? Cathy would probably flip it back eventually, but that could potentially take a while...especially if you ironically gifted it to another culturemonger (which would not have the huge current culture attached to the city, but would tend to fight her culture off).

Still, whatever. Culture players need to learn to protect their cities. If the game is too easy for you that way, just up the difficulty or remove your ability to raze the city. City razing exists for a reason though.

 

[sarkun]

@ sarkun "you can still commit mass murder on amazing scale with absoilutely no repercussion."
Depends on how mass the murder has to be, but in my experience voters don't really care that much about people in different countries / with different skin colours. How often do civilian casualties in Iraq become headline news? Also, think about incidents like Mi Lai and Abu Ghraib: sure they causes some consternation in the elite press but did any American cities go into full scale revolt because of it?

well we are getting into very delicate topics here... but i believe, that american cities would go into revolt if american troops just razed baghdad to the ground, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in cold blood. i cannot believe, that any democratic goverment would remain in power after such atrocity.

afterthought: adding one war weariness for every one population of the razed city would be a way of simulating a response to such actions. the number should be modified by religions, gov. civics ans so on, but now, it is just wrong imo.

Couldn't you just bypass no city razing by gifting the cultured up city to another AI? Cathy would probably flip it back eventually, but that could potentially take a while...especially if you ironically gifted it to another culturemonger (which would not have the huge current culture attached to the city, but would tend to fight her culture off).

Still, whatever. Culture players need to learn to protect their cities. If the game is too easy for you that way, just up the difficulty or remove your ability to raze the city. City razing exists for a reason though.

if cathy's city was just about to go legendary, chances were it was n the middle of her empire, and it would flip back really really quick.

i agree that city razing should not be removed as a whole - it makes perfect sense in ancient/medieval eras, but even then - there's something wrong with it.

as someone pointed out: it takes 4 turns to destroy a town. and only one to destroy ANY city. this makes the biggest city of the world, as easily destroyable as a single... farm. this is just silly.

EDIT: even easier - you just need to beat the last military unit on that square. in case of a farm, u need to beat that last unit AND pillage. as i said. silly.

i believe, that this option could be expanded - one military unit being able to destroy certain amount of population per turn is a very good idea imo.

but this would mean, that city razing would take up more than one turn - which brings another question - why can we raze a city only upon its conquest? why not later? it does not make sense to me.

 

[Feanor01]

Just saw your post, so I may be a bit late. I would not worry about razing a city. There are some examples in modern history: Sherman burned Atlanta instead of trying to hold it. War of 1812, Brits/Canadians burned down US capitol. What did Germany do to the capitol of Poland in 1938?

I agree not razing would add more difficulty to a game, but it is still possible to raze a city. Maybe industrial era razing should reduce the population by 1/2 and destroy some of the city improvements.

 

[vanatteveldt]

- according to wikipedia: sherman burned all military facilities (but spared churches and hospitals) after evacuating all civilians
- wikipedia: an attack on Washington D.C. itself that resulted in the burning of the White House, the Capitol, the navy yard and other public buildings, later called the "Burning of Washington".
- afaik warschau was never razed to the ground

Better examples of attempts at obliterating cities are probably the bombing of axis cities by the WWII allies. Hamburg (50,000 casualties (40,000 in one night), 250,000 homes), tokyo (100,000 casualties, 270,000 homes in one night). [@sarkun: shouldn't this count as mass murder...?]

Does anybody have examples of complete razings in history? Again according to wikipedia, the romans did a good job of carthage, selling all survivors into slavery and systematically burning the city to the ground in 10-17 days. I guess especially in medieval europe, where cities were pretty small (+/- 10,000 - 50,000), it would have been relatively easy to completely burn a city...

Another question is whether civ cities are to be understood as cities or as a sort of provinces: until specialization, most of the population works outside, so we could understand the city to be a combination of rural population in the province plus specialists in the city. This would agree with the large amounts of industrial laborers after industrialization, where the # engineers can grow pretty hard. In that reading, razing would be unprecedented, because you would have to go around and kill all members of a culture in a hundreds or thousands of miles radius.

projecting this back onto civ:
- turning razing off is a lot more realistic
- military should be able to plunder cities, turning one population into gold, partizans, war weariness, diplo penalties, and/or unhappy citizens
- a lot of modern mass murders were caused by bombers. Why did they remove this ability from civ 4? A sustained bombing (or artillery shelling) campaign should be able to remove a lot of population and buildings. My fleet of battleships should be able to do significant damage to enemy lands (and artillery should be able to do damage to ships). I think dale's mod does a lot of this?

 

[noto]

Well it's interesting to talk about history and realism, but my main concern is gameplay. In the end, Civ is a game, not a simulation. My concern with city razing is only slightly due to its lack of realism. Mostly my concern with city razing is that it might ruin gameplay. More speicifially, allowing city razing might make it so that it is impossible for the AI to win a cultural victory. Not only that, in the monarch game I just played, 2 top AI's in the game purused a cultural victory at some point (Dutch, Russians). Both times I invaded a legendary coastal city with a squad of SEALS and burned it to the ground. Going for a cultural victory means the AI turns up the culture slider, which helped me get ahead in terms of science. Gilgamesh was going for a space victory and was right behind me in spaceship-building, and I was preparing another invasion force to hit is capital if he launched.
As I stated in an earlier post - the main problem, to me, is that the AI is not programmed very well to anticipate maritime invasion. When you declare war on the AI and give it a couple turns to prepare, it does a good job of defending its cities. But if you declare war and then on the same turn hit a major city from the sea, the AI has a hopeless chance of defending it. Now, such a brazen attack would fall to an AI counter attack unless you had a truly superior military, but by razing the city you can take out a major AI city with a small number of troops, doing massive damage to them with a sneak attack. I would see this as a cheap trick on MP with humans...but it's even worse against an AI that doesn't seem to anticipate its possibility.

 

[vanatteveldt]

I agree that the ultimate question is about gameplay -- but it's fun to discuss whether elements are historical or not

I think your question is really whether cultural victories are possible in a really challenging environment. For a cultural victory most people turn off research and focus on culture rather than production, meaning not enough and backwards military. Moreover, it is clearly communicated to all players how far off you are. For this reason, I don't think people ever try cultural in multiplayer.

As a human, we don't really have to worry that much because the AI is fairly predictable: build enough troops and play the diplo game and you won't get the stacks banging on your cathedral doors. If an AI attempts diplo, it will have to anticipate being invaded, and from 80% of legendary it should probably act as if the whole world has declared war on him in terms of preparations.

The vulnarability to a quick invasion is due to razing, but the strategic problem (how to hold out long enough against a superior and determined foe) has less to do with razing and more with the demands of cultural victory. Maybe cultural victory is really impossible in the face of determined opposition, maybe the AI could be improved. Until multiplayer people start winning with cultural, my bet is on the former

 

[noto]

well multiplayer is a different game. I love the idea of multiplayer...I would much rather play against humans than a computer...but in practical terms it doesn't work for Civ, unless you have a bunch of friends that will play Civ with you when you have time. Playing it on the internet against strangers to me is extremely boring. I might as well play Risk. It turns into a weird, slow, turn-based ancient/classical military strategy game. It's all about killing each other using chariots/swords/axes/catapults. I've never seen a MP game even make it to gunpowder. Also...by about turn 70 the turns just become too slow to have any fun playing. That's the real problem. The last MP game I played went on a long time, almost to gunpowder, in fact, and at that point I was sitting waiting at my comp like 5 minutes between turns. I'm just not patient enough for that. Unfortunately Civ is still just a SP game to me. I like playing RTS's online...but Civ? Maybe if it were a small map on quick speed it might work a little better. Maybe I should try that.

 

[Morgrad]

Better examples of attempts at obliterating cities are probably the bombing of axis cities by the WWII allies. Hamburg (50,000 casualties (40,000 in one night), 250,000 homes), tokyo (100,000 casualties, 270,000 homes in one night). [@sarkun: shouldn't this count as mass murder...?]

Mass killing, certainly. Murder is debatable. "Obliterating cities" is an overstatement, I think.

Does anybody have examples of complete razings in history? Again according to wikipedia, the romans did a good job of carthage, selling all survivors into slavery and systematically burning the city to the ground in 10-17 days. I guess especially in medieval europe, where cities were pretty small (+/- 10,000 - 50,000), it would have been relatively easy to completely burn a city...

Especially because cities were made of wood!

Deliberately targeting civilians was not only not uncommon, it was normal, up until the end of WWII. Kill the men, rape the women, sell the children into slavery, burn the buildings, salt the fields, tear down the infrastructure.

Not only is not deliberately targeting civilians relatively new in warfare, actively minimizing civilian casualties is very new - a matter of a couple generations. With even a slightly different political evolution since WWII we could be in a situation where an emancipated, democratic population would be screaming for the blood of the enemy and the utter annihilation of city X (Moscow, Berlin, Washington D.C.) would be met with cheers and exuberant bloodlust.

As to examples of non-middle ages city razing: I would consider the Spanish utter annihilation of the Aztecs to meet the Civ IV criteria for razing. American rounding up and shipping off of American Indians would also qualify as *cultural* and *population* razing, which also meets the reflection in Civ IV. Serbs/Croats could have ended a similar way if things had gone slightly differently.

As a game-play mechanic, I think razing should stay - I just think an AI nearing a cultural victory should act as if those three cities need to be protected a lot better. Ditto for the capital when a space ship is nearing completion.

 

[Gr8scott]

I would tweak the AI a bit so that it doesn't try for cultural with a coastal city. I've done exactly what OP did on a few occasions, and it is much tougher on an interior city.

GS

 

[noto]

LOL, as far as I remember, Cathy's 3 almost legendary cities were all coastal...

 

[sarkun]

- afaik warschau was never razed to the ground

well, after the uprising was crushed, the remaining civilian population (and a LOT have been killed during the fighting) was forced to flee, and then the nazis were metodicaly blowing up house after house with explosives. when russian army "liberated" the city, about 80% of the buildings were destroyed. pretty decent job at city razing i think.

Better examples of attempts at obliterating cities are probably the bombing of axis cities by the WWII allies. Hamburg (50,000 casualties (40,000 in one night), 250,000 homes), tokyo (100,000 casualties, 270,000 homes in one night). [@sarkun: shouldn't this count as mass murder...?]

i don't know. maybe. it definitely would count as mass murder if germans won the war.

and back on topic... if you think of cities as provinces - representing all infrastructure in certain region - then the easiness of destroying them makes even less sense... to destroy all factories, all industry in a certain region with so little troops... makes no sense to me.

but i cant imagine fighting ancient era wars without city razing - not with AI's placing them in the craziest places...

 

[Roland Johansen]

The example in the original post is one of the reasons that I play without city razing. The way city razing is implemented in this game makes it far too easy to accomplish. I do think it should be feasible to completely raze a smaller city in this game, but it should be hard, it should take time and many units and should have diplomatic repercussions.

In this game, is is easier to raze a city than to keep it. I think it should work the other way around, razing it should be harder than keeping it. With the present implementation of city razing, I find it more fun and more realistic to play with the option turned off. Deselecting the option to raze cities does make the game a bit harder.

 

[Bartholomaï]

It does seem strange to be able to raze cities of >100.000 people with one wounded marine. I don't know of any examples in post-medieval history of cities being completely razed.

Stalingrad comes to mind, although I don't know how long it took the Nazis to destroy it, I guess one, two years? At least close to one turn.
I remember reading that Hitler wanted to raze Moscow too.

But I agree you would need a rather big army to raze a city.