How does a city's population change when it's conquered?

[wobuffet]

So cities that have been taken over seem to drastically lose citizens. Is this all simply working through starvation (because tiles occupied by enemy forces aren't workable), are they dying during resistance, or is there some special population effect when ownership of a particular city changes hands?

edit: No details about resistance in the PDF manual, but this link
http://forums.2kgames.com/showthrea...onquered-cities-should-go-to-connected-cities
seems to suggest the population of a city that's taken over is halved. If I lose a city with 20 citizens to Napoleon, then win it back a few turns later, does this mean it's down to 5?

 

[Montov]

A city loses half the population when it is conquered, no matter what. After that, the city is in anarchy/resistance for x turns, where x is the new population. During anarchy the city cannot fire, and the city will not be making any gold/science/food/production/culture. In this time a city cannot grow or starve. Buildings do generate maintenance however, and roads do count toward tile maintenance. Happiness buildings also count in cities with resistance.

 

[wobuffet]

Awesome, thanks for the quick reply! May I ask how you know this, for my future reference?

 

[Montov]

Awesome, thanks for the quick reply! May I ask how you know this, for my future reference?

Experience. The population drop is obvious (it is rounded down by the way, so a 7 pop city reduces to 3 after conquest, but a 1 pop stays 1 pop), the other stuff is apparant when happiness or maintenance is an issue during warfare. Some buildings are also lost during conquest, I'm not sure however what criteria is used to decide which buildings will stay and which buildings are destroyed, best guess is that it is random.

When you raze a city, selling buildings is helpful, but leave happiness buildings until there are not enough citizens anymore. For clarity, this means that you can sell a theatre when the city is left to 3 pop. A Colloseum should be left alone. Obviously, you cannot sell buildings in puppets.

 

[Misterboy]

Does anyone know the exact formula for what buildings are kept/lost when you conquer a city. I think I read once that all "cultural" buildings are automatically lost, for example.

 

[fmlizard2]

Does anyone know the exact formula for what buildings are kept/lost when you conquer a city. I think I read once that all "cultural" buildings are automatically lost, for example.

I have always wanted to know this too. I was wondering if stuff got blown up when you take a city or if the AI really neglected infrastructure that much.

I know all wonders stick around, for sure.

 

[bryanw1995]

iirc you keep none of the cultural buildings and 66% of all the others. However, a UB like the wat is considered scientific even though it also provides culture, so you can keep those as well. Unsure on burial tomb, MPM, etc.

 

[Dai]

Do you keep exactly 66% of the others (rounded off), or does each non-culture building have a 66% chance of surviving, such that it's possible for all of them or none of them to remain with sufficiently good/bad luck?

 

[Misterboy]

iirc you keep none of the cultural buildings and 66% of all the others. However, a UB like the wat is considered scientific even though it also provides culture, so you can keep those as well. Unsure on burial tomb, MPM, etc.

Thank you

I wondered about what qualifies as a "culture" building. For example, I don't think I've ever seen a burial tomb in a conquered Egyptian city.

And the 66% is totally random? Production costs, etc, don't factor in?

 

[Spatzimaus]

It's totally random. Each normal building has a 66% chance of surviving. World Wonders have a 100% chance of surviving. National Wonders have a 0% chance of surviving. Culture-producing buildings (Monument, Temple) and city defense buildings (Walls, Castle) have a 0% chance. These values are set in the <Buildings> table in the XML, so you can see for yourself.

Each building is checked independently. You might get lucky and get every building intact, or the city might be gutted.

As for population, yes, it's halved, and yes, recapturing the city on the following turn halves it again. In the early game this isn't so bad, since the cities will regrow quickly and the lower size means less population-based Unhappiness. But once you're up in the 20s for sizes, a city becomes almost worthless if it's changed hands more than once.

 

[vexing]

globaldefines has a city_capture_population_percent which is 50 by default.
the conquestprob is
100% for colosseum theatre and stadium,
75% for gold buildings
66% for others
0% for culture, defense, military, circus, forge and stable.

 

[Callonia]

If you've ever had a dream of seeing an metropolis being ravaged by mutants and zombies born from radioactive cloud, well, take a city and set it to raze then drop a nuclear missle or atomic bomb on it, give it enough time, its population will eventually drop into negative xD

This happened quite a few times when rome managed to sneak in a few atomic bombs on me when i was conquering his lands.

so, a city of 30 gets captured by me, and it becomes 15, and i order it to be razed. 15 turns of razing occurs, rome drops atomic bomb in hope of clearing out the soldiers i have surrounded the rrazing city with.

pop 15 city drops to 7 or 6 with 15 turns of razing left.

After the last 6 or 7 of the population dies off and the population goes negative, the city becomes a large ghost metropolis again regaining the exact same shape it formerly had when its was at its unconquered state but the buildings is semi transparent.

The metropolis stays the same with negative increasing every turn until 15 turns of razing passes. Only then the ghost buildings will fade again.

Was pretty cool.