How to abandon a town

[rickmc]

I cannot find this in the manual and a forum search results are all civ3.

i invaded a barbarian town and click install new government. when i took a moment to review the area, i believe a town would be much better off 2 squares away. how to i abandon the town and get rid of it??

 

[jar2574]

I cannot find this in the manual and a forum search results are all civ3.

i invaded a barbarian town and click install new government. when i took a moment to review the area, i believe a town would be much better off 2 squares away. how to i abandon the town and get rid of it??

You cannot AFAIK.

 

[snipafist]

give it to an enemy, declare war, then raze it to the ground. That's the only way.

 

[rjjb]

As nice as it would be, and useful as it often is, just abandoning a city isn't really practical. Where would all the people go when you raze a size 10 city, or a size 20+ for that matter? Did you slaughter them all when you clicked raze city so that you didn't have to spend so much in upkeep?

What would be nice is a 'convert to settler' option whereby a city of size n would be converted into s settlers in t turns by some, not necessarily linear, formula either all at once after t turns or incrementally (decreasing the city size at each settler).

In any case, whether or not you can abandon a city you control isn't really that big of a problem. Knowing that you cannot do so should make you stop and consider beforehand whether or not you want to capture or create a new city. And if you do screw up and find yourself with an undesirable city, gift it to a pleased/friendly civ to improve relations.

Jeremy.

 

[rickmc]

that should definitely make the list of consideration for the next update.

i will chaulk this up to other lessons that i have learned the hard way:
1) having all my units take over a town that my enemy recently took away from a neutral ai whom i didnt have open borders with. my army was stuck as the nueutral ai would give me open borders.

2) forgeting to move my navy through a panama canal city (a city that is on a single land square spanning 2 bodies of water) before declaring war on that ai.

 

[automator]

I kind of like that you can't abandon cities. Though it scared me in one game where Oil appeared right under one city and I didn't realize that automatically brought it into my empire.

In addition, I think that razing a city should have two negative consequences: one, a major rep hit, and two, the city should disband into "rebels", the number of which would be based on a combination of population and reputation you have with the civ in question. (More popluation = more rebels, long time rivals = more rebels, minor one-time skirmish = fewer rebels). The rebels could be one or two techs back from the best attack unit the target AI had at the time of razing. For example, a size 10 city razed when the enemy civ had Calvary could disband into 3 axemen or something. Oh, and fighting rebels would only give experience points up to ten, like you get when fighting barbarians.

 

[rjjb]

that should definitely make the list of consideration for the next update.

I doubt it. Too big a change and it's potentially exploitable. Say you have a worked floodplains city that grows like crazy; all you have to do is let it grow sufficiently large to generate a few settlers and disband, resettle the same tile and elsewhere, then repeat. Great care would have to be taken with respect to balance.

Jeremy.

 

[salty]

one, a major rep hit, and two, the city should disband into "rebels", the number of which would be based on a combination of population

I agree. I guess you can try to kill everybody, but they should always be some refuges. If you don't get rebels, I think you should get computer controlled refuges that try to make a bee line to one of your cities, where you can turn them into settlers or workers or citizens. Of course your attackers can try to slaughter them while they flee (and take a reputation hit). I don't know if iwould be any fun to have human controlled refuges (0 defense).

 

[obsolete]

In civ III this one bugged me to hell. In civ IV I don't know why but still they didn't really fix this issue. As mentioned, there is an (exploit?) where you can give it to an enemy, and then just re-attack and raze it.

 

[DaviddesJ]

It's unlikely to happen in a real game, but what happens if a city of size 1 is unhealthy, and you make its only citizen into a specialist? Eventually it will run out of food. Does it starve away?

 

[ndthsmdy]

In civ III this one bugged me to hell. In civ IV I don't know why but still they didn't really fix this issue. As mentioned, there is an (exploit?) where you can give it to an enemy, and then just re-attack and raze it.

In RL pulling off something like this would be totally dispicable--like to the point of people liking you really questioning how likable you really are.

I guess I would suggest a diplo penalty along those lines: taking a city you gifted to the AI within a certain amount of turns incurs a penalty so large that no one would do it (unless they didn't care if everybody hated them). That's probably the only way to stop a gift-and-raze exploit.

 

[Smirk]

...and it's potentially exploitable. Say you have a worked floodplains city that grows like crazy; all you have to do is let it grow sufficiently large to generate a few settlers and disband, resettle the same tile and elsewhere, then repeat. Great care would have to be taken with respect to balance.

What are you describing that would be an exploit? Abandoning a city with a large population isn't a good thing.
If you are saying something along the lines of slave rushing till the city is unmanagable, then yes, this was exploited in Civ3 until it was fixed.

But abandoning a city should be an option as there are maintence costs associated with cities and sticking you with them sucks. I'd say abandoning a city merely removes it from your list and makes it a barbarian city.

That's probably the only way to stop a gift-and-raze exploit.

Or an easier solution, allow the player to abandon a city.

 

[automator]

It's unlikely to happen in a real game, but what happens if a city of size 1 is unhealthy, and you make its only citizen into a specialist? Eventually it will run out of food. Does it starve away?

I thought there was always the "city" tile being worked, giving at least 2 food, enough to keep your population at one. Maybe I'm wrong.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I thought there was always the "city" tile being worked, giving at least 2 food, enough to keep your population at one. Maybe I'm wrong.

2 food isn't enough to feed your population if the city is unhealthy.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

A city of population one cannot starve (although I'm not sure what happens to a starving city when you have Mercantilism or Honging Gardens)

 

[DaviddesJ]

A city of population one cannot starve (although I'm not sure what happens to a starving city when you have Mercantilism or Honging Gardens)

What do you mean when you say that it can't starve?

If it has more unhealth than health, and it generates only 2 food per turn and needs 3, then something will eventually happen. Perhaps it just gets stuck at zero. But the only way to find out is to test it.

As for Hanging Gardens, I think the +1 population when you build that is a one-time boost. I don't think you lose the +1 population if you subsequently lose the wonder.

 

[friskymike]

I'd say abandoning a city merely removes it from your list and makes it a barbarian city.

I like this idea. Is it exploitable though, by the player settling cities he doesn't want to creat barbarian cities near the AI? I suppose not because there is a cost in shields there and thats a potential city fo the AI to use that won't cost them a settler. And they should be smart enough to raze it if its in a really horsehockey location (?)

 

[andrewlt]

I'd like to have this option as well. Too often, the AI would build towns too close to my own where the potential tiles that can be worked on overlap. If I conquer their town, I can easily raze it. However, sometimes the city flips and I'm stuck with an extremely useless city that is sucking maintenance costs and/or will grab tiles from another one of my cities if I grow it. These cities are usually near tundra, tons of mountains and tons of desert also.

 

[anti_strunt]

It should definitely be possible to abandon cities; and yes, it DID happen in real life... Rather often, even.

 

[Charles 22]

In civ III this one bugged me to hell. In civ IV I don't know why but still they didn't really fix this issue. As mentioned, there is an (exploit?) where you can give it to an enemy, and then just re-attack and raze it.

I'm guessing they didn't really think this thing through when designing the game. Only way it makes any sense is if you don't suffer a rep hit for razing cities. You certainly never see the AI gifting you with cities that it takes from barbs. And how dumb would that be, not to mention terribly illogical, for the AI would be gifting you with cities where you didn't want them, and you would be doing the same to them if it's "intended" for you to leave cities be. So far, I've just razed them from the start, and this can't be doing me too much harm, as the AI apparently is suffering just as bad as I am in that I've seen plenty of razings.