How to encourage razing of cities?

[CrazyG]

I don't know if we shouldn't question that idea. Razing in it's current situation is super-unlikely because puppet cities give benefits to you and deny and enemy that land. It's extremely rare that razing is a good idea imo. (Only when the city is so bad it's not worth puppeting and is actually detrimental to any owner of it.)

I think it might be worth it to make Razing a good idea a little more often, depending on the opinion of the general community.

I think having a burning city give a "Slaves/Refugees" unit for every 2 pop burnt that can be used on a city to grant +1 pop would be a good idea.

I sometimes raze cities when I have large bonuses to city conquest (such as Assyria). Let my enemy resettle then come and sack the lands again.

There are a few other situations as well, such as making room for borders to grow and getting yields that way. Razing should be a bad idea in general, its intentionally destroying resources you control

 

[kawyua]

If you guys really want to RAZE cities, Egypt has a decent incentive to annex a captured city, build a burial tomb for the artifact and burn the city. I think that's a legit strategy for the arsonist in you.

crazyG's point is better. but any incentivized razing kind of points to some gamey mechanic or painfully annoying penalties to having a city.

 

[tu_79]

I don't know if we shouldn't question that idea. Razing in it's current situation is super-unlikely because puppet cities give benefits to you and deny and enemy that land. It's extremely rare that razing is a good idea imo. (Only when the city is so bad it's not worth puppeting and is actually detrimental to any owner of it.)

I think it might be worth it to make Razing a good idea a little more often, depending on the opinion of the general community.

I think having a burning city give a "Slaves/Refugees" unit for every 2 pop burnt that can be used on a city to grant +1 pop would be a good idea.

This could be exploited like selling buildings in razed cities was before. I'd say that a counter mesure would prevent exploiting it too much. Something like 3xpop unhappiness in cities being razed and +100 food in the closest owned city every turn. It's a forced reallocation. The happiness penalty is high enough so the player think it twice before reallocating people.

The thing about razing is that it can be stopped any time. So, sometimes we can raze cities just to lower their population and put happiness under control. Is it any good other than domination games?

 

[ElliotS]

This could be exploited like selling buildings in razed cities was before. I'd say that a counter mesure would prevent exploiting it too much. Something like 3xpop unhappiness in cities being razed and +100 food in the closest owned city every turn. It's a forced reallocation. The happiness penalty is high enough so the player think it twice before reallocating people.

The thing about razing is that it can be stopped any time. So, sometimes we can raze cities just to lower their population and put happiness under control. Is it any good other than domination games?

Couldn't Razing be attractive for tall civs as well? Growing your core cities instead of a puppet would be a nice choice. +100 food wouldn't be enough though imo.

 

[infidel88]

Razing big cities (and those are represented in civ) basically didn't happen in history and should have severe penalties all over the world. Burning down 20 pop civ is similar to genocides and should be greatly condemned by any civ that doesn't follow autocracy route, as it represents slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people. Burning small cities in ancient history, maybe even in medieval should fade over time and shouldn't have the same effect though.

 

[tu_79]

Unlike Detroit?

 

[Gazebo]

Unlike Detroit?

So far as I can tell no foreign power has eased or is currently razing Detroit to the ground.

G

 

[tu_79]

So far as I can tell no foreign power has eased or is currently razing Detroit to the ground.

G

Mmm, Honda, Hyundai and others, I'd say. Modern wars.

Point is, city razing happens, by economic means nowadays. Nothing so violent as we were discussing. It's called workers flexibility.

Only controlled cities can be razed, so they don't qualify as foreign anymore. Player razes cities of his own empire.

 

[Gazebo]

Mmm, Honda, Hyundai and others, I'd say. Modern wars.

Point is, city razing happens, by economic means nowadays. Nothing so violent as we were discussing. It's called workers flexibility.

Only controlled cities can be razed, so they don't qualify as foreign anymore. Player razes cities of his own empire.

I’m sorry but what does that have to do with the discussion at hand?

G

 

[tu_79]

I’m sorry but what does that have to do with the discussion at hand?

G

Infidel says razing doesn't happen. Only in Ancient times. And very rarely. I'm saying this still happens, but in other, more peaceful ways.

 

[CrazyG]

Infidel says razing doesn't happen. Only in Ancient times. And very rarely. I'm saying this still happens, but in other, more peaceful ways.

Whats happened in Chicago is a economic process that Civ doesn't have a way of representing very well. The closest gameplay mechanic would be an unhappiness spiral. Chicago isn't burning to the ground, the people aren't dieing (even if the murder rate is high, its not high enough to cause a serious population loss). If the population is shrinking its due to unhappiness or migration, which civ has no mechanic for, and if it were to get one razing would be a ridiculous choice.

If anywhere in the modern world is being "razed", its probably Syria. Someone in history warmonger might have razed everything in sight, but the question is what that actually good for his empire? Both human and AI play quite well, so they don't raze very often

If you want to create an actual reason to raze cities, nerf the benefits of puppets. Its generally easy to swallow the unhappiness burden of puppets, increase how much unhappiness they create and you might raze cities more. Lately puppet cities are all the rage in the strategy discussions

 

[Blue Ghost]

Why should razing be encouraged? It’s not inherently a fun gameplay pattern to destroy cities and give up territory you’ve taken. I think razing should stay as it is, an option for niche situations. It’s more fun to keep and make use of the cities you conquer, so we should encourage that.

 

[Gazebo]

Whats happened in Chicago is a economic process that Civ doesn't have a way of representing very well. The closest gameplay mechanic would be an unhappiness spiral. Chicago isn't burning to the ground, the people aren't dieing (even if the murder rate is high, its not high enough to cause a serious population loss). If the population is shrinking its due to unhappiness or migration, which civ has no mechanic for, and if it were to get one razing would be a ridiculous choice.

If anywhere in the modern world is being "razed", its probably Syria. Someone in history warmonger might have razed everything in sight, but the question is what that actually good for his empire? Both human and AI play quite well, so they don't raze very often

If you want to create an actual reason to raze cities, nerf the benefits of puppets. Its generally easy to swallow the unhappiness burden of puppets, increase how much unhappiness they create and you might raze cities more. Lately puppet cities are all the rage in the strategy discussions

For now.

 

[Legen]

If you want to encourage razing, make the AI be more invested in recapturing his or her cities ASAP, so you end thinking "I can't keep this city, I should raze it, if just to deny it".

Overall, I don't think razing has to be equal to annexing or puppeting. It's ok for it to be niche.

 

[ElliotS]

If you want to create an actual reason to raze cities, nerf the benefits of puppets. Its generally easy to swallow the unhappiness burden of puppets, increase how much unhappiness they create and you might raze cities more. Lately puppet cities are all the rage in the strategy discussions

For now.

I think the problem is less with puppets and more the terrible status of non-puppets.

 

[Tekamthi]

besides the untested population/refugee mod mentioned earlier; here's another that might add some interest here (also untested, I'll try to get a game w/ both of these added on top of VP next wknd):

'Useful City Ruins'
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=422519147

copy/paste from workshop:

[NEWLINE] With this mod city ruins affect plot yields and plot defense value. Cities that generate a lot of yields have higher chances of leaving extra plot yields when they are destroyed. And the higher city population was when it was captured the higher defense value will be when the city is destroyed. [NEWLINE] City ruins model was replaced, so now big cities will not leave just one house ruin when they are destroyed.
[NEWLINE] Removing city ruins when building an improvement is not instant any more, now it takes time.
[NEWLINE] In vanilla game when a city is founded on flood plains, they are removed,. This mod restores flood plains when an improvement is built on that city's ruins.
[NEWLINE] To increase chances of getting extra plot yields from city ruins open "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\my games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\Useful City Ruins (v 2)\LUA\Useful city ruins.lua" with a text editor and decrease value of iExtraYieldOdds variable which is found on the second line..

[NEWLINE] Known issues:
[NEWLINE] When you select a worker to remove city ruins on a hill, estimated yields shown in build action panel will be wrong. This is due to an engine bug and can not be fixed.
[NEWLINE] Now you can pillage city ruins. You do not get any gold for doing it, so just don't . You can disable city ruins pillaging, but it may affect performance. To do it open "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\my games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\Useful City Ruins (v 2)\LUA\Useful city ruins.lua" with a text editor, find line "GameEvents.CanStartMission.Add(OnStartMission)" and remove 2 minus signs at its beggining.

 

[cammcken]

I've seen AI choose to raze when the city is small. This can happen when a city (in a good location) changes hands to quickly during a war, flip-flop-ing and losing population and buildings each time, until it gets too small that the AI decides it's not worth it. Which is a shame, because sometimes it occupies valuable land.

I usually raze so that I can place the city in a better spot. It's probably not the best strategy, but city spacing is a pet peeve of mine.

Those mods mentioned sound really good for Civ4's Caveman2Cosmos, I don't think it's necessary here. The war monger reputation and war weariness mechanics are robust elements of the game, adding incentive would tip the balance of those mechanics.

 

[Valvts]

The problem with Razing, is that once you raze, another civ just comes and settles the place. I guess that not a huge problem, but an annoyance.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

@Gazebo , would it be possible to code that if you raze a city, you keep all its tiles under your control/within your borders? For me, that would be a big reason to raze vs. taking a puppet/annexing.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

@Gazebo , also, would it be possible to code an option (perhaps via an Authority policy) that for each turn that a city is being razed, you get a certain amount of culture, gold, science and/or production, (to represent the thorough pillaging of the city being burnt down, slaves,...), scaling with era and going to your capital city?