how to inspect enemy city?

[dalamb]

I'm in conquest mode and want to only take over an enemy city if it has something valuable, like a wonder. But how can I tell which ones a city has? Only the top 5 cities are listed in the "top 5 / wonders" screen and, if there's some way to tell from the crowded city picture on the map, I can't see it.

I imagined there might be a spy mission for this but couldn't see one that would let me list all the special buildings in the city.

 

[Shurdus]

I believe you need enough spy points against an AI for that one mission.

Because of the cultural pressure that cities can enforce on newly captured cities you will want to get those non-special cities anyway. If you really do not want to keep them you can always raze them.

In the top5 city screen you can always see where each and every wonder is located. There should be a list on the right displaying what wonders are free and which ones are built already.

 

[dalamb]

When I capture a city I have to decide to raze or keep right away, don't I? so I don't get a chance to see what's in it first. Also aside from the top 5 cities, that screen only shows what civilization has the wonder, not which city.

 

[EmperorFool]

Sometimes it shows the city as well--I believe as long as the city has been revealed to you on the map. You don't need to have active visibility of the city.

There's a modcomp that allows you to open the city screen from the keep-or-raze popup. There's also an improved wonder list screen modcomp. This latter screen is in BUG, too.

 

[dalamb]

I just noticed that, with BUG 3.6 at least, clicking on a wonder in the full list (that just gives civs) shows the wonder and what city it is in. Don't know why I didn't notice before...

But it would still be nice to be able to open the enemy city screen with some sort of espionage mission; wasn't something like this possible in an early Civ version?

 

[Birdman6]

There are 2 ways to inspect a city that I know of.

First, you can literally zoom in and look at the city from the outside and see all the buildings & wonders it has. This method is a little bit rudimentary and annoying because it's hard to see everything when they're all crowded together. It also requires that you know what each building looks like...you can learn by looking at the pictures in the civilopedia. However, this method definitely works.

Second, I saw someone post a method about a bug. If you press F1 (domestic advisor) between the moment that you attack and the moment that the "keep city / raze city" window pops up, you will see your newly captured city in the list. Double-click on it and you can view everything inside. I tried this the other day and it didn't work, but it might work for you.

You'll notice some cities have a white star next to their religion. That indicates forbidden palace.

 

[dalamb]

Apparently the 3.19 patch lets you inspect a city before deciding to raze!