I need help deciding when to raze or puppet a city

[Blitz Spearman]

I wouldn't take any cities in a peace deal, as there is a bug that causes the city tile to have 0 yield.

Is this true? I have never heard of this bug.

 

[Mr. Grieves]

Yes it was, but it would have taken 15 turns for it to come out of resistance. I couldn't afford that, so I just razed it.

That's definitely the downside of getting cities in a peace treaty. I usually don't bother and accept a straight up peace deal, even if they offer a city. That's unless the city is awesome, or I've built up a lot of cultural influence, which cuts the resistance period way down.

 

[George Abitbol]

I annex sometimes a city for overseas domination, if it doesn't have a airport I rushbuy so I can airlift units from my capitol.

 

[Browd]

I wouldn't take any cities in a peace deal, as there is a bug that causes the city tile to have 0 yield.

Is this true? I have never heard of this bug.

This is a long-standing bug. See this thread in Bug Reports.

 

[beetle]

I decided to puppet it and it cost me -70 GPT and I went into extreme unhappiness. Needless to say, I ended up razing it because it was a terrible choice. Was that a good choice or would have you guys kept the city?

Neither option was terrible. It was, however, terrible to change from puppeting to razing (or vice versa) because that pointlessly raised your SP costs. You get GPT/happiness penalties from either initial choice, but (as others have pointed out) both are temporary.

It’s not clear to me that GPT/happiness would ever be the deciding factor in the decision between raze or puppet because, as pointed out in this thread, there are too many other more important things to consider. Getting several cities at once (in a peace deal) could change things up a bit.

The GPT/happiness cost/benefit math between the two is a bit fuzzy to me. Can anyone provide a little clarity on this? The GPT would be about the same except that razing lets you sell buildings. My understanding is that razing causes more net unhappiness, but over a shorter timer period.