keep or raze captured cities?

[spybot]

Now that I've gotten a bit better at city placement, I realized that some AI cities are pretty horrible. So is it better to keep or raze those cities in crappy places when I could resettle in a better location, or is it not worth the effort and the computer getting pissed at you forever?

 

[xanadux]

Well, as for the diplo penalty, if you don't plan on being friends with that AI, and plan on eventually taking them out anyway, doesn't really matter.

As for razing and resettling, you have to judge whether it is more worthwhile to resettle, or to keep. If the city is very small, you would tend more to raze. Is the city going to be a big help in the short run in it's current place? Are the long term advantages of a more ideal spot worth the work of building a settler and extra time to grow? Each case is a little different, and you just have to keep these things in mind. Another question to ask is whether the current city is going to interfere with a later or currently settled or captured city, resulting in one city or the other having stunted growth.

A lot of the time, in the early game, where a settler is a big investment, I'll tolerate a slightly non-ideal placement just because it's a city I don't have to build. This commonly happens with barb cities. Of course if the city location really is crap, raze away.

Keep in mind that food is king for city growth, and if by moving a city 1 square, you can get say 6 surplus food compared with 3, It won't take long for the new city to surpass what the old would be.

 

[RERomine]

If you decide to raze the city, make sure someone else isn't laying claim to it. I made that mistake. Declare war on one civ and got an ally to join in with me. My ally lost a small city to the enemy and I eventually captured it. I was given the option to keep it, raze it or return it to my ally. Knowing my ally would be my future enemy, I didn't want to return it. It was also crowding one of my larger cities, so I didn't want it. I decided to raze it and instead of getting the penalty with my enemy, I got it with my ally! It wasn't even a city they built. My ally had captured it in an earlier war. Guess they had it long enough to figure it was theirs.