epicivfreak
Prince
I was thinking about doing away with capturing cities in the classic manner for the next installation of Civ and replace it with occupy and annex as described below. I haven't worked all the issues out 100%, so it's more of a framework than a complete system, but what's left out is relatively minor details that could be handled a number of ways - best left to the one actually implementing it.
Instead of declaring war, moving your units in and capturing a city then immediately adding it into your fold*, that city's status would change to occupied when it was defeated (in previous civs, would have been captured instead). You're still at war with the enemy. No one owns that occupied city**. You should keep units behind to protect it from being occupied by an enemy unit***.
So, how then do you finally get your grubby little hands on those tasty little cities? You sign a treaty. At some point, you go to the enemy and say, "I demand your surrender," or the enemy comes to you and says, "I surrender." At that point, the treaty signing is very similar to the way things are done now, except you have the option of putting cities in for annexation by whoever occupies them at that time - though, you can leave them in occupied status and have peace as well. Once peace is declared, removing your occupation (units) from the city tile allows the original owner to re-take control and the occupation is ended.
What if you occupy an entire civ? The same rules apply. If you occupy all of a civ's cities, those cities will rebuild some infrastructure during the occupation, but the civilization itself is effectively powerless, unable to build units or wonders, it is your puppet. My thinking is that a civ without a city in its control should neither be able to declare war or have war declared upon it, though existing DoW are still in effect - but occupied cities would generally not be targeted because that would not only give a huge diplomatic penalty to attack an already occupied city, but then you'd also have to DoW on the civ occupying the city as well.
Diplomatic penalties need not be so severe for being at war anymore (except perhaps with allies of the civ you DoW on) - annexing cities could hold severe penalties though (perhaps getting more severe over time, as civs become more advanced). Letting another civ take an occupied city from you would surely have severe penalties, both for you losing the city and even more so for the attacking civ.
Other Issues:
*We are Borg. Resistance is futile.
**The question then is, what happens to it's output? Some things could be stockpiled, some obviously couldn't be and would either need to go to owner or occupier (or split between the two somehow). City Governor would probably take over the queue and isn't allowed to build units and/or wonders during occupation.
***Should that happen though, the city is still not theirs - it's occupied until a treaty is signed, doesn't really matter who occupies it, and a city may change hands several times during a war.
Instead of declaring war, moving your units in and capturing a city then immediately adding it into your fold*, that city's status would change to occupied when it was defeated (in previous civs, would have been captured instead). You're still at war with the enemy. No one owns that occupied city**. You should keep units behind to protect it from being occupied by an enemy unit***.
So, how then do you finally get your grubby little hands on those tasty little cities? You sign a treaty. At some point, you go to the enemy and say, "I demand your surrender," or the enemy comes to you and says, "I surrender." At that point, the treaty signing is very similar to the way things are done now, except you have the option of putting cities in for annexation by whoever occupies them at that time - though, you can leave them in occupied status and have peace as well. Once peace is declared, removing your occupation (units) from the city tile allows the original owner to re-take control and the occupation is ended.
What if you occupy an entire civ? The same rules apply. If you occupy all of a civ's cities, those cities will rebuild some infrastructure during the occupation, but the civilization itself is effectively powerless, unable to build units or wonders, it is your puppet. My thinking is that a civ without a city in its control should neither be able to declare war or have war declared upon it, though existing DoW are still in effect - but occupied cities would generally not be targeted because that would not only give a huge diplomatic penalty to attack an already occupied city, but then you'd also have to DoW on the civ occupying the city as well.
Diplomatic penalties need not be so severe for being at war anymore (except perhaps with allies of the civ you DoW on) - annexing cities could hold severe penalties though (perhaps getting more severe over time, as civs become more advanced). Letting another civ take an occupied city from you would surely have severe penalties, both for you losing the city and even more so for the attacking civ.
Other Issues:
- This seems the perfect excuse to finally implement multi-party diplomacy in Civ. It's 2013 - we should have this already! Imagine an entire civ occupied by three sides and the wheeling and dealing fun that could be had splitting those spoils.
- Should tile output be blocked by occupying units for the occupied city? Perhaps just reduced by 1 instead of completely blocked?
- Obviously no civ will want you to annex their cities in most circumstances, so if the civ surrenders or all of its cities are occupied, forcing annexation should be an option.
*We are Borg. Resistance is futile.
**The question then is, what happens to it's output? Some things could be stockpiled, some obviously couldn't be and would either need to go to owner or occupier (or split between the two somehow). City Governor would probably take over the queue and isn't allowed to build units and/or wonders during occupation.
***Should that happen though, the city is still not theirs - it's occupied until a treaty is signed, doesn't really matter who occupies it, and a city may change hands several times during a war.
