Stolen Rutters
Deity
... The way to win the game is to reach a victory condition before anyone else. Razing a city definitely helps hold the opponent back from reaching the goal first... if you attack at the right time!
Before Currency+Code of Laws (the "big empire" tech pair), you will kill your ability to keep up in tech if you keep too many cities, but you will still have a few opportunities to knock some of your neighbors down if you get, and use, certain early techs first.
Example:
That Axe rush might net you a few AI cities... but more than that can hurt you more than help... but you have all these hyped up City Raider III axes ready to take down the next neighbor with really nice cities... who is just getting the axe-counter techs and has a worker building a pasture on a horse!
Problem? You can't wait, (they have really nice cities... they could challenge you with all those resources behind them!) but you you know the maintenance costs of adding just one more city is going to kill your tech growth.
One Solution? Attack when you have the opportunity, but raze everything in sight! The second AI will never again challenge your growth, and might even build a few more cities for you if it survived... and, you captured enough cash to "deficit research" your way straight out of the ancient era!
Back to the regularly scheduled topic.
