Puppet city-do pay building cost & get happiness?

[Gen. Maximus]

I am thinking long term if i should annex puppet or let it remain puppeted.

I have three specific questions here.
1) Who pay for the building cost in puppet cities? They? I understand I get gold and science from puppet per the manual so i wonder if I am paying the cost of it as well.

2) If there is say a colleseum in the puppet city, do I get the happiness?

3) Does it makes sense to raze a puppet city to size 1 before letting it grow again back to normal size to reduce unhappiness long term? Does the new citizen be considered 'foreign' or naturalise and does it impact happiness?

My main issue of conquering cities of value to get hold of resource/wonder is increased unhappiness. I would think that it is better to annex so I can build all the happiness improvement in that city to offset unhappiness holding it (provided i can bear the cost of social policy/national wonders). What do you think?

 

[FeiLing]

1) You. However puppets are on gold focus and they'll always build markets etc to ensure they cover their own maintenance costs. Usually they produce gold, even more so if you build trading posts around them.

2) Yes. And they build these occasionally. Their focus is like: Money > Culture > Defense (therefore honor policies are great for happiness in puppet empires) > Happiness.

3) No. You're after all only annexing it, because you need it very urgently and that hardly ever means you want it to stay small. Only point in annexing is if you need it as a unit production city or if it could grow very well and be one of your top cities. Other than that you should keep it a puppet (due to happiness management) and prevent it from growing too much by simply not buildings farms there. The Autocracy Courthouse policy though changes this, as a former puppet annexed with an courthouse then will cause less unhappiness than one of your original self founded cities.

 

[Ranos]

1) There is no gold cost for buildings in puppet cities.

2) You gain the benefits of all buildings in puppet cities (happiness, science, gold, etc.)

3) If you raze a city, you annex it at that time, so it is no longer a puppet city. If you have enough units, you can starve the city before you capture it. After you capture it, remove all farms from the surrounding terrain. This will help them grow much slower and keep your happiness cost for the city down.

The city will build happiness buildings when your happiness is very low. Overall, it's better to puppet. There is less of a happiness penalty from a puppeted city than from an annexed one until you can build a courthouse, and even then you have to pay extra gold for maintenance.

Plus you don't have to worry about build orders in puppeted cities, or any of the other microing that comes with a city.

 

[Gen. Maximus]

1) Looks like getting conflicting answer for this one.

2) Sounds good.

3) Yes, will need to manage their size by destroying puppet city farms. BUt can you pillage farms in your own tiles?? I find that workers can dismantle road but not other tile improvement. Another way but slower is building say trading post to replace the farm.

FeiLing,
"The Autocracy Courthouse policy though changes this, as a former puppet annexed with an courthouse then will cause less unhappiness than one of your original self founded cities"
Where can i find more details on the calculation on the happiness count? I do not have Autocracy policy yet and would like to know how much happiness improvement that is needed in my puppet city to be on par to my own founded city.

 

[FeiLing]

1) Looks like getting conflicting answer for this one.

Uh well, Ranos might be right there as my statement was based on observations and feeling there. Both answers at least lead to the same: No need to worry about gold/maintenance in puppets.

3) ... BUt can you pillage farms in your own tiles?? I find that workers can dismantle road but not other tile improvement. Another way but slower is building say trading post to replace the farm.

Yes, you can't pillage own stuff. You need to replace the farms with trade posts. Or pillage the farms before you take the city (you'll want trading posts anyway, but pillaging beforehand slows down growth a lot earlier).

"The Autocracy Courthouse policy though changes this, as a former puppet annexed with an courthouse then will cause less unhappiness than one of your original self founded cities"
Where can i find more details on the calculation on the happiness count? I do not have Autocracy policy yet and would like to know how much happiness improvement that is needed in my puppet city to be on par to my own founded city.

The Complete Guide to Happiness :
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=436022

If I'm not mistaken, when you annex and build a courthouse it's simple on par with an self-built city. With the autocracy policy former puppets should be 3 happiness "better" than own cities.

 

[NotSure]

Re. #1. Whenever you conquer a city you start loosing a bunch of GPT (depends how many buildings are in the city). I always assumed this was because you were paying for the buildings and tile improvements (roads & RR) of the city without getting the benefits of the tiles the citizens are working and the trade route income. When the city comes out of resistance that GPT loss goes away and often times (esp if trade route is connected & pop is high) you get an increase in GPT. Based on this observation alone, I've always assumed you did pay maintenance on puppet buildings. I've never bothered to count buildings and look in the economic overview.

 

[joncnunn]

Court houses: Long standing undocumented feature that the court house removes the base city cause of unhappiness for the unmoded game. (There are some mods that "fix" it)
Annex & rush a court house and happiness is now +3 it was as a puppet.
Autocracy makes it +6.

Unless going for cultural victory (or the city is always going to have poor production such as a one tile island that you only keep for a luxury or strategic resource) your better off initially puppeting but the annexing after it comes out of resistance and you have the cash.

Puppets are locked to emphasize wealth. This will make it unlikely that the city is net losing money post-resistance, particularly at the high building destruction rate seen in Civ V.
Upon annexing you generally want to change focus away from this.

 

[Tokira]

2) Yes. And they build these occasionally. Their focus is like: Money > Culture > Defense (therefore honor policies are great for happiness in puppet empires) > Happiness.

On this I might add that I've noticed that the puppets don't follow a direct pattern like this on happiness buildings. They seem to only produce happiness buildings if your empire is unhappy and otherwise they might indeed go for Money > Culture > Defense.

 

[Gen. Maximus]

Superb responses and link! The secret of happiness is found

 

[Ranos]

3) Yes, will need to manage their size by destroying puppet city farms. BUt can you pillage farms in your own tiles?? I find that workers can dismantle road but not other tile improvement. Another way but slower is building say trading post to replace the farm.

You can't pillage your own improvements but you also don't have to build an entire improvement just to remove an existing one. Move a worker to a tile with a farm and then tell it to build a trading post. Click on the worker again and cancel the last mission. Repeat next turn until all farms are removed. Then start actually finishing the TPs so you can get all that extra gold.

Depending on where my happiness is, I'll also build forts on tiles with resources (wheat mostly) to reduce the food there as well.