puppet then annex

[RicKhan5]

My current game, Rome vs Greece, Siam, Egypt, i decided to try out the puppet and annex choices.

For Egypt, i just outright annexed each city as they fell. It required a long time to build the courthouses, especially as the populations in all but Thebes were low. Overall it taught me not to annex so soon. Especially low pop cities.

Against Siam, each city that fell, was turned into a puppet. Ended up with 3 cities before Greece took the capital and Siam fell for good. The cities as puppets built monuments to start with and i saw a steady increase of population overall. It helped that i sent 5 workers that were building improvements, while the 5 Roman Legions built roads.

As each city reached 7 population, i annexed them. With a good infrastructure in place and money saved, it was easy to integrate them into the Roman Empire.

From now on, unless there is a compelling reason to change my SOP, Ill work with a puppet then annex game plan. It may not be optimal but it seemed to work ok.

If anyone tries this, feel free to add your experience.

 

[goodolarchie]

So long as you build some trading posts, the puppets won't get too crazy with the building upkeep costs.. but you still reap the benefits. Since four cities seems to be the optimal number I've been keeping them as puppets unless their production is so stellar that it would be better served under my supervision

 

[Syiss_]

So far in 3 domination victories I've puppeted just about every city I've conquered and never annexed any of them. The only exceptions so far have been a couple times where I captured a coastal city with a nice resource in the water where I wanted it to build a work boat, and didn't have another coastal city to build it for them.

 

[Shillen]

It would seem to me if you have excess happiness it's silly not to annex a city. The exception being if you're going for a culture victory. I agree with the OP, though. Puppet first and then annex when you're ready for it.

 

[carstuar]

I definitely prefer to annex as soon as the cities grow productive enough to build a courthouse in a reasonable time. The puppets tend to build a lot of buildings I don't want.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

Sorry if this is a silly question because I am somewhat new to the strategy.

I have heard a lot of talk about specializing cities (production cities/gold cities/science cities) as an important part of the strategy. For instance, my gold cities would have lots of trading posts, have the market/stock market/etc improvements, and would be set to produce gold rather than unit/buildings. Production cities have lots of + production features, and those production cities I use for units would have barracks/military academies, etc.

Some people advise keeping conquered cities as puppet states- how does that fit into the city specialization strategy? I would think their autonomous building strategy would be an inefficient use of resources. Do the resources need to build courthouse and happiness features outweigh this inefficiency?

 

[loveandpolitics]

At first puppets tend to build buildings you would have built anyway like monuments. I've also seen that puppets will focus on happiness buildings when your empire is unhappy. As soon as they start buildings which I do not regard as necessary I annex them.

 

[thwump]

Sorry if this is a silly question because I am somewhat new to the strategy.

I have heard a lot of talk about specializing cities (production cities/gold cities/science cities) as an important part of the strategy. For instance, my gold cities would have lots of trading posts, have the market/stock market/etc improvements, and would be set to produce gold rather than unit/buildings. Production cities have lots of + production features, and those production cities I use for units would have barracks/military academies, etc.

Some people advise keeping conquered cities as puppet states- how does that fit into the city specialization strategy? I would think their autonomous building strategy would be an inefficient use of resources. Do the resources need to build courthouse and happiness features outweigh this inefficiency?

All puppet cities are gold focused because you put a trading post on every tile. They will build culture buildings, happiness buildings, other good buildings (library, market...) and sometimes something useless. The first three are good things to have, and you deal with the last category by having lots of gold income.

Meanwhile, you:
avoid occupation unhappiness
get science from puppeted population
get culture
take away cities from your opponents


Seems like a much better proposition than annexing. By annexing you gain unhappiness until you have a courthouse (and then you pay 5g/turn for that privilege) and you can avoid a couple useless buildings and maybe slow build some units.

 

[patsfan454]

If it's before 1000AD or so I usually just raze the city and build a settler instead. No point in paying the 5gpt on the courthouse and waiting however long for it to be built. What you are often paying for by keeping a conquered city is it's border. If it's a small city with a small border just raze it.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

Like Pat said my SOP is to Raize and rebuild, with a few exceptions as noted here:

Going for culture win, puppet is better
Has a good wonder, one shot wonders (Oracle, Great Library) I usually raise
Has a lot of borders have grown and I don't feel like waiting for them to regrow (epically if the city is next to another Civ or City State)
Really high population (over 8 after annex, with maritime allies new cities grow to size 4-5 pretty quickly)

If you really want to game it, annex the city build/buy a settler first then raise. Building a settler is much faster then building a courthouse without the ongoing maintenance and you don't have to waste production in one of your original cities to build a settler.

 

[JudgeDeath]

Raze the bad cities, puppet the good ones until they start building something bad, then annex them and buy a happiness building if necessary (try to keep some gold reserves for this purpose).

 

[stormerne]

Here's a stupid question ("There are no stupid questions - only stupid people" ) ... ... ...

Does anyone know where is defined the actually mathematical formulae the game uses for calculating unhappiness for captured cities - annexing, puppeting, razing, and converting puppet to annex, especially their changes (if any) over time. I've only seen vague references - lots for annex, less for puppet, though eventually it seems to go away. At the moment I feel as though I'm making decisions on rather scanty information! (Probably my own fault for not reading the relevant stuff, though I've not found it yet.) Normal pop plus #cities I understand. Just not seen the rest explicitly defined.

 

[Toranth]

Even if I intend to keep the city, I ALWAY select "Puppet" during the initial dialog box after capture. Then, I wait until the resistance period is over before clicking on the city to annex it. During the resistance period, the city provides no bonuses to your empire, but does add the negatives. Only after the city is pacified, and productive, is it worth annexing.

 

[}{ELL/\/()]

Ya there is no reason to annex until the resistance period is over. Also it lets you do some long term planning (gold vs happiness vs what you want to do). There should be some downside to the puppet, maybe have a %chance when you annex they rebel if you puppet first or have it cost money or something.

 

[Stefanskantine]

I usually wait until the puppet governor is building something of which I dissaprove. Then I fire him and send in the federales with an "austerity package," as it were.

 

[THE_COW_IS_OK]

When I go to war, I start lining a bunch of settlers.
All non capital get a raze then I settle. A courthouse takes 2 long, and cost 5 GPT....
I don't puppet since I usually need those cities to purchase happiness building on demand. Puppeting pop 7+ city that doesn't build closseum, circus,... tax heavily your global happiness and slow down your expansion.

 

[CultureManiac]

I agree 5gp maintenance is a lot for a courthouse, but if they start producing crap you don't need, like barracks when they can't produce military units or opera houses when you already have loads of happiness, then the maintenance costs of all those unwanted buildings can quickly add up to more than 5gp.

Sometimes raze and rebuild is the only solution, unless there's a particularly important reason to keep the city, like a wonder.

For a cultural victory, though, puppets are really useful.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

Here's a stupid question ("There are no stupid questions - only stupid people" ) ... ... ...

Does anyone know where is defined the actually mathematical formulae the game uses for calculating unhappiness for captured cities - annexing, puppeting, razing, and converting puppet to annex, especially their changes (if any) over time. I've only seen vague references - lots for annex, less for puppet, though eventually it seems to go away. At the moment I feel as though I'm making decisions on rather scanty information! (Probably my own fault for not reading the relevant stuff, though I've not found it yet.) Normal pop plus #cities I understand. Just not seen the rest explicitly defined.

Puppet causes the same unhappiness as a normal city in your empire (I think it's 2 for the city then 1 more for every pop) but do not add to your culture policy costs and you can't control production. Annexed cities without a courthouse cause double the unhappiness from population, so the bigger the city the more you need a courthouse. Annexed cities with a courthouse cause the same unhappiness as an normal city and an annexed city with our without a courthouse adds to policy costs.

 

[yanner39]

When I go to war, I start lining a bunch of settlers.
All non capital get a raze then I settle. A courthouse takes 2 long, and cost 5 GPT....
I don't puppet since I usually need those cities to purchase happiness building on demand. Puppeting pop 7+ city that doesn't build closseum, circus,... tax heavily your global happiness and slow down your expansion.

I don't know if I agree here. Based on my current game as Ramesses, from the beginning I decided I was going for a Culture win (I've won diplo, space and domination so far). For culture, it's best to have a small empire. I took Kyoto first and tried to weekend Oda because if he gets going, there's no stopping him. I then focused of Arabia. All the 2 or 3 pops I razed, the rest I puppeted and spammed TPs. I did the same with America. I still only control 3 cities, but a bunch of puppets. In my game, I didn't see the Puppets build an Armory or barracks. They immediately started on Burial Tombs.

I'm making alot of gold to keep my CS happy.

I agree with goodolarchie, 4 seems the optimal number of controlled cities.

Here's a question. I was going to attempt to do the math on this.

In my current game, my happyness is at +48. I was wondering if I should annex Kyoto as it is one of my largest puppets. The logic behind this would be that I could control what it builds and I could make sure it builds culture producing buildings like Opera houses, and broadcast towers.

I just don't know if the added culture would outweight the increase in cost for social policies. Has anybody else tried to figure this out?

Man, culture victories are long.

 

[JudgeDeath]

Culture is a pain. In my last game I was creaming the AI and decided not to go for Domination. Churning out piles of culture, but still a lot faster to build the spaceship.