ElliotS
Warmonger
With the most recent patch I think this is a good discussion to have.
As far as I know here are the differences between your options. Please tell me if you notice something I've missed.
Puppet:
Even though their happiness thresholds are lower than normal cities, they still tend to cause more unhappiness than any other city.
Additionally new cities only increase total tech/science cost by less than 6% each city after 10 (13% of 226% as an 11th city is 5.7%.) which annexing cities easily covers. And if the city you take isn't able to cover it's culture increase it's not going to cover the science increase, so puppeting it is still a bad choice.
Puppet cities are also anti-synergy with Peity, the courthouse happiness policy and a couple other beliefs. They do have the one 25% production belief in imperialism, but it's too little, too late imo.
Also maybe my most hated fact is that puppet cities never build work boats nor workers and will leave burnt tiles burnt and sea resources unclaimed unless you remember and micro manage them. Very annoying for isolated puppets.
As for what I think could/should be done for puppets:
I think one solution could be that they don't increase culture nor tech costs. This would make it better to puppet versus raze on many terrible cities. It would still provide unhappiness, so it's not like it's just free stuff.
I'd like to hear other ideas, thoughts and suggestions.
As far as I know here are the differences between your options. Please tell me if you notice something I've missed.
Puppet:
- Science costs increase.
- Culture costs don't.
- Cannot purchase with gold or faith
- Lower unhappiness thresholds than full cities
- Cannot produce units
- Cannot choose production
- Increases science and culture costs
- Need to build a court house
- Lower time to stop revolution (very helpful in war)
Even though their happiness thresholds are lower than normal cities, they still tend to cause more unhappiness than any other city.
Additionally new cities only increase total tech/science cost by less than 6% each city after 10 (13% of 226% as an 11th city is 5.7%.) which annexing cities easily covers. And if the city you take isn't able to cover it's culture increase it's not going to cover the science increase, so puppeting it is still a bad choice.
Puppet cities are also anti-synergy with Peity, the courthouse happiness policy and a couple other beliefs. They do have the one 25% production belief in imperialism, but it's too little, too late imo.
Also maybe my most hated fact is that puppet cities never build work boats nor workers and will leave burnt tiles burnt and sea resources unclaimed unless you remember and micro manage them. Very annoying for isolated puppets.
As for what I think could/should be done for puppets:
I think one solution could be that they don't increase culture nor tech costs. This would make it better to puppet versus raze on many terrible cities. It would still provide unhappiness, so it's not like it's just free stuff.
I'd like to hear other ideas, thoughts and suggestions.