Puppets vs Annex

[Civsassin]

In a game like CiV, absolute statements of advantage or disadvantage for a particular course of action are never correct. One may be better than another for a particular play style; howeer, whether to annex, raze, puppet, or return the conquered city is a decision that each player has to make based on his/her goals for the game. Each has its place. If you are intent on war mongering, razing as you go gives you just enough time to heal your units in friendly territory and move on before the razing process completes. If you are having happiness issues, razing or puppeting may be better than annexing. If you are striving for a cultural victory, the same applies. However, if you need a few city's in which you to control production for the sake of building units or something else, annexing may be the way to go. The decision is usually based on the situation or play style. I prefer not to commit to a particular play style to adjust my game based on the random situation I find myself in each game and what I need at the time.

 

[DeepQantas]

After I build a courthouse, does the annexed city still benefit from Police State?

 

[Antarion]

nope but you can sell it police state is a strong eco policy down the autocracy tree.

it safes you the maintenace of your former courthouses and also allows you to get a plus of happy faces from annexed cities over normal ones

 

[Minor Annoyance]

nope but you can sell it police state is a strong eco policy down the autocracy tree.

it safes you the maintenace of your former courthouses and also allows you to get a plus of happy faces from annexed cities over normal ones

At first I though it odd that it would not just counter the unhappy it generates but add happiness, but it may be that under an autocratic society the people into their nations conquests that they want to rule over foreigners and for them not to assimilate.

 

[Treso]

Playing as Japan. King difficult. Standard continents, everything standard.

Start with Alex, Nab, Napoleon and Siam in the same island.

Did NC start. Get luxuries techs and went to steel. Got 4 samurais and ganked Alex with Nab. Took two cities and he wanted peace offering me a lot of cities.
Turned my armies to Nab and the same occurs. Them I finish off Alex and went to Siam. Got a nice peace treaty and upgraded my samurais to rifles and invade france.

The situation is:

I have 3 settled cities (2 + capital) and a lot of puppets. My hapiness is going very unhappy to almost zero hapiness.

I am the tech leader. Almost going industrial.
What path I should do?

My 3 cities have crap production. I got 4 policies in tradition and the left side of rationalism. I think annex everything and spam science building and try science victory.

Any advice?

 

[WeaselSlapper]

Playing as Japan. King difficult. Standard continents, everything standard.

Start with Alex, Nab, Napoleon and Siam in the same island.

Did NC start. Get luxuries techs and went to steel. Got 4 samurais and ganked Alex with Nab. Took two cities and he wanted peace offering me a lot of cities.
Turned my armies to Nab and the same occurs. Them I finish off Alex and went to Siam. Got a nice peace treaty and upgraded my samurais to rifles and invade france.

The situation is:

I have 3 settled cities (2 + capital) and a lot of puppets. My hapiness is going very unhappy to almost zero hapiness.

I am the tech leader. Almost going industrial.
What path I should do?

My 3 cities have crap production. I got 4 policies in tradition and the left side of rationalism. I think annex everything and spam science building and try science victory.

Any advice?

I would annex the cities a few at a time (as fast as happiness will allow). Raze the one's that aren't developed (big culture borders), have good infrastructure built, or have a useful wonder. Courthouse the rest and make sure you stop them from growing past their happy cap (4 with Colosseum, 9 with theater, and two more if it has a circus). In your three production cities you can churn out some settlers to replace the cities you're going to raze (will probably be most). This will save you the 4 GPT per city for a courthouse. You could do a science victory, but it would probably be faster to do a military victory. For military beeline to destroyers. Plant some good production coastal cities now, buy a Colosseum (a theater too if the city's in a good spot), build a harbor and start start pumping out frigates. Also make sure you ally with some maritime CS so your new cities can grow faster and your production cities can focus on production instead of food.

 

[CivMcNut]

From what I've seen, doesn't the lay of the land determine largely what you do? If you have a whole bunch of tundra tiles with a city in the middle of it, wouldn't it be better to raze it? If there's a city (probably one of the AI's capitals) that is in a choice spot with a nice river valley that could churn out massive production, wouldn't that be a good one to annex? If you have sort of an average city with medicore production ability, wouldn't that be the one to puppet?

That just seems to be how I've gone at it so far. If hapiness is a problem I don't try to go out and conquer anybody until it gets better. I try not to worry about maintence costs for courthouses too much, having a happy large empire is what you want. I've noticed that an annexed city with a courthouse generates more hapiness than the puppeted city.