Looked in the faq, and searched a bit this morning for something about this, but I kept getting returns on CiV 5 only.
My question:
What is the criteria for getting the option "wait, let me examine the city first..." when capturing a city?
I never (as in, I can't recall the last time it ever happened) get the option though I have seen it plenty of times watching videos of TMIT or AZ, or looking at write ups here on the forum. I only ever get the option to raze or not on the spot, and can't even look around at the terrain at that point to make a more informed judgement, even forging peering into the city. Obviously this gets quite annoying as I'm not meticulous enough to look directly at the city trying to study what might be in it when I'm more focused on paying attention to defender matchups. This isn't just me complaining about accidentally razing wonders or to look at maintenance costs; I know how to spot them easily enough and it's pretty easy to know ahead of time which city they might be in in the first place, and I already know you can't look at happiness/health/maintenance until the city is out of revolt anyway. It's more about wanting to see things like the city's workable tiles (since they often overlap or are blocked by enemy culture/units) an the culture breakdown before I decide to keep a border city that'll just revolt the instant it comes online unless I leave my entire army in it.
Does it have something to do with espionage (such as, you must have city vision or investigate city unlocked already)? Your own culture in the city? Mods ( I only run BUG, but I'm sure I've seen TMIT playing without it and got the option)? Game version (I play 3.17)? Difficulty (unlikely)?
My guess is the EP one, but as I've had games where I run early, late, short or long wars all at different times I can't really associate anything to back it up myself. I've been unable to pin down the answer so far. Any help understanding is appreciated. Thanks.
If you are in Theocracy without a state religion (!), can (foreign) religions spread to your cities?
Theocracy prevents any religion, other than the one you are running as state religon, from spreading. Period. If you are running no state religion, it's the same as any other religion--with no benefits, or detriments, diplomatically or otherwise... No state religion IS your state religion as far as the game is concerned, and thus Theo blocks the spread of anything else at that point. This is how I got my head around Theoracracy (that it was a blocker) and how it works, but I had to find out the hard way that it also blocks YOU from spreading around any extra-state religions to your own cities for their benefits
Theo seems like one of those things that's put in for isolationists like Mercantilism and Hereditary Rule, but often I only use it for the XP bonus at war. AP is nasty though, I usually make it a mission to raze that thing before it causes problems. I understand that's not always possible, and higher difficulty lets the AI run rampant.
. If it doesn't work, I could still adopt a random religion and switch into Theocracy, that would be foolproof. But also not desirable if it means switching into an outsider religion because of the diplo penalty.
