Raze and Replace - Is It Recommended or Practiced by Skilled Players?

[vorlon_mi]

In previous games in the franchise, the AI players were (in)famous for poor city site selection. "Raze and replace" was very common in Civ3 and Civ4; perhaps Civ2 also, but I didn't play it as much. Civ5 introduced the concept of requiring multiple turns to raze a city which was continued with Beyond Earth.

But several elements of Civ5 rewarded a "tall" strategy, where the player founded only 3 or 4 cities. If one founded too many cities too fast, the global happiness mechanic would come back to bite you. The developers fixed that in BERT, so that razing an AI city might be painful in the short term but self-founding a replacement could be beneficial.

The preferred strategies described here for Civ6 involve going very "wide", founding 10 or more cities to fill the available space while managing loyalty. Is there a place for razing conquered AI cities and replacing them -- perhaps a hex or two closer to a resource? Would this be more common in the early game, when fewer districts have been built? If I raze an AI city which has districts, what happens to them? Are they also destroyed?

If I capture an AI city which has their Govt Plaza or Diplomatic Quarter, is that automatically destroyed (since I already have one in my core cities)?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

The preferred strategies described here for Civ6 involve going very "wide", founding 10 or more cities to fill the available space while managing loyalty. Is there a place for razing conquered AI cities and replacing them -- perhaps a hex or two closer to a resource? Would this be more common in the early game, when fewer districts have been built? If I raze an AI city which has districts, what happens to them? Are they also destroyed?

If you raze a city it is burnt to the ground and any Districts, Wonders etc are destroyed with it. Generally it's better to keep enemy cities for that reason (if you can manage the loyalty) but yes often they will be badly placed e.g. no fresh water and suitable location for an Aqueduct.

If I capture an AI city which has their Govt Plaza or Diplomatic Quarter, is that automatically destroyed (since I already have one in my core cities)?

Yes they will be destroyed but REGARDLESS of whether or not you have built your version yet.

 

[MartinMcMartin]

I raze al lot of cities lol.... if a city is closer than 4 hexsquares, I raze.... and replace of course... to make things look nicer. it is not important if the city is beneficial, I have enough nice cities already and I don't need the extra income/science. sometimes I just leave the space empty because it is to full anyway with all these cities cramped in a small space.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Thanks, all. I need to do some more reading about loyalty, because my experience in these last 2 games has been so varied.

In the prior game, I was playing as Lincoln and able to march through Pedro's (Brazil) cities fairly easily. Install a governor, connect to my trade network, and they became productive. Both the cities near Brazil's original capital, and even the capital itself, were not hard to hold.

In my current game, I'm playing as Trajan and have invaded Gandhi 3 times. Each time, the first city I conquer has massive loyalty issues. Even with a governor, it rebels to become a free city. The rebels are well-armed, almost more so than Gandhi's troops, so I've resorted to conquering the free city and razing it. @Noble Zarkon 's comment above about "if you can manage the loyalty" is spot on.

 

[Bibor]

Capturing cities is binary for me, either I go all the way (kill off an AI) or don't do it at all. That includes razing "infringing" cities. I also raze cities I have no hope to keep, since at that point I don't really care about grievances.

Generally speaking, I don't really invest into AI cities. My core cities take care of the economy, while fringe cities are for resources and whatever they can scrap. Worker and district costs by that point probably really skyrocketed anyway. Many players say "go for 10 cities", but that is already too high. With proper optimization and placement I'd say 5-6 is a better number. Considering population 15 in each, that's at least 3 workers per city at minimum (just to mention one investment type). Now multiply that by, say 12 AI cities. Never going to work. I'd say it's actually more beneficial to slot in the pillage card and sweep AI lands clean of any type of yield you can get your hands on.

Due to how policies and the congress works, favoring simultaneous builds in all cities, fast wins favor investments into city-states and fewer, but more generalistic core cities.

Regarding loyalty, there's usually one big city holding the AI loyalty together. Get that one, and you're usually good. It usually requires going for two cities at the same time, so bring moar troops™.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Regarding loyalty, there's usually one big city holding the AI loyalty together. Get that one, and you're usually good. It usually requires going for two cities at the same time, so bring moar troops™.

Thanks! That's what I found, too, as I resumed my war. Taking and holding that big city was much, much easier than holding a small border city.

Re-reading Victoria's Loyalty Guide https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-vi-loyalty-guide.641581/, the answer was right there. Small cities can suffer really nasty loyalty penalties, since the ratio of population pressure can be sharply against the conquering player.

What tripped me up -- what was counter-intuitive to my Civ instincts -- is the notion that small cities suffer much larger disloyalty in Civ6 than they do in other franchise games. I've played the most Civ3, where small cities are the *easiest* to pacify, to quell the rebellion. Large cities (pop 8 or larger) require much more effort and turns. Similar experience in Civ4, where larger pop cities are more likely to rebel. In Beyond Earth, puppet cities are unproductive for a N turns, where N scales up with population. Smaller cities become productive sooner and hardly ever rebel. After annexing a city, it is again unproductive for a period that scales up with population. In Civ5, annexing a city means that one needs to build a courthouse, which happens more quickly in a large city than a small one.

Only in Civ6 (Gathering Storm and later) is a small city harder than a large city to pacify / mollify / integrate into your empire. Lesson learned! If given a choice of conquering a smaller or larger city -- early, without significant walls -- I need to Go Big.

 

[Bibor]

What tripped me up -- what was counter-intuitive to my Civ instincts

As much as I'd want to "diss" Civ6 devs for this, as long as they want a city flipping mechanic in the game, this current version of it is... the best one so far. Perhaps I would give it a tweak by making culture pressure "obsolete with nationalism", since culture victory is based on another mechanic anyway (tourism).

 

[Exarian]

It depends, there is some useless cities wo housing or yields that you just don't want to bother with, I just raze them because I'm too lazy to queue stuff in every city out of 40+ in domination games.

 

[cain3456]

Loyalty is the big issue that determines if an enemy city burns. My latest game is with Portugal, and I had Rome bottled up on a peninsula with a no-man's-land between. Rome kept trying to stir up stuff and fill the gap. Their attempts got razed, eventually I put my own city in. There was some pressure, but a guv made it stay loyal.

 

[Civilopedian]

There is no point capping a city you can't keep. The goal is to take the enemy capital, acquire resources through pillaging, and perhaps acquire lebensraum and anything else is not crucial to victory.

If the city has a wonder that I find useful and/or is well placed and I can deal with loyalty, I will make an exception.

 

[reddishrecue]

It depends, there is some useless cities wo housing or yields that you just don't want to bother with, I just raze them because I'm too lazy to queue stuff in every city out of 40+ in domination games.

This is how I was going to start my post. It depends..
Since cities often fall to the influence and loyalty of other civilizations, I have seen the AI and other players raze and replace cities often. This to me is a use of resources that can be used for other purposes such as science or improvements. However, it can be done because of loyalty issues but the loyalty that the last city that was razed would eventually be the same unless you shop and get those monuments or the war governor in time to spread the loyalty issues once the city is resettled. It'll be even better once the city is conquered and given a governor and help out with local cities by making circus bread to increase loyalty. Unless you're a good conqueror and conquer cities fast enough to not let loyalty get that tight root. It really depends on whether you want to conquer or just build another non domination win.