Raze-less Fury

[krc]

Postscript: I decided to continue the game to test whether a cultural victory was really achievable. I completed the Sydney Opera House in 1957 and took my free policy.

Spoiler :

Having switched all my cities to a "cultural focus", I was eventually producing 822 culture per turn. Even so, the time to obtain my next social policy gradually increased from six turns to nine turns.

Spoiler :

I finished my fifth policy track in 2001.

Spoiler :

I then started producing the Utopia Project in my most productive city, Moscow, where it was projected to take 25 turns. The time was shortened somewhat because I spent most of the following years in GP-induced golden ages; I either produced my own GP or was given a GP by one of my allied city-states at just about a fast enough rate to keep the golden ages flowing. Finally, I finished the Utopia Project for a cultural victory in 2018. Since I didn't even get a splash screen for this second victory in the same game, I missed the initial screen shot and had to open the notification log....

Spoiler :

 

[Paradigne]

Good read. Thanks for posting. Sorry I didn't get a chance to chime in before your glorious victory

 

[Civ'ed]

you also got a cultural with Askia?

 

[Sparthage]

Nice game. Especially the alternate Cultural Play.

 

[krc]

Since part of the point of this game was to see how things would work if you weren't allowed to raze cities (and had to annex foreign capitals), it's probably worth thinking a little about the impact of those "house rules".

First, they did cause me to change my playing style. The decision to switch from aggressor to builder (as the first war with Augustus wound down) was driven by the house rules. Without them, I'd have more likely just gone for the straightforward domination victory at that point, razing cities and puppeting capitals as I took down one civ at a time.

Second, it made me think about the three choices. In the game as it stands now, there are clear drawbacks to annexing a city. Your happiness goes down (a lot) until you get a courthouse built. Over the long term, you have the extra maintenance costs for that courthouse, and you have a hit to the amount of culture you need for new social policies. Almost the only thing you get in return is the ability to control what gets built. Unless the city has marble and you want to use it to push wonders, it's not clear what would make that worthwhile.

By contrast, there are almost no drawbacks to puppeting or razing. Puppets may give a short-term hit to happiness, but with the changes in the last patch, puppet cities mostly build stuff that produces gold, happiness, science, and culture. Razing only gives the short-term happiness hit until the population dies out.

I think there should be more possible downsides to each of the choices, so that you have to think more carefully about what you want to achieve. I can think of two possibilities for puppets. One might be labeled as "corruption", where either the gold maintenance is higher for puppet buildings (possibly growing over time) or else whatever the buildings are supposed to produce gets diminished. The second possibility would be revolt/rebellion. For each turn that a city spends as a puppet, the chance that it will revolt goes up. If it revolts, it could either return to its former owners, or it could become a new (militaristic) city-state.

If diplomacy worked sensibly, then the reasonable thing to do with razing cities would be a diplmatic penalty. This would be a permanent penalty with the civilization whose city you razed, and a temporary penalty (that declined over time) with everybody else.

 

[Save_Ferris]

Awesome story!