Raze or not to raze?

[777]

Do I get penalty if I capture enemy city? Should I rather raze and build with own settler?
I've seen that very rare buildings stand still after capturing.

 

[Gooblah]

If you raze a city, you will gain a -1 diplomatic fallout with the civ whose city you razed.
If the city you captured has a Wonder in it, you should capture it since the benefits still exist. If not, or if its in a bad position, raze it and build a city with your own settler elsewhere.
Lastly, if the enemy civ exists after the war is over, its culture still exists even if the city is destroyed. Thus, if you razed City A of Civ A, and built City B on top of City A's former site, some of Civ A's culture will exist in City B.

 

[KMadCandy]

if it's a holy city, you get a diplo penalty with all civs that have that religion as their state religion, not just whoever's living in the city now.

you don't ever get a diplo penalty for capturing the city (other than the penalties from the war itself), but you do get the penalty for razing like gooblah mentioned.

 

[Airefuego]

Can cities be abandoned / disbanded?

I have just gained one of Hatty's cities by culture flip, and it is in a stupid place. I need to replace it one tile away, but can't figure out how to disband it, if that is possible.

Any ideas? The best I can think of is to gift it to someone I am at war with, then recapture and raze it ... not easy though, gotta wait ten turns after the gift cos peace treaty would come along with the deal etc.

Please help!!

 

[snipafist]

You cannot abandon your own cities. The only way to get rid of them is to raze them when capturing them. You should also get an option to destroy them when they flip to you.

 

[KMadCandy]

Any ideas? The best I can think of is to gift it to someone I am at war with, then recapture and raze it ... not easy though, gotta wait ten turns after the gift cos peace treaty would come along with the deal etc.

Please help!!

how long have you had it? have you gotten any culture in it yet? if you don't have any yet, that's a good thing.

you can't raze a city that you've earned culture in, until the current owner of the city has more than 3x what you earned in it. like, if you have 15 culture points in that city this turn, and give it away to monty, and declare war on monty this turn, you won't get the "burn baby burn" option if you capture it next turn, you just automatically move in. you need to gift it to him and then wait for him to build up 46 culture points of his own in there.

so if you're going to try that, you need to gift it away soon so that they have enough time to earn 3x what you have. you can hope that they'll raze it in a war, but you can't always count on that, and hatty i'm pretty sure wouldn't raze it since it used to be hers.

 

[777]

So you don't get any upkeep penalties? In civ3 corruption was horrible in captured cities, I recall

 

[snipafist]

You still pay upkeep, but in the long run keeping a captured city of reasonable size is more efficient than razing it and building a new one right on top of the rubble. If it's poorly placed and has no wonders or religious shrines, then raze it. That's how I do it.

 

[Airefuego]

how long have you had it? have you gotten any culture in it yet? if you don't have any yet, that's a good thing.

you can't raze a city that you've earned culture in, until the current owner of the city has more than 3x what you earned in it. like, if you have 15 culture points in that city this turn, and give it away to monty, and declare war on monty this turn, you won't get the "burn baby burn" option if you capture it next turn, you just automatically move in. you need to gift it to him and then wait for him to build up 46 culture points of his own in there.

so if you're going to try that, you need to gift it away soon so that they have enough time to earn 3x what you have. you can hope that they'll raze it in a war, but you can't always count on that, and hatty i'm pretty sure wouldn't raze it since it used to be hers.

Ahhhhhh thanks KMadCandy That is good to know.

It started building culture right away 'cos it has a couple of religions (thanks to my own missionaries earlier!) and I am running no state religion... But not too much, only for a few turns. I wonder if Monty would bother to build any culture there. I think I am best off just keeping it and crying over the positioning one more square and it would have been on the coast, and had two more floodplains ...

maybe Hatty knows that some uranium will pop up there in another 1000 years but apart from that ... !

 

[777]

You still pay upkeep, but in the long run keeping a captured city of reasonable size is more efficient than razing it and building a new one right on top of the rubble.

Of course I have to pay upkeep. Still my primary question is "do I have to pay more upkeep, than if it's my own city?"

And other question is does it becoma more easily unhappy than my own city?

If no, I don't see a point to raze cities. Unless if it's poorly located and other before mentioned

 

[CivDude86]

You'll still get the yearn to join the motherland whether you capture it or raze and rebuilt since population ethnicity is determined by culture, not who owned the city when the pop was born like in .
Upkeep is the same too.

 

[777]

Okay, thanks

 

[BrantleyL1]

If the city you captured has a Wonder in it, you should capture it since the benefits still exist.

This made me think of one of my [many] un-asked questions.... How do you know what a city has in it before you capture it??

And second question... What improvements survive capture & what don't??

 

[Electryon]

Here's something that I think is new in BtS, at least I've never seen it before.

I'm playing Ottomans/Mehmed II/Prince. I've been at war with Gilgamesh for about a million years (he just won't give up!) I finally got to a position of strenght where I could, and did conquer one of his large cities - pop15, no wonders or holy sites. Just for spite I decided to raze it as it was too deep in his territory for me to hold easily. Just as my battered forces raze the city, I get an event message to the effect: "Citizens are so upset that they have formed partisan militias to harass the evil conquerer". Lo and behold 5 musketmen pop up in surrounding tiles!

I saved game and went to bed. One more thing to worry about when razing cities.

 

[CivDude86]

You'll have to zoom into the city and look to see what wonders it has (usually the big buildings outside the city square itself). You can never capture buildings that produce except wonders which won't produce and there is a chance any other buildings will be destoryed too.

 

[KMadCandy]

You'll have to zoom into the city and look to see what wonders it has (usually the big buildings outside the city square itself). You can never capture buildings that produce except wonders which won't produce and there is a chance any other buildings will be destroyed too.

if you've seen the city at some point after it built the wonder (which is obviously the case if you're about to capture it), any wonder treasures within it are included in the F9 summary. which is really handy if you're a permanoob like me who recognizes some wonders from the outside view but not others. oh how i long for the choices to be "- install a new governor; - burn baybee burn; - wait, let me examine the city first!" that would be glorious but, ah well.

i'm sure you know, but because i'm the queen of throwing in free potentially useless info ... sistine chapel does still give you culture from specialists and from state religious buildings if you capture it (since the wonder effects work), it's just that (as you said for all captured stuff), the building itself gets zero culture/turn. sistine is a GREAT wonder to capture! it does let you start getting culture instantly from the turn your captured cities come out of revolt, even if you're not in caste system and haven't whipped a theatre. just assign citizen specialists, which often you have to do anyway since you don't have control of enough tiles to work. voila, those citizens (often for me they're residents of the "prepare to be whipped" room) are now providing 1 hammer and 2 . nappy and louis both love to make it and i adore stealing it from them. that's how i found out how powerful it is in beat-em-up games actually, before that i'd only ever used it in culture games and it had never once crossed my mind to make it when i was gonna go mash heads.

 

[Airefuego]

"residents of the "prepare to be whipped" room"

Strangely, captured Academies seem to keep producing culture in Vanilla Civ. Is this a bug...?

 

[GuitarHero]

No, it probably ain't a bug. It's just a mistake.(I think)

 

[gettingfat]

if you've seen the city at some point after it built the wonder (which is obviously the case if you're about to capture it), any wonder treasures within it are included in the F9 summary. which is really handy if you're a permanoob like me who recognizes some wonders from the outside view but not others. oh how i long for the choices to be "- install a new governor; - burn baybee burn; - wait, let me examine the city first!" that would be glorious but, ah well.
.

IMHO this is probably the most retaxded feature of Civ4 series. I've started a hundred year war, sacrificing the lives of 10 zillion of my soldiers, finally conquer a city, but not allow to take a look before making a crucial raze or keep decision?? What is worst is the screen basically freeze at that point and you can't even check the map. I'm actually quite amazed they don't change this part even after 2 expansions.

 

[GuitarHero]

Mabye you're supposed to use a Great Spy to see into the city. Or have huge Espionage spending.