Raze or occupy?

[cabert]

You also have to consider wether or not you can keep teh city.

I had a hell of a time taking a city earlier today. I had 10 Horse Archer v. 4 Longbowmen. I lost all but 2 of my units. The city was in a nice location and was home to Stonehenge. I decided to keep it, but I should have razed it. I ended up losing the city and it took another 10 troops to take it back.

that's something is have to work on
same thing happened to me:
as Isabella, i was waging war against Gandhi.
He had the tech lead (well, he had riflemen while i had grenadiers ) and more land / better cities.
I razed 3 cities, and captured a 4th. But it was very costly, and far from my base (i was researching flight, but didn't have it yet).
I managed to keep it 5 turns, started to put fighters in it, in order to bomb next city, and that's when his cavalry and artillery came around to get it back.
It still was revolting, so gandhi had the full strength cultural bonus back and i just couldn't take the city from him.
It would have been easier to just raze it, and sue for peace while resettling in the middle of the 4 razed cities...

 

[Jayhawk_Colin]

what level do you play at?

 

[cabert]

what level do you play at?

this was monarch
i restarted it, and got a good tech lead.
Will try for cultural this time. Leaving Gandhi on his peninsula until my good friend tokugawa asks for help.
the problem is monte is on a very near continent, but on the other side of Fred/Gandhi = too many tiles to sail for my little boats, needing open borders with Gandhi, or after capturing Berlin (already done : it's the only horse city!=conquistadores), i must defend hard against troops landing. Very fun game.

edit : my first monarch win, cultural victory for 20.000 points

 

[Eggolas]

It depends so much on the cities and their placement as well as the financial strength of your empire and if it's before courthouses.

However, in general, I raze all cities except capitals prior to courthouses, unless the placement is outstanding and I'm concerned another power will take the city. If I'm creative, I'll bend a bit and capture a city, knowing that the borders will expand quickly and fill in the empire bringing new resources with it. If happiness resources are in the fat cross, then I'll head down the research slider to accept it.

After courthouses, I'll keep many of the cities, using the slave population to build the courthouses. If I'm also organized, so much the better.

 

[pigswill]

If you're talking about early war then it comes down to war objectives i.e. imperial expansion or simple annihilation. If you're looking at imperial expansion then keep producing garrison units to follow up your attack stacks and guard the stack while its healing (and obviously hold the city once the stack moves on). But you still don't keep every city for the sake of it; you have to decide how it fits into your overall empire; if it doesn't then raze it. If its got a shrine or wonder or great potential or additional resources these all add value to your empire, if its nothing special then its probably not worth the expense.