Razing Cities in the Modern Era - Is it even Reasonable?

[King Phaedron]

I've been playing Civ6 for a year, and Civ5 for a lot longer, and I've been missing something... Mainly that Razing down a city in the modern age is ridiculous.

It makes sense to Raze cities in pre-industrial times, but it takes a heck of a lot of effort to raze down a modern city with all it's infrastructure. Plus if you keep the city, you keep all of the economic value of everything in the city. Homes, Real Estate, etc. Who in their right mind destroys Real Estate!

When did City Razing Start? I've played Civ1, Civ2, Civ5, and Civ6. I have no experience at all with Civ3 and Civ4. I don't remember whether there was razing in Civ2, but in Civ1, if a city had 1 population, it was razed, otherwise it was captured. But you could raze the city over a slow process of starving it, forcing the citizens to leave.

The problem with Civ6 is that you can't puppet cities, and you can't set cities to gold, science, faith focus, so that they leave you alone until you ask them to produce something. These features that existed in Civ5 either need to be restored in a future patch, or brought back for Civ7.

I'd like to get your thoughts on some possible solutions:

I think this solution is the most reasonable: If you Raze a city in the modern era or later, your entire empire goes into anarchy for 3 turns, the current leaders are replaced, and probably tried in an international court for crimes against humanity.

But City Razing should be allowed, without consequences, IF the city is first hit with a Nuke or Thermo.

City Razing should be allowed, but the population of the city should migrate to other cities in the same empire. (A way of doing it without the anarchy and crimes against humanity.)

Or do you think it's fine the way it is? If so, could you please cite one example of an actual city razed down in 1900s or later?

Poll allows up to 6 votes (If you like all of the possible solutions)
But If you select "It's fine the way it is" please don't select anything else.

Sorry guys, I forgot to add to the Poll, "Razing a city in modern times should just not be possible at all."
If you prefer that solution, please just select "Other" and write it in the comments.

 

[ezzlar]

Since occupation is the only other alternative, razing is fine.

 

[zurichuk]

Look up Dietrich Von Choltitz, according to Wikipedia he prevented Paris from being destroyed/razed in WW2

 

[oSiyeza]

Razing being an option is fine. But the only reason to do it is that you are bored to death of managing cities, and since you cant use vassals or puppet cities, you nuke it out of existance with the hope the AI does not replace it with a new city.

That is the issue.

Fixs could make the mechanic meaninful and deep in some way, making razing a decission to consider... But lets not pretend they are fans of deep or meaningful mechanics now.

There is no benefit in razing a city, which makes somewhat sense. But the game is so badly designed that makes you want to in order to avoid just having another city.

Bring Vassals and puppet cities back!

 

[The googles do nothing]

Razing should be mandatory until Political Philosophy and then there should be a military policy card allowing you to keep the city. I don't like how powerful being able to capture a city early is. I would go as far as to only allow settlers to be killed until you slot the card. Razing should also have a pillaging reward.

I think this solution is the most reasonable: If you Raze a city in the modern era or later, your entire empire goes into anarchy for 3 turns, the current leaders are replaced, and probably tried in an international court for crimes against humanity.

Razing give you grievances so - in theory - many of the other civ will declaring war on you.

 

[Sostratus]

I would raze 75% less if you could unbuild a district and rebuild it elsewhere in that city.

I do think razing should not be instantaneous, but perhaps, 1 turn per district in the city. This gives a little leeway for retaking it in a close fight, but prevents the silliness of civ5 where it took an entire era to burn down a large city.

 

[8housesofelixir]

There is no benefit in razing a city, which makes somewhat sense. But the game is so badly designed that makes you want to in order to avoid just having another city.

Recently in the Possible New Civilization Discussion thread we suggested a unique ability for a possible Assyria civ (historically famous city-razer and population-deportationer) for razing cities: every time you raze a city you gain a free settler, indicate that you try to resettle the captured population elsewhere.

Bring Vassals and puppet cities back!

To my knowledge the Vassal/Puppet System of civ5 is an internal part of civ5's "playing tall" metagame, as a puppeted city will not increase the culture requirement nor additional unhappiness. Today in civ6 there is not penalty for having a large empire, so the positive effects of making vassals will be not that much.

IMHO, if the vassal system can come back, we can introduce a much higher maintenance cost - in the form of gold - for a large empire. I personally don't think the science, culture, and happiness penalty for large empires in civ5 is good design or realistic; on the other hand, many IRL large empires collapsed because they cannot keep up with the huge maintenance cost and went bankrupt (e.g. traditional Chinese Empires/Dynasties and Rome). Currently in the game it is very hard for a player (or an AI) to experience bankruptcy unless you are a ruthless warmonger, it's more like a hidden mechanic.

If, say, you have more cities than the total governor count, or alternatively if you have many cities outside the 9-tile loyalty range of your capital, the upkeep of the "outside" cities will drastically increase, one will more likely to maintain the gold income more seriously to avoid bankruptcy. This is where the vessal/puppet system can make a return: Similar to how decentralized empires can have a lower maintenance cost IRL (the costs are shared among local elites rather than concentrated in the central) the puppeted cities will only have a normal maintenance cost, and will focus on gold output to generate wealth, therefore maintains a large, decentralized empire.

I hope in a system like this, the new mechanism of "Vassals" can deal with the new penalty of "Maintenance Cost", therefore increase the complexities and create more variety of the metagame.

On a side note, a recent leak from the code in the game files suggests that we will have an "Alternative Economy" gamemode in the future. I sincerely wish that gamemode can address these economy(gold)-related issues.

 

[oSiyeza]

To my knowledge the Vassal/Puppet System of civ5 is an internal part of civ5's "playing tall" metagame, as a puppeted city will not increase the culture requirement nor additional unhappiness. Today in civ6 there is not penalty for having a large empire, so the positive effects of making vassals will be not that much.

You may be right in that the system should be different in Civ VI than in Civ V.

However, the main reason to implement it is not to adhere it to the wide metagame of civ VI, is to give the player an option to play managing few cities and make tall play possible without sacrificing the way the game works, and even more importantly, to avoid boring the players that hate micromanaging hell.

I have seen quite a lot of times players in this forum saying that domination sucks because u are forced to manage the conquered cities, which is a bigger chore the more cities you conquer, and discourages many of even trying. Something that on the other hand maybe Fxs does not care about, since they did not implement a AI capable of achieving domination.

IMHO in civ6 the penalty for having a large empire is that loads you with repetitive and boring tasks, having a large empire is a penalty on itself. I would have tons of stupid AI cities than having to manage 50 cities in domination games any day. And it would probably make the game more interesting as it would efectively make the AI civs more competitive.

That is actually the main problem in the game, and why Vasals and Puppet cities should come back.

 

[8housesofelixir]

You may be right in that the system should be different in Civ VI than in Civ V.

However, the main reason to implement it is not to adhere it to the wide metagame of civ VI, is to give the player an option to play managing few cities and make tall play possible without sacrificing the way the game works, and even more importantly, to avoid boring the players that hate micromanaging hell.

I have seen quite a lot of times players in this forum saying that domination sucks because u are forced to manage the conquered cities, which is a bigger chore the more cities you conquer, and discourages many of even trying. Something that on the other hand maybe Fxs does not care about, since they did not implement a AI capable of achieving domination.

IMHO in civ6 the penalty for having a large empire is that loads you with repetitive and boring tasks, having a large empire is a penalty on itself. I would have tons of stupid AI cities than having to manage 50 cities in domination games any day. And it would probably make the game more interesting as it would efectively make the AI civs more competitive.

That is actually the main problem in the game, and why Vasals and Puppet cities should come back.

I fully agree that playing tall should be a more available game style. Currently playing tall can win the game, but still not as "efficient" as playing wide; more okay cities will always have larger yields than few good cities, and more cities will definitely make a faster win. Personally I love playing tall as well, since I am not interested in micromanaging more than 7-10 cities.

That's also why I suggest maintenance cost and vassals working together - if that can make people think more seriously before spamming cities. Or alternatively, besides vassals, buff tall cities (population yields production, or X% buff when population reach 15/20, or X% buff when a city have more than X districts, or single city wonder have larger boosts, together with better specialists, etc). In that way tall cities can actually compete with more cities, or one can have few good tall cities with lots of vassals as a "wide" empire.