Razing VS Capturing

[Globex]

Whenever I fight wars, I will always raze my enemy cities because:

-Captured cities can flip or be recaptured
-The damage you do to your enemy by razing cities can not be easily reversed (they have to build another city and build its infrastructure and population from nothing while all they have to do to reverse the damage if you capture cities is to recapture the city)
-I dislike the way the AI places it cities
-You get more slaves
-You don't have to slow down your attack to quell resistors
-You don't have to reduce the size of your army to defend captured cities
-You can focus entirely on the offense

Is there any advantages for capturing cities over razing them?

 

[Tribute]

Wonders, strategic locations, variant limitations (512 city limit or limited built cities), resources/luxes, confidence that the enemy cannot take back the city (they're normally not that strong), a place to rest and heal up troops....

Actually, there is damage that you do to yourself when razing a city. You can't get the free population and unit support money. It is better to keep cities in some cases. Some infrastructure (aqueduct, marketplace, ...) will remain for you. Also, the city will count as a road, your troops won't slow down when they are attacking. You can trap the AI troops if they want to retake the town (cultural border) and defeat them on the next turn without harm to your troops. And if it does flip/get captured, the AI does not get all its infrastructure back (it still loses all cultural buildings). The downside, of course, is that you don't get those slaves and may lose units in flips. However, flip rates are very low <5% most of the time. You could probably capture the next cities and reduce that to <1% within 2-3 turns until you beat the enemy AI.

 

[gmaharriet]

Is there any advantages for capturing cities over razing them?

Oh, yes!!! In addition to what Tribute mentioned, there are HUGE advantages in the later game after rails and the arty that come with Replaceable Parts.

Bring combat settlers and combat engineers (workers) along with your troops and arty. Capture and keep an enemy town, use their roads to rail to the other side of the cultural borders. Sometimes you can bombard from that far side and, if not, move a settler into position (covered by infantry or an army for next turn if in enemy territory). If in neutral territory, settle, rail to the far side and bombard the AI's next city before capture. Rinse and repeat.

You can often take several enemy cities in a single turn using this technique. I'm not sure if my explanation is clear, since it depends on specific terrain and roads/rails available, but it can be very effective.

 

[vmxa]

In C3C you can turn those cities and metros into nice specialist farms. They are already full of people. You can rush workers or settlers if you have Recycle with structures you sell off.

Use gold to rush after pacified.

I often use their pop to create settlers that I will hold until I kill the civ off or nearly gone.

 

[Globex]

How about having to defend those cities? I know I can keep obsolete units stationed in the cities to quell resistors but they might not be able to defend against attackers. The cultural borders would trap AI units but not fast units since the borders shrink when you capture the city. The effort that is needed to defend those cities would slow down my attack. Is there a way to capture and hold your enemy cities without having to slow down your advance?

 

[nimbuses]

There is a big impact on your war weariness when doing the razing all of the time (of course for those types of governments where war weariness is an issue which should be taken into account). I recall several games where I did excessive razing, this lead to civil disorder in almost all of my cities. Of course it can be prevented by making citizens content, but this means it'll cost you a lot of money and science advance. A few cities won't matter significantly, but I would advise against doing that all of time.

 

[Globex]

Razing enemy cities has no impact on your war weariness according to the War Academy article on war weariness: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/war_weariness.php

War weariness is caused when:
You lose workers/artillery to the enemy
Your tiles get pillaged
Your units get attacked
When your attacking units lose a battle
When one of your cities are captured

 

[nimbuses]

Razing enemy cities has no impact on your war weariness according to the War Academy article on war weariness: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/war_weariness.php

War weariness is caused when:
You lose workers/artillery to the enemy
Your tiles get pillaged
Your units get attacked
When your attacking units lose a battle
When one of your cities are captured

Might be that I'm wrong, but such civil revolts indeed occurred. And I thought that this was because of the excessive razing I did.

 

[vmxa]

How about having to defend those cities? I know I can keep obsolete units stationed in the cities to quell resistors but they might not be able to defend against attackers. The cultural borders would trap AI units but not fast units since the borders shrink when you capture the city. The effort that is needed to defend those cities would slow down my attack. Is there a way to capture and hold your enemy cities without having to slow down your advance?

Like so many things in this game you have to use your experience to determine the tactic that is best for the goals and the settings. IOW, what is the chance that the town could be retaken?

If that is a risk and you do not want to take it, then don't try to hold it. You have to evaluate the impact on your over all plan of war to see if you have the units to space to hold a town.

It varies from game to game and from within the same game. I may land be able to hold this town now, but not the next one. It could be the landscape, it could be any number of things, again experience counts.

 

[ecuwins]

I will usually raze the first few cities during the war (being careful not to attack wonder cities). After I am certain the AI is weakened beyond repair then I capture the rest of its cities. Also, I will also starve down any city until the AI is dead. A lot of money and/or beakers can be made while starving down some large cities, just make it so no tiles are being worked and all non-resistors are tax men or scientists -- usually requires you to check it every turn.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Whenever I fight wars, I will always raze my enemy cities because:

-Captured cities can flip or be recaptured
-The damage you do to your enemy by razing cities can not be easily reversed (they have to build another city and build its infrastructure and population from nothing while all they have to do to reverse the damage if you capture cities is to recapture the city)
-I dislike the way the AI places it cities
-You get more slaves
-You don't have to slow down your attack to quell resistors
-You don't have to reduce the size of your army to defend captured cities
-You can focus entirely on the offense

- Captured cities will stop flipping after the your enemy is destroyed. Until then simply factor in. A flipped city is easily recaptured on the first turn, because the free defender is not yet fortified.

- See it that way, if a city flips and you recapture it, your enemy gets another dose of WW.

- OK. But most of the captured land is for specialist farm land anyway. So, it doesn't really matter much.

- You can build slaves in captured cities.

– Don't quell resistance until after the war. Just let the cities sit there. After your enemy is destroyed you can quell resistors at a rate of one for every stationed unit per turn.

- Make use of your allies. If a city is certain to be captured, gift it away to your ally (if you don't have one, get one). So, it is not you to lose the city but your 'friend.' You only get to re-capture it (and kill some attackers(!) in the process).

- But you are already focusing on the offensive if you decide to take cities.

Is there any advantages for capturing cities over razing them?

- No need to make overly use your valuable population to resettle large stretches of territory. Just bring along a few combat settlers and you are fine.

- No need to regrow cities. It takes some time to get even a pop of only six or seven from scratch.

– You can build slaves and settlers from these cities. No need to drain your pop.

- Even if the cultural borders of a captured cities are only small they still take more of the cultural thicket of your enemies empire. May have some importance for mobility.

- Attitude hits (not rep!) for razing are irreparable. Just don't be surprised if everyone hates you if you go on razing frenzies. And don't expect to take any lazy diplo wins (I mean what is the point in playing on if you already possess half the world. The challenge is lost.)

- Wonders and Aqueducts are not lost.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

How about having to defend those cities? I know I can keep obsolete units stationed in the cities to quell resistors but they might not be able to defend against attackers. The cultural borders would trap AI units but not fast units since the borders shrink when you capture the city. The effort that is needed to defend those cities would slow down my attack. Is there a way to capture and hold your enemy cities without having to slow down your advance?

Armies are never (OK almost never) attacked in the field. So, use them to shield your new possession from attacks of fast movers. During the early and mid Industrial Age Infantries in a fortress can cheaply fulfill the same purpose.

Make sure your adversary does not have any fast movers. Suicide pillaging missions of Explorers at the beginning of the war are a valid tool.

 

[ignas]

Keep cities, don't raze them. Don't bother with quelling resistance, leave one or two units outside the city to recapture in case it flips

 

[Chuggi]

Also you don't have to deal with other AI rushing in with settlers as soon as you've razed them.

 

[Elear]

Agreed also. Keep capturing cities and pushing the front line. Your main army can keep attacking, while re-enforcements take back any flipped cities on the way to the front line. You can also quell some resistance if you need to rest your troops.

Plus, if you are managing your troops well, it should be a rare occurance for enemy troops to just slip through and start taking cities, unless of course you have a huge border to defend (usually only Pangaea).

 

[Zandrew]

I usually keep captured cities just because it's easier than building my own, but I've started razing more often because of poor city placement. The AI does a terrible job placing cities, often missing nearby whales, fish, fresh water and other valuables. I'm often amazed to see small islands surrounded by whales and fish, and the AI finds the one place to build that misses them all!

Flipping drives me nuts and I try hard to avoid it by loading the city with units, but I like the idea mentioned above of just leaving them weakly defended letting them flip and then easily retaking them. This has the additional benefit of further reducing the native population each time I take the city. I'll have to try that!

 

[Globex]

There are a lot of good points here about capturing cities over razing especially about the gifting cities that are about to be captured to your ally and recapturing them when the enemy captures them. I knew the concept of gifting cities to other civs to avoid a WW hit but it never occurred to me to have a MA with the city that I gift to so that enemy will attack and allow me to retake the city without starting another war. I will try to use that strategy during my next game.

 

[Lexicus]

Razing vs. Capturing really depends on the circumstances. Generally, I tend to be very powerful culturally, so culture flips haven't been a very big problem for me in most of my games, so I usually opt towards capture. A city than revolts is razed immediately after recapture when I play. That doesn't happen often, but when it does the result is always the same.

 

[Jazzmail]

I do all the quelling on the first 1 turn after capturing a town. This is usually enough to quell all, because I make large killer stacks.
Loosing troops due to flips is impossible this way.

I don't do agressive settling, because near the border a size 1 foreign town has about the same chance to flip as a native size 1. So I simply reduce enemy cities instead while I benefit from extra slaves and taxmen/science. That's all what distant towns are good for anyway.

I may raze if there's scattered enemy units in the area who can immediately retake the undefended city, or when I'm doing a hit and run (rarely).

 

[AutomatedTeller]

It depends:

I'll keep cities under the following circumstance:

1) Demigod or below
2) I'm about to eliminate the AI
3) It has an important wonder.
4) It's very early in the game