Starving newly captured cities?

[ACEofPANZERS]

I've spent a few hours reading through the War Academy and forums and keep seeing mentions of "starving" newly captured cities. How do u do that so they don't flip when u capture them? Do you pillage all irrigated fields before you siege the city center? Do u just bombard the city with artillery until the population is near 1? Or is it AFTER you capture the city that you somehow starve them, maybe by making every resident a specialist so no one is working the fields for food?

one other quick question: I had never made mobile sams before my last game. so i had one set up in the countryside outside the city and one in the city. English bombers kept bombing the bejesus out of the city and the sams didn't do a thing. how do the mobile sams work?

 

[FeelGood]

Normally, I convert them to specialist or rush slave labor to starve them. This way you get something before they die.

I'm no expert but as I remember correctly, SAM has 2x2 zone of control and only act once per turn.

 

[CommandoBob]

The idea is that you want to starve the city down to size 1. At that size, the chances of a flip are greatly reduced. Don't pillage around the city, because once the city does get to size 1 that one, remaining citizen belongs to the original AI. As it grows, the new citizens will be your citizens and eventually that 'other' citizen will become your nationality.

If you can, disband an obsolete military unit in the city to help build a worker/slave. You will build a worker, and it may look like a worker, but it will perform like a slave. The bonus is that this unit also needs no per-turn upkeep and does not count in the unit support calculations.

 

[vmxa]

Mobile Sam or Flaks should use in 4's. They will do nothing out on a tile, unless the bomber bombs that tile. So you want to put them in the towns or stacks being bombed. I will put 5 or 6, if lots of bombers come and I may loss a sam or two.

Only 4 will be used in the defense calculations, but I want to not drop to 3 or less, so I may use an extra or two.

Fighters are the only ones that can defend a zone AFAIK.

 

[Ansar]

Yeah, I starve them down

Convert the citizens to specialists so that the city doesn't have food and loses foreign citizens who are not going to be happy (as you just captured the opponents city).

 

[lordmacroer]

Also keep in mind that the city will automaticly put all of the citizens back to laborers every turn that the city loses population, so it is important to make sure that you manualy put the citizens back to specialist every turn.
If anyone knows how to get a city to stop doing this, please tell me.