Stop automatic building destroy for capturated cities

[Danicela]

Oho, fighting fire with fire, eh?

You mean i defend from your 'bad playing' in sayin' that you have "bad playing" ?

I see few other options to building a library for culture early game:

Ok, build a library ... But to chop the only trees for that ?
=> Is that a good building to make in the early game?
There are much more interesting buildings to make firstly ...

1) I need the fat-cross

What is it ?

2) Library is more useful than Obelisks, which I very rarely use. Obelisks become obselete too quickly with my tech choices, and Libraries will always pay for themselves in coastal cities.

Library gives 2 culture whereas obelisks gives 1.
The interest of these buildings is to reach 10 culture enough fastly (to expand), the rest isn't important, so having obelisks is quite enough, library will be useful for science after.
Obsolete is a problem, but you won't need more culture, often.
(If the obelisk is obsolete, do you lose his +1 culture income ? or you keep it but only loosing the ability to build others ?)

Note that obelisks cost 30 and library 90 ...
Knowing that obelisks are better to make a faster culture expand by his little cost, they are the best choice, for early culture expand.

Library in the early game is useless, it costs too much for its culture, and the science bonus isn't worthwile when you don't produce enough science in the cities, you don't need the library.

Why the library are a good choice for coastal cities ?
The libraries make culture and science ...
You talk about ocean's gold? The libraries will give a very bad income for the 2 gold you gain, in the early game.

3) I had no state religion, and had yet to adopt the Mongolian religion

For culture, obelisks are good if you haven't any state religion
You don't need more 1 culture expand...
Obelisks are quite enough

Regardless, if trees are going to be chopped, what makes a Library a bad choice for a city of middling size that has no hope of ever going for a Wonder

You must not chop trees, they are good unchopped, +1 prod and more with high technologies is better than having 50 hammers for only 1 thing.
Particularly when you have only 1 tree, you won't chop it, if you are smart

But if you have to chop these trees, that's to make a high cost military unit, or something that has a REAL use, instead of an useless library.

A risk that pays off is good playing.
A risk that ends in disaster is bad playing.

I think that in your case, you had a disaster, so that's bad playing

Just kidding

??

Granted, it would be less offensive to say 'mistake' rather than 'bad playing'. You all have my sincerest apologies for my lack of tact.

Yes, and even if this is a mistake, this mistake is a really good exemple, to make creators & developpers change this part of the game.

a weak defender in an important city

If the city isn't important, that's normal that you can abandon it for some turns waiting for reinforcements that will defend the city in their place, but if the city is important, you shouldn't give it up no matter/whatever the reasons, or only you are SURE that you won't lose it.

But that's strange that the AI sent units from his last city, to capture your city, whereas he should defend his city ...

If one is forced to resort to such drastic measures, then that person has failed to properly plan military needs.

You mean that someone who send defenders and who abandon cities to put these soldiers on the frond has failed?
I don't think so.
If you want to make a big assault, with the maximum troops, using your defenders can be a good help for your attackers.
This isn't bad.
But you must pay a big attention to your cities, replacing the lost defenses fastly, and you can't afford this "defenders => attackers" if your cities are in danger.

 

[JustAnotherUser]

Personally I think it would be nice add some gradation to razing a city, a thing that IMHO would work could be like this, when you enter a unguarded city you are presented with 3 (4?) options
1 pillage, then burn): The standard "burn baby, burn" option. the city is totally destroyed.
2 raze) the standard Civ 4 option, all the buildings (except wonders and shrines) are destroyed, but you keep the city.
3) just pillage (optional) like 2 but any building (except military have a random chance to be kept intact and operative.

4) conquest, you keep the city more or less intact, buildings military in function "walls, barracks, etc) are destroyed but all the others are intact and functional.

The difference between the options would be
a) gold, with 1) you get more, with 4) you get less or nothing
b) revolution: with 1) you don't get Resistance (well, you don't have city, but you know what I mean) with 2,3 and 4 you get increasingly longer periods of it.
This way you have to choose if to conquest a city without buildings that can start producing in 3-4 turns or a city more or less intact but that would be useless for a dozen turns or so.

 

[Danicela]

This is an interesting suggestion/idea, like in Warlords III, we would have several choices concerning what you want to do with the captured city.

Put warning in the vocabulary : razing means a total destroy of the city, and pillage, means only keeping city but destroying some buildings.

In Warlords III, you had the choices :
Occupy : Take the city without any modification.
Pillage : You destroy ways of production of units that you can't make and you get some gold.
Saccage : You destroy all the ways of production of units whatever you can make or not, and you get more gold. (the gold depends on the ways of production destroyed)
Raze : Destroy the city.

This concept can be interesting to search and to try to use it in Civ4.

The differences would be the same like for Warlords III : Occupy = keep the city, razing = destroy the city, pillage = destroy some buildings (= + Gold), and saccaging = destroy all buildings. (= +++ Gold)
But I prefer my starting idea : You can choose the buildings you want to destroy, or the ones you want to keep, and you know the gold you'll get for each building destroyed.