Strategy Informer Preview: City Destruction

[AriochIV]

A brief preview posted at Strategy Informer:

http://www.strategyinformer.com/pc/civilizationv/previews.html

The one piece of information here I haven't seen before is regarding city destruction.

The first option for the captor of the city is to destroy it – but this isn’t immediate, and takes several turns to happen. This allows the defeated player to try to retake their precious city before it is destroyed.

 

[Ahriman]

Yes, it has been announced that razing cities only kills 1 citizen per turn, so no more insta-razing. Which is fantastic.

 

[Tylerryan79]

Ya I posted about this in another thread a while back, and I also agree that it's great. It will really allow for better battles, either trying to save your cities, or defending the ones you want destroyed.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Sweet!

 

[CTH]

I hope that you can destroy your own cities, perhaps in the same way

 

[Mu'min]

Nice info - perhaps this explain the burning city i saw in one of the screenshots or maybe one of the vids??

 

[AriochIV]

I hope that you can destroy your own cities, perhaps in the same way

They generally don't allow this, because people will just destroy a city rather than let it be taken, and that's neither good for gameplay nor particularly realistic.

 

[Aeon221]

They generally don't allow this, because people will just destroy a city rather than let it be taken, and that's neither good for gameplay nor particularly realistic.

That's silly, and you should know exactly why. Plenty of blah blah destroyed cities blah blah stop the enemy blah blah Russia blah blah wikipedia.

Besides, now that destruction is a slow process, it'll be a race for the invader to take your city before it's burned to the ground! That IS fun!

 

[BobDole]

That's silly, and you should know exactly why. Plenty of blah blah destroyed cities blah blah stop the enemy blah blah Russia blah blah wikipedia.

Besides, now that destruction is a slow process, it'll be a race for the invader to take your city before it's burned to the ground! That IS fun!

Sure, you could come up with some sort of historical justification, but it'd be a lame gameplay mechanic. If you have a few cities on an island or somewhere far away from your main empire if they get attacked and you know you couldn't defend them you could just burn everything and screw the attacker out of cities.

 

[duckstab]

This is the first I've read about being able to set up a puppet government in a captured city. That's an interesting option.

 

[wolf_brother]

Sure, you could come up with some sort of historical justification, but it'd be a lame gameplay mechanic. If you have a few cities on an island or somewhere far away from your main empire if they get attacked and you know you couldn't defend them you could just burn everything and screw the attacker out of cities.

Which happens all the time

And it would be a fun gameplay mechanic. If you're the one attacking, you have to make sure your attack is hard and fast enough to take the city before your opponent can burn it down - and since razing cities now takes several turns, that isn't too much to ask.

 

[TheDS]

Considering that most players raze cities more often than taking them anyway, I hardly see it as a problem. I'd like to be able to take a city and use it as a base of operations, then when the war is over, if it's in a bad location, trash it and build a new one in a better location. (But since we can't use cities as bases of operations any more, it may be a moot point.)

 

[AriochIV]

The problem in terms of realism is that razing a city means killing the population, and giving an order to murder an entire city's worth of your own people is the kind of order that can result in the giver not being in charge anymore. I know there are historical examples to the contrary, but these are the exception rather than the rule, and usually involve internal ethnic conflict. Don't expect an "ethnic cleansing" option to be in a game like this.

In a game like Colonization, where the population is mobile, it's a different matter... you can just evacuate the people and goods ahead of the invasion (which felt oddly realistic). In that case an argument could be made for city self-destruction, because it was just the structures being put to the torch. But in terms of gameplay I think that takes too much of the fun and reward out of conquest, if all you can expect to conquer is a smoking ruin.

 

[wolf_brother]

The problem in terms of realism is that razing a city means killing the population, and giving an order to murder an entire city's worth of your own people is the kind of order that can result in the giver not being in charge anymore. I know there are historical examples to the contrary, but these are the exception rather than the rule, and usually involve internal ethnic conflict. Don't expect an "ethnic cleansing" option to be in a game like this.

Maybe if one were far enough down the Autocracy branch of the social policy tree...

 

[Ricci]

Yes, it has been announced that razing cities only kills 1 citizen per turn, so no more insta-razing. Which is fantastic.

Yes, this is certainly something the previous civs always lacked and I hoped for. I believe this mechanic will end up having the city being razed incrementally; 1 pop/turn for the first 2-3 turns, two pop each next couple of turns , 3 -4 pop the next turn, so on so forth.
So, having a 23 pop city razed will be something of the sort:

1st turn -> 22
2nd turn -> 21
3rd turn -> 20
4 -> 18
5 -> 16
6 -> 12
7 -> 7
8 -> city was completely destroyed

It might be game-play unwise to run the raze for 23 turns for instance. This increment could be augmented for faster game speeds as well.

 

[AriochIV]

If you seriously want to raze a 23-pop city, you should be forced to sit on it for 23 turns. I don't think genocide is nearly as easy as you guys seem to think it is.

Well, modern weapons obviously make it a bit easier, so I suppose it depends on the technology level of the unit doing the mass-murder.

 

[Carver]

The problem in terms of realism is that razing a city means killing the population, and giving an order to murder an entire city's worth of your own people is the kind of order that can result in the giver not being in charge anymore. I know there are historical examples to the contrary, but these are the exception rather than the rule, and usually involve internal ethnic conflict. Don't expect an "ethnic cleansing" option to be in a game like this.

In a game like Colonization, where the population is mobile, it's a different matter... you can just evacuate the people and goods ahead of the invasion (which felt oddly realistic). In that case an argument could be made for city self-destruction, because it was just the structures being put to the torch. But in terms of gameplay I think that takes too much of the fun and reward out of conquest, if all you can expect to conquer is a smoking ruin.

A work-around would be if the cities pop was converted into workers. You could keep them as workers or your could settle them in different cities, a la Civ3.

 

[CTH]

With the new, empire wide happiness system I think it could be important to be able to raze your own cities, it would take some time so that you just cant raze it when somone is about to take it.
And I dont think that razing a city is the same as killing every citizen (well in civ it is right now) but with the empire wide happiness one city less means that other cities can grow larger. And cities are razed in the real world and moved, not very often but it happens. The swedish mining city Kiruna will soon be moved to make room for a mine, it is a political decision and I am pretty sure no genocide will happen in the process.

 

[Ituralde]

I wonder how permament the razing decision is. Meaning, once I start razing, can I stop it? Would be interesting if you could, but would also open the possibility to raze a little and then occupy so as not to get such a high happiness hit. On the other hand the remaining populace should be pretty pissed after you just killed off the other half.

On razing in general, I wouldn't just equate it to genocide by the way. I always understood it more like putting all the structures to the torch. The remaining populace would become refugees since their city was destroyed. Of course refugees have never been portrayed in any Civ game, that's just how I think of it, though.

 

[Thyrwyn]

Forced relocation is a rather common means of dealing with indigenous populations. . .