The futility of Recalling to Life

[tenkk]

After trying out G&K quite a bit recently I came to enjoy a slither of what Civ once was, which is great. I think the diplomacy is somewhat better, which enabled me to play Civ the way I do as an enforcer of the historic balances of power, rather than just trying to win.

However it seems that without Tech trading, liberating the capital of a long extinguished nation is pointless. In the first instance one may not be able to commit to a defence pact as they do not have that knowledge. They will still produce archers or swordsmen, when their sizable neighbors are already making Riflemen and cannonry. This is an unenviable situation wherein whomever you liberated the civ from, or whoever, will trample it later.

I do gift advanced units to such cities to the tune of 3 or 4, but this never makes a difference against a big nation marching. The recalled civ needs at least the potential to defend itself.

I might choose to Annex such a city consequently and gift it to a weak civ precisely because liberating its even weaker Dead civ will result in rapid capitulation as just mentioned. Yet in spite of paying good money, such as 800 gold, the receiving civ still chooses to Liberate it still. And so it just gets killed off.

I think it would be good if Civs which are recalled to life are brought to the mean Era of the game. If the weakest alive civ was renaissance and the strongest modern, then it could be reborn in the industrial era. Or perhaps it becomes the same Era as the liberating civ is. Not sure.. But as it stands, by the time my armies can cross oceans, I am unable to effectively liberate long dead American nations for example and must instead deal with one massive opponent by way of war alone.

Thoughts?

 

[Ryoga]

I've had this problem often as well. I think things could be fixed if defensive pacts worked correctly.

For example this is a typical situation in continent maps I play. I dominate my own continent and then I want to play the role of "peacekeeper" in the other continent. So I go to war against the dominant civ out there and liberate all the cities that it gobbled up.

Problem... the civs that I liberated start to wage war against each other even if I made a defensive pact with them.

Normally a civ that undeveloped would never DoW on me, but they completely ignore the defensive pact and still attack a civ under my protection.
If only defensive pacts worked as a deterrent this would never happen.

Even stronger civs would think twice before attacking them as long as I have a superior army.

For what concerns the technological department, currently a civ gets a bonus on researching technologies that other civs that have been already met already own.
I think this bonus should be enhanced proportionally with the technological disparity. So a civ stucked in the medieval time should get a huge boost from a civ that is in the industrial era and even more from one in the information era.

 

[Halcyan2]

Recalling to Life can be very strong. The massive diplomatic boost all but assures you have a DoF with the liberated civ for the rest of the game. For Diplomacy games, you have another RA partner and likely an extra UN vote. For Science games, you have another RA partner.

It's obviously less useful for Domination and Cultural games, but might still be worth it at times.

Instead of gifting units, my preferred tactic is to surround the besieged city with units so that opposing armies cannot take the city with melee units (but will constantly shoot it down to 0 HP.

 

[Ryoga]

Instead of gifting units, my preferred tactic is to surround the besieged city with units so that opposing armies cannot take the city with melee units (but will constantly shoot it down to 0 HP.

I end up doing so myself, but that's a waste of units especially if I need to defend more than one city. Moreover I'd like for the civ to develop a bit and that's not possible as long as it's besieged.

 

[pilot00]

I had done this two times. Once with China and once with Russia. I needed/used them to have a buffer between their lands and my own in order to prevent other civs from declaring war on me and settling near my borders. On the Chinese case I attacked the Romans, liberated China and gave them half of Romes cities. They were stuck in the medieval era but Rome was effectively broken after loosing so many cities.
On the Russia game I did the same with Russia only I used them as a buffer against Carthage. However Dido though that she could reclaim her cities back, too bad I used tanks to steam roll her into place.

In general there is no much point in reviving except if you want to RP.

 

[Ryoga]

In general there is no much point in reviving except if you want to RP.

There is a practical point albeit often not necessary. Each civ that you recall to life will vote for you in diplomatic victories.

 

[Cahillicus]

If you do it late enough in the game, you can defend the liberated civs long enough for them to vote for you in the UN. Not sure how it will work in BNW, though.

 

[pilot00]

Yeah well there is that, but how many will you liberate for it to be worth it? I mean I never won a diplpo by a single vote.

Dont get me wrong I dont trash the mechanic its a nice 'spicing' mechanic but from a pure 'efficiency' (for a lack of a better word) play its not worth it. That said I would like to see it been implemented a bit better.

I.E. the liberator to be the one responsible for only for taking relations downhill and the ability to libirate a city after you puppet it. Some times its not worth it to liberate it you want to keep it as a staging ground. Once the war is over you might want to hand it over. OR you might want to play the good guy. I might have trashed your empire but see? Here take those cities back and be a nice guy from now on.
That sort of thing.

 

[Ryoga]

There is another advantage in that which I explained in another thread.

This another continent scenario. The AI on the other continent just conquered every single civ and has become a runaway, its sciene is better than yours, it's got uranium, it's got nukes and it's got enough money to buy them one after another. What do you do?

Well I managed for a while to win its cities even though my units were a generation behind.

It's simple. The AI will never DoW on another civ as long as it is engulfed in a war with a major enemy. So when I went there, rather than taking the cities for myself, I liberated them.
As a result the AI could only attack my land units with aircrafts and ranged and it could not use its nukes on me.

As soon as I made the mistake of keeping a city for myself in order to upgrade my aircraft, it sent a nuke on me and destroyed almost all of my attacking force.

See if I just kept gifting cities to the liberated civ it would've went without a hitch.

Why a liberated civ? Because even if you give a whole continent to it, it is still so behind in tech that you can later steamroll it without a problem.

 

[pilot00]

Admitting I haven't thought of that. It usually is two CiVs that are powerful enough in my games to have nuclear weapons so I bribe them to DoW each other and take a spaceship ride if things get so hairy.