The Razing of CITIES

[brinko]

I would like to see cities burn for at least 2 turns, when the decision is made to raze them. for them to instantly turn to rubble is blande and it dosent have a devestating impact nor an everlasting impression.

 

[Admiral8Q]

Awesome idea! I'd love it if they added this!

Maybe if the razed city burned for 3-5 turns, and all imediate tiles in the radius. While burning, you could not settle or use any of these tiles. Units should still be able the move through the burning tiles however.

Or maybe in stead of so many turns, the city would burn down 1-3 citizens until it reaches zero, then the ruble would appear. Therefor a large city would take longer to burn down.

 

[Comrade Pedro]

what??? 3-5 turns??? you mean a city that's burning to 3-5 years.....?

 

[sir_schwick]

One citizen drop per military unit(hehehehe) per turn along with burning graphics, including inside the 'city view'. Finally a city view I would enjoy.

 

[searcheagle]

I'd like to see some motivations not to burn cities but not to have them go on for several turns.

 

[Darwin420]

Maybe have the razing take 2 turns, and you need to keep at least one military unit there to 'keep the fires going.'

 

[rhialto]

Considering the timescales taken to burn a city, this idea makes no sense at all.

 

[Admiral8Q]

what??? 3-5 turns??? you mean a city that's burning to 3-5 years.....?

Considering the timescales taken to burn a city, this idea makes no sense at all.

That's not a very good argument...

It makes no sense that to move the same unit 5 tiles over period of 5-500 years (depending on the year) for a distance that in reality would take several months. This is just a fact of the game that makes it playable.

I'd like to see some motivations not to burn cities but not to have them go on for several turns.

The fact that you can't "instantly get rid of cites by razing then would be good motivation to reconsider this, don't you think?

Maybe have the razing take 2 turns, and you need to keep at least one military unit there to 'keep the fires going.'

Good idea that you'd have to keep at least one unit there to complete the razing, but I think the larger the city, the longer it would take to finish it off.

 

[Darwin420]

@Admiral8Q:

Maybe the razing could work like this...

Level 1-3 = 1 turn
Level 4-6 = 2 turns
Level 7-12 = 3 turns
Level 12+ = 4 turns

Plus you have to keep units there to continue the burning. Maybe number of units equal to how many turns needed to burn (4 turns = 4 units). Or 1 unit for up to size 6 city razing, 2 units for cities larger than that.

The only problem I can foresee with having raze times in excess of 2 turns, is it would get really annoying, and destroy some of the fun factor. It's also close to just occupying the city (since you need units there anyway) and starving the population to 1 point...

Ah, well. Just my two cents.

 

[brinko]

actually if u think about it 2-3 years or turns would be suffiecent for the city square, sure troops can still occupy it while its burning, but the fires would signify nothing could be built on that square. the extensive clean up of the rubble and destruction after realsiticly would take 1-2 years.

imagine this, you capture 1/2 of the country of your greatest enemy in 3 turns, as u make way to his capital, u leave a path of engulfed cities burning. The whole country side is red...by the time ur at his doorstep, the country side is beggining to look like a 20year olds birthday cake. (candles)

is that not sweet or what, who cares if a city squares on fire for 3 turns, imagine the satisfaction!

 

[Darwin420]

actually if u think about it 2-3 years or turns would be suffiecent for the city square, sure troops can still occupy it while its burning, but the fires would signify nothing could be built on that square. the extensive clean up of the rubble and destruction after realsiticly would take 1-2 years.

imagine this, you capture 1/2 of the country of your greatest enemy in 3 turns, as u make way to his capital, u leave a path of engulfed cities burning. The whole country side is red...by the time ur at his doorstep, the country side is beggining to look like a 20year olds birthday cake. (candles)

I think this should cause pollution, as the smoke and ash and burned corpses pile up. Maybe for each turn the city burns, it generates one tile of pollution around it.

Depending how they use rivers in cIV, maybe the pollution can travel downstream (maybe carrying disease)?

 

[brinko]

i like your city size-burning ratio. thats excellent, yeah a little polution, but once the cities are cleared from rubble, think of the excellent farm land that the carbon ash would provide. we do it all the time up here in canada. we burn the stubble, that provides ash for the soil. the ash is rich in nutrients that make way for an excellent crop.

 

[Darwin420]

i like your city size-burning ratio. thats excellent, yeah a little polution, but once the cities are cleared from rubble, think of the excellent farm land that the carbon ash would provide.

Firstly, Thanks!!

Maybe cIV will implement the ability to have terrain change over time. Then the land around it would get some sort of different coloration, or maybe a symbol on it, that would denote it as ash-rich farmland... perhaps the bonus will only last for, say, 10 turns of irrigation?

Also, on the note of terrain changing, imagine a desert that is expanding over thousands of years... can anyone say Sahara? I hope they take environment more into account in cIV, a la SMAC.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

i like your city size-burning ratio. thats excellent, yeah a little polution, but once the cities are cleared from rubble, think of the excellent farm land that the carbon ash would provide. we do it all the time up here in canada. we burn the stubble, that provides ash for the soil. the ash is rich in nutrients that make way for an excellent crop.

Oh. Of course. All that lovely, clean, CITY ash. Anybody want to take a guess at how many tens of thousands of tons of poisonous gas and ash you'd get from burning down Chicago or NYC? How many square miles of land that would be unusable for years to come because of all the toxins in the soil from a nice city burning? These places would become dead zones.

I do like the idea of better city burning/razing, as it is, the city just quietly disappears. Maybe if it's a multiturn event, some of the population could attempt to escape as refugees, and you could chase them down for slaves.

Also, maybe you could deliberately order your military to slaughter the populace, that way, you would hear screaming and wailing from the city while it was being destroyed. This would be an act of brutality, and other nations could ask you to halt the civilian slaughter during diplo negotiations.

 

[Darwin420]

I do like the idea of better city burning/razing, as it is, the city just quietly disappears. Maybe if it's a multiturn event, some of the population could attempt to escape as refugees, and you could chase them down for slaves.

Also, maybe you could deliberately order your military to slaughter the populace, that way, you would hear screaming and wailing from the city while it was being destroyed. This would be an act of brutality, and other nations could ask you to halt the civilian slaughter during diplo negotiations.

It has been brought up in other threads to implement the ability to make "Camps" (death, internment, refugee). The idea of refugees is a good one, I think. A separate unit for refugees, and if captured become slave workers (unless you don't allow slavery, in which case they can be added to the population of a city).

I'm not sure how much it would add to gameplay to be able to order your military to "slaughter innocents." Granted, it would realistically portray the awful crises and genocides that have occured through history, and would create fun new diplomatic options, but not sure if it should be done for cIV.

 

[Admiral8Q]

I have to agree with Ivan, the nutrient bonus doesn't make sense. I mean if you burn a grassland, yes it gets nutrients, but burning a city is a completely different story. I think the city's rubble should be the same as if that square was pollution and would need to be cleaned up by workers, kind of the same scenario as when you nuke a city.

@Darwin420, excelent ratio!
I've thought about it and you're right, leaving a unit in a burning city would take away from the gameplay. Also, if you leave the burning city and it it stops burning, what happens to it then? Perhaps the burning city would continue to burn on it's own until it's finally destroyed. This would be the "benfit" of razing vs. occupying and starving. I think this would make more sence.

 

[Comrade Pedro]

The objective is to turn the game into a more realistic way of playing, i think....so adding elements that isn't irrelevant and either doesn't contribute to the reality of the game is a bad idea...

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Well, I think that if you are going to make city razing a deliberate, multiturn event, then you should have to stand guard and make sure everything is destroyed; if you left, the enemy could come back and rescue the remaining populace (getting free pop points for nearby cities), and getting some gold through emergency salvage of remaining infrastructure.

 

[brinko]

i hope it is... if i woke up one day i felt like liquidating the french, i should be able to do so in the vacinity of my own home. it would be cool if the iroquois were gassing the innocent germans, i could play captain america and save them, and then confine the iroquois in a camp, far off in the middle of the ocean

 

[Comrade Pedro]

you could be able to rebuild razed cities by plancing, for example, a settler and seize the remnants of the buildings that were destroyed.

But i think no army had interest in guarding a burning city 2 ou 3 turns.....