To Pillage or not to

[asurania]

Hey Do u think it is worth pillaging or not. I figure it is useless, i usually take my forces and take one city a time...and don't bother to pillage because i want to use the improvement, and don't want to bother rebuilding it up.

But i am playing on Chieftin, and slowly moving up the level..still on my first game so next game will be on harder level

 

[mjm801]

Well I think it depends on what you want. I find that if I am not wishing to expand sometimes pillaging will get them to the peace table other times you are correct I do not pillage because I want to use those improvements for my self.

Other times when my enemy is strong pillaging will weaken a city's ability to create units and by removing the roads you also can slow the reinforcement rate.

 

[Zhahz]

Same as Civ3 for me, except in Civ4 you get cash for pillaging. That is, sometimes I'm planning on conquering a civ or city so I don't pillage because soon it will be mine. Other times other civs are annoying and/or declaring war on me, but I might not want to take any of their cities at that point, so I'll terrorize them by pillaging their lands - and when I do so I make sure I cut them off from as many resources and other key tiles as I can to hurt em as much as possible.

I'm thinking I'll pillage less frequently in Civ4 if it's true that AIs don't go to war as much, which seems to be the case so far (ie, no random wars or suicide wars). In Civ3 the AI would attack me with no hope of killing a single unit and I'd just defend and/or terrorize them (cut off their roads to me, for ex).

 

[OGGleep]

Well, I don't know if this is a "efficent" strategy long term vs short term...but I was in an extended War with France. I was having difficulty taking just one city. So I made two camel archers with the expressed purpose to hurt his ability to respond, as he was sending troops to reinforce the city, and making troops in the city under siege. I pillaged the entire area around 4 of his cities, and by the time I was done I had 1500 gold in the bank. I had 200-300 before I started pillaging.

Cottage structures (Towns/Hamlets etc.) are reduced by one level each time you pillage. Therfore on a fully developed square, you can pillage 3 or 4 times, getting anywhere from 20-40ish gold. That adds up.

 

[Shillen]

I pillage if I'm not planning on keeping the city afterwards. You can get over 20 gold for pillaging a town. It's good for when your knights/cavalry are sitting around their city waiting for the catapults and cannons to show up. They can pillage and then move again even.

As for pillaging strategic resources it seems to be much weaker than it was in Civ3. This is because none of the defensive units even need a strategic resource. I miss the saltpeter resource. Sure it's nice to deny knights/cavalry to the enemy, but other than that most of the strategic resources are pretty useless, at least until the modern era.

 

[DangerousMonkey]

OGGleep is right, pillageing is insanely useful. Most improvements (but not roads) net the pillager 5-10 gold, and towns more like 15-20. And since you can pillage a town 4 times before it's gone that's a whole lot of gold. Also, a unit with a 2 move can pillage the same square twice in one turn, so a mounted unit can generate you maybe 30 gold or more in one turn by messing up an enemy town.

Overall i've noticed that taking cities is much harder in Civ4, but the pillage option is much more attractive than it used to be. Plus, if you destroy enough of a player's countryside you'll handicap them pretty badly, and maybe even force some of those damn defensive units out of the city walls to engage you.

 

[OGGleep]

Ya thats another point. He couldn't produce any units fast enough to reinforce his cities after I laid waste to his country side. So that plus the money imho its worth the extra time to rebuild. Since your workers are going to run out of things to do anyway on older cities.