To Raze or not to Raze

[cybrgamr]

I started a new game last night - continents, medium sized, settler level using the Spanish. I quickly founded the first 5 religions (Oracle for Theology helped). I built no military units outside of warriors and archers to protect my cities until I was ready to attack, then I focused many of my cities to producing units. I was able to found the last two religions around 0 BC, so I own all seven. I have my state religion set to Buddhism and all of my cities have adopted Buddhism, and I have the Spire built in the Buddhism home city.

I am currently at 1700AD (about 250 turns left to go) and I now own one of the two continents thanks to a succesful military campaign to remove the three countries on the continent with me (it is very easy when you have gunships and they are still defending with longbowmen).

As I was taking them over, I had the option to install a governor or destroy the cities. For all of them I chose to install a new governor, but as I did that I slowly went from a gold suprlus of +36 per turn to -100 per turn (because I captured over a dozen cities).

Does it make more sense to destroy them or to install the new government in them?

 

[futurehermit]

Raze ones that are too far from your capital. You get a distance from capital penalty for maintenance.

However, there are ways to avoid needing to raze, especially that late in the game.

1) Build courthouses. This will cut your city maintenance in 1/2. This should be your first build in newly captured cities.

2) Build forbidden palace (and optimally Versailles) in a good location a fair distance from your capital. It acts like the capital and reduces maintenance in nearby cities.

3) Run state property civic once you hit communism. This eliminates the distance from capital aspect of city maintenance.

4) Build up your economy overall. For beginners, this means many cottages everywhere. Once those cottages mature you will be able to absorb the costs of new cities much more easily. Also, adopt cottage-based civics as they become available (emancipation, universal sufferage, free speech, free market, free religion).

5) Trade for $$$. It's ok to run a deficit economy as long as you have a lot of $$$ in your bank account. If you can develop a healthy tech lead post-currency then you can trade your outdated tech to other civs for $$$. This will allow you to run a deficit economy.

Hope this helps.