Warmongering & The Strange Statistics Behind Puppets

[danaphanous]

I don't know about others on this forum but I've played civ5 for about 1/2 a year now and have yet to fully understand everything that goes on when I decide to puppet, annex, or raze. Annex and raze I think I understand but puppets...eh, I thought I did but then I saw a lot of comments on these forums that confused me.

I seem to have read conflicting things on the forums. Short term it always seems better to puppet because of the resistance, unless the city is crap: <5 pop and few building due to the fact it will raise your social policy cap permanently. However, after puppeting and resistance wears off it's often a decent city. I have been preferring (if it is a good city and could give me 15+ production) to annex and let it build a courthouse real quick. If it will take longer than 6 turns I typically buy it for the city as I have plenty of gold and save up for just this. This allows me the happiness boost via courthouse and allows me to direct production to military units, other happiness buildings, and more useful things. As far as I can tell there is no happiness difference to a puppet and potentially more as I can buy the pagoda or other happiness-boosters. This seems to me to be the better deal, however, I've encountered players who seem to be way more experienced at conquest who tell me to hardly ever annex and I'm wondering why. I've seen other players say your culture cost and science cost has already gone up with the puppet. It's not going to go up again. The only downside I see is a temporary gold hit (I guess I'm now supporting the buildings in the city?) Can someone explain this to me? Is my plan bad or am I missing something? I'd like to understand this. I'm also not terribly good at encouraging my puppets to make what I want which may be why I tend to annex the nice ones rather quickly so I can control them.

thanks for your opinions in advance.

 

[joncnunn]

Yes, unless you have the Order tenet that gives a free courthouse upon annexing, you always want to puppet initially. (Due to a "feature" that the tenet for free courthouse only works if you annex immediately)

Leaving forever as a puppet vs later annexing:
The main drawback to annexing (after you have a courthouse) as opposed to leaving as a puppet is that you need yet another copy of every building in which you haven't yet built the national wonder for (that the puppet hasn't already built)

So I time annexing for when I know it won't delay any national wonders for cities with good enough hammer potential to be annexation possibilities. (Also glance at turns remaining until the next social policy; if it's showing 1 turn remaining, you might want to wait an extra turn)

One tile islands that bring in a unique luxury though are cities that I always leave as puppets; if hammer production is always low I don't see the point in managing it.

 

[Browd]

I think it all depends on what your goals were/are when you conquer the city. If it is city #2 on an anticipated 20-city domination steamroll, you are going to get killed by unhappiness (even with courthouses) long before you get to city #20, so razing all cities that have no wonders or other compelling reason for existence is the best plan.

If, however, your goals are more modest (e.g., take X's capital and another city or two, and then make peace and beeline to a science or culture victory), then your standard for city-retention can and perhaps should be a bit lower. As you note, 20 or 30 turns later, a city that appeared marginal may be a strong contributor.

If you are inclined to raze the city, do it immediately -- no impact on culture costs. If you don't raze, always puppet (for at least the resistance period) unless you have taken the Iron Curtain tenet, as noted above. Only annex when you (A) can rush-buy a courthouse, or (B) can build a courthouse in 3 or 4 turns, or (C) have an urgent need to annex for some other reason (e.g., you need to rush-buy an airport so you can airlift in more units to keep your military campaign going).

 

[GoStu]

I generally annex as quickly as I can after the rebellion is over. Puppet cities default to Gold focus and cannot be changed, so they tend to develop very slowly in terms of science and cultural development. Their construction priorities are pretty awful as well, choosing anything with zero maintenance over anything useful. A puppet will usually build a Military Base before a freaking Monument or Library.

Also, because of the Gold focus and the priority building of markets, Banks, and Stock Exchanges they tend to work Merchant slots and can be an inadvertent source of great merchants. This can play havoc with your desire for a key scientist or engineer.

TLR, puppets are idiots and the less time you let them make bad decisions for, the better.

 

[b7fanatix]

With a good Happiness religion, pagodas and the other happiness buildings available from Renaissance on, I run into the limit of what i'm prepared to micromanage rather than a happiness one. At this point I make peace, everyone's scared of us, and go for a science win with my massive pop.