What does the cede peace deal do?

[Victoria]

I hate to be That Guy and necro post...

but I can't seem to find ANYWHERE on Google (and that's a lot of Civ6 Wikis) that actually explains, in detail, what the "cede" thing actually does.

Because apparently it's definitely NOT intuitive.

I trawled the sites for anything and the was pretty much nothing apart from a warmongers guide in this forum that said it was broken so I playtested it both in firetuner and the real game. I also looked around various aspects of the same where a non ceded city may make an affect, like religion.

The simple answer is horrific and shows it is broken.

During peace deals the AI very commonly wished to cede cities to you am puts a good value on each such city. If you remove the ceded city and ask for extra instead you can often get most of their gold.
If I attacked someone and just took 1 city and say got 6 warmonger points for taking that city, at the peace deal the following will occur.

Give the city back and have the 6 warmonger points removed. Warmonger points degrade but it's always the 6 back at peace... but you cannot get positive warmonger points.
Keep the city and gain -18 for you occupy my city
Have the city ceded to you and get another 6 warmonger points !!!!! (They may have fixed this now, I need to check again)

A city ceded to you still has -18 but now it counts toward your victory score. Non-ceded cities do not count toward victory points... that's it. I need to double check the non trading also, I think you can trade them, I made an error when testing and was trying to trade a capital (which you cannot do)

There is still a bug where if you accept a peace deal on the same turn as capturing a city but before you keep a city it stays in occupied status. Nothing to do with cede.

 

[SxSnts9]

@Victoria

Since you say that ceding only adds to victory points...

Does that mean the only time you NEED to make sure the city is ceded to you is when taking a capital on the path to domination victory? Or does capturing the capital regardless of ceding still count it properly?

I always ask for cede deals from the AI because I consider it an exploit to take extra gold/resources since the AI puts a value on ceding cities when it really should not.

 

[Victoria]

Does that mean the only time you NEED to make sure the city is ceded to you is when taking a capital on the path to domination victory?

You only NEED to take ceded cities for a points victory

 

[Darth Tribble]

The cede mechanic was not fully implemented. It doesn't work in any sort of rational or intuitive way.

I had a war where I took three cities, but only two of them were ceded to me, yet the last city is no longer shown to be occupied and seems to be functioning as any other ceded city.

 

[Victoria]

I had a war where I took three cities, but only two of them were ceded to me, yet the last city is no longer shown to be occupied and seems to be functioning as any other ceded city.

Correct, the only difference between a ceded city and a non ceded is it counts for victory points.