[vanilla] What Happens When Barbarians Take a City?

[EndoConvert]

I have never, ever in my life lost a city to barbarians, and especially with the buffed city defenses since the 1.0.1.135 patch, it is increasingly unlikely, so I was wondering if anyone knows what happens if a city does fall to barbs.

Do the barbarians establish a barbarian civ and annex or puppet the city? (Yeah, I know, this seems unlikely.)

Does the city get razed? Or does the city just disappear like conquered cities on OCC?

If the city is razed or disappears when taken by barbs, what happens if your capital gets taken by barbs, since capitals can't be destroyed?

 

[jtb1127]

I have lost cities to barbs in civ iv but not in civ v. Come to think of it I'm not sure if I've ever had a city attacked by them. I'm not sure if they even attack cities.

 

[Horizons]

I always wanted to know what happens if one city-state captures another, because city-states always raze any city they capture, yet city-states themselves cannot be razed.

Like you said, I think these situations (barbs taking cities or city-states capturing each other) are probably impossible.

 

[lschnarch]

I remember having cities being attacked by barbs, but that was prior to the 1.135 patch.

Certain things have to come together to make this happen: there have to be at least 3 barbs in the vicinity of the city and no own units around. And I had "raging barbarians" on.
Needless to say, I have never lost a city to them. They even didn't attack consistently.

Barbs in Civ5 display the competence level of the designer team: almost non-existent.

 

[jtb1127]

I've seen city states capture other city states. They just occupy the city as would any AI. Yesterday Sidon actually razed Copehagen

 

[mutant-enemy]

I'm just playing a game and one of my allied city states is under constant barbarian attack - they already broke through its defenses several times, but it never fell under 1HP. Guess it's simply not possible for barbs to be more than a nuisance.

 

[I_qua_I]

Barbs don't capture; they plunder. Rather than gaining control of the city a good deal of your gold goes missing. I once stuck a city way out in the middle of nowhere to get the +10 natural wonder and kept wondering why my treasury was so low since I was raking in the dough. I was ignoring the pop-up things on the side and it turns out Medina was totally flooded with barbs. When a warrior attacked I lost gold but the city stayed.

 

[DaveGold]

If you do find yourself at war with a city state then it's probably advantageous to let one of your city state allies capture the enemy city rather than do it yourself. All you need to do is knock the city down to low health when an allied unit is nearby.

 

[Roto-Router]

"Raging Barbarians" is lame in V; much less fun than IV. Anyone know how to increase their aggression and spawn rate, so they might actually take a city or a CS? I miss the RB option from IV where you would sometimes see whole AI civs taken over by barbs.

 

[Thormodr]

Sadly, they have made barbarians relatively toothless.

I liked the fact that Barbs could capture cities, control wonders and build minor empires if they were left isolated. It was one of many fun little things you could discover in cIV.

I like that Barbs can capture workers and settlers though. That is an improvement I'll admit.

However, the rush you got from founding your second city and only having light defenses and then seeing a Barb axeman appear over the horizon is now gone.

Barbs are merely a nuisance now.

 

[Airey]

I always wanted to know what happens if one city-state captures another, because city-states always raze any city they capture, yet city-states themselves cannot be razed.

Like you said, I think these situations (barbs taking cities or city-states capturing each other) are probably impossible.

really? In my games CS always kept the city they capture.

 

[EndoConvert]

really? In my games CS always kept the city they capture.

Agreed. I've never seen a CS raze a city; they always puppet it.

 

[elthrasher]

Agreed. I've never seen a CS raze a city; they always puppet it.

You're both wrong. You're all wrong!

City-states sometimes raze cities they capture and sometimes keep them. It seems to me that the AI makes a guess whether or not the city-state will be able to hold that city and if not, it razes it.

For example, if your city-state ally captures one of Alexander's cities and sets it ablaze, and then if you make peace with Alex, Alex will make peace with your ally and your ally will stop razing and keep the city.

I had a game in which Darius settled one city on the other side of me, near my two CS allies. Then we went to war. My allies took the city and kept it. None of Darius' troops or cities around, so it was perfectly safe to do so. I've had other games where I ally a city-state that is surrounded by another civ. Go to war with that civ. If the CS takes a city, it will almost always raze it because it doesn't think it will be able to hold it.

 

[joyous_gard]

CS have to puppet capitals and other CS... they have a criteria whether or not to puppet other cities... I am not sure what the criteria is but most of the time they raze, not always.... I supported CSes to take over an entire continent once and they razed most cities, the one CS (Helsinki) that puppeted more cities than the others ended up very unhappy and barbarians spawned.,.. but then they got their happiness under control and held 3 Roman cities (rome included) in addition to Helsinki.

Also interesting to note is that when the last opposing city was on the map, the CS stopped attacking. I think this may be because they didn't want to win the game.

EDIT: I have never seen barbarians take a city.

 

[Guardian_PL]

I have never, ever in my life lost a city to barbarians, and especially with the buffed city defenses since the 1.0.1.135 patch, it is increasingly unlikely, so I was wondering if anyone knows what happens if a city does fall to barbs.

Do the barbarians establish a barbarian civ and annex or puppet the city? (Yeah, I know, this seems unlikely.)

Does the city get razed? Or does the city just disappear like conquered cities on OCC?

If the city is razed or disappears when taken by barbs, what happens if your capital gets taken by barbs, since capitals can't be destroyed?

Wrong game for such a thing, it's 2010, so we don't get units insta-killed, barbarians are not a threat anymore, only sadly wondering countryside ("capturing" workers&settlers so you can get them back, "pillaging" tiles so you can repair them in no time, and never attacking cities), ah, and there's political "correctness" in a history-themed game , so we have no slavery and no religion. The result is lukewarm and bland experience for the mass audience.

 

[Babri]

Sadly, they have made barbarians relatively toothless.

I liked the fact that Barbs could capture cities, control wonders and build minor empires if they were left isolated. It was one of many fun little things you could discover in cIV.

I like that Barbs can capture workers and settlers though. That is an improvement I'll admit.

However, the rush you got from founding your second city and only having light defenses and then seeing a Barb axeman appear over the horizon is now gone.

Barbs are merely a nuisance now.

Here is one fun picture for you.

 

[Smote]

I've found that if 3+ barbarians are adjacent to a city, they will attack. This is usually beneficial to the player, as the barbarians all get hurt by doing so, while the city will not fall without substantial barbarian tech or reinforcement.

I had one game where my team great library -> civil service on turn 28(quick) and all the barbarians were spawning pikemen at turn 29 onwards. This may be because the other team had bronze working+iron working unlocked, and nobody had archery or sailing, so barbarians could only spawn pikemen. It was something of a massacre for every player in the game, and very enjoyable. I haven't seen this since. I would shudder to think of this scenario with raging barbs. I could see peoples cities getting sacked by 10 pikemen barbs.

 

[Jenarie]

My city was attacked last night by two barbarian warriors. They didn't accomplish much and as soon as I killed one the second one ran away but I was pretty surprised they even tried. Maybe because it was a brand new city with low defense and nothing to pillage yet but it did really suprise me.

 

[aatami]

...because city-states always raze any city they capture...

Haven't done that in games I've played.

 

[Thormodr]

Here is one fun picture for you.

Lol. Awesome.