What's the best way to wipe out a civ without crashing your economy?

[TheKingInYellow]

In the mid-to-late game on a large map, a powerful opponent is likely to have numerous high-population cities. Now, let's say that I want to crush them out of contention, leaving them with a single city if any at all, but my economy can't support the excess weight of their empire.

Razing their cities would be the obvious method, except (unless they're AV) it quickly maxes out the Armageddon counter. How bad this is depends, but it's safe to say you need an alternative for situations where you can't afford the AC to go up; if you're playing as FoL Svarts and you're Evil, you may as well just have gone to war with yourself.

So, does anyone have any suggestions as to the best way to violently deprive enemies of their kingdoms while not crashing your own economy with the added maintenance? So far I've experimented with the following:

1. gift each city to another faction as you take them. The downside is that you're potentially setting up a new rival (unless it's the Mercurians; I've experimented with summoning Basium just to be a dumping ground for cities I can't handle)
2. set each new city to produce marketplace/wealth, and then hoping their income will outweigh the maintenance cost. Maybe over time they'll become an asset
3. switch to City States - which limits civic options, and makes it difficult to swap civics temporarily because your economy has a seizure
4. wage short wars of attrition, not huge campaigns of annihilation - the latter is just bad economic sense all round. The problem is that huge campaigns of annihilation are also tremendously satisfying!

Am I missing something obvious? Is there a way to decrease the population of a city so that razing it doesn't incur such a massive AC hit? I thought bombardment might lower population sometimes, but it doesn't seem to do so predictably.

Also, does inflation increase with the size of your empire? If so, then 2+3 may not help enough in the long run.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

A large, revolting city adds a lot to to your costs, while giving you nothing for 10+ turns.

To fix this, carry a big stack of tier 1 priests around in your conquering army, and have one use great work in every city you take. This ends the revolt and expands the city's culture by a ring, bringing the city online immediately. It helps a lot.

If it's not enough on its own, produce wealth.

 

[Doug Piranha]

To fix this, carry a big stack of tier 1 priests around in your conquering army, and have one use great work in every city you take. This ends the revolt and expands the city's culture by a ring, bringing the city online immediately. It helps a lot.

Agreed, but pillage the cottages first. Pillaging in general is a very good answer to the original question. It hurts your opponent and helps you. Pillaging a town down to nothing gives you >100 gold and causes your opponent to lose a decent amount of commerce; pillaging farms and other food bonus tiles (and taking away health bonuses) will starve your opponent's cities. The AIs are way too fond of cottages; they never got the memo saying aristofarms are better.

 

[TheKingInYellow]

Both great ideas, thanks guys!

 

[BobCW]

You can mitigate the AC rise upon razing cities to some extent by casting Life I to "sanctify" the city ruins tile. This will lower the AC a bit- not enough to help much if you're burning size-20 cities, but it should allow you to destroy a few more smaller towns before the AC events start to get nasty.


If it's at all feasible, you might want to take the opposite approach though and try to max the AC. The AI doesn't handle the later AC events very well, particularly having most of their units spontaneously die. You can have a major advantage in rebuilding if you prepare in advance (1-turn unit builds in your que, drafting, cash-rushing, mercenaries, etc.) Losing all your forests doesn't matter if you've got enough of a military to carry you through to a win, plus you could just fill your territory with water adepts to put out fires and life adepts to keep out hell terrain.


The Aristocracy civic will help some. Cuts down on city maintenance, but also unlike City States it allows you to quickly spam a bunch of farms around your new cities to get them producing gold to counter their expenses.


The Basium solution you mentioned works really well btw. I've done that several times when I didn't feel like managing a larger empire because I knew I already had a good enough base to win. Enabling Permanent Alliances and finding a willing AI partner also works.

 

[Goodwill]

I know it's not a very good answer, but it could also be that your base economy isn't strong enough for whatever reason, and the may be ways to build it more successfully. One idea that comes to mind is research. You don't always have to be pumping it out at full force. In cases like this, where I'm stretched to the hilt, I often turn it off completely until I can afford it again. I may not be making progress with techs, but in this case it isn't the priority.

Also, to support a war, I might focus on growing my strongest cities with happiness so they produce more commerce and trade routes with buildings. Especially gambling house for happiness (tons since I will have research at 20 percent or less). Then commerce, gold and trade route buildings. A few well groomed cities make a huge difference. For research, try specializing cities. That way even at ten percent research you're still pumping it out strong with specialists, instead of getting it from commerce production (which can be used for gold instead). When trying to balance research and gold, I find it more effective to assign scientists and turn down the research slider, than using merchants and turning it up.

Finally, another consideration is to re-evaluate the composition of your army in respect to unit costs. Units not being used cost gold, as do permanent summons like skeletons and tigers. If you have ten tigers but dont really need them, you're still paying for their support. Move up defenders that are deep in your territory if it seems safe, and use them to defend frontlines instead of making new ones. If you have a bunch of warriors you never upgraded because of the cost, but they're still hanging around, either upgrade and use them, or be willing to let them go, if you need to prioritize. If you have a newer tech, you can start swapping quantity for quality. A few longbowmen for defense might replace five archers in a city. You might find new ways to reduce the number of units you need by exploring new strats with mages, priests, or hit and run assassins. A maelstrom and a couple assassins can be more effective than eight champs on offense, for example.

I rarely pillage unless I'm losing and stalling in an attrition war, because when I take the city, I want to use it as soon as possible, especially towns. Oh and if you need to build wealth producing buildings in your finest cities, but can't because you need new troops too, consider switching to military conquest civic (I think) - it lets you build troops with food instead of hammers, making your newer cities usually decent producers while your better cities support gold growth. Also the other similar civic gives you "free" units which will raise the number you can have before you have to pay for them. Might be obvious, but that gives like 35 free extra units or something, which is a big swing.

If your enemy has a holy city, getting that can turn the tide on cashflow if it's popular and has the great wonder. Also, I think you may have said for mid-game, but if you have an order tier 3 disciple unit, use them to cast unyielding order in new cities - instant no unhappiness or anarchy. You can also try to limit yourself to only a certain number of new, rebelling cities at any one time, whatever you can absorb, before acquiring more.

Lots of ideas, hope some are helpful.