When do you annex a city? What criteria must be met?

[Artifex1]

Or is puppeting usually the way to go always?

 

[CylonHybrid]

Or is puppeting usually the way to go always?

What exactly do you mean by criteria?
If you invade a city you have the options of puppetting, annexing etc. You generally want a lot of hapiness in your empire if you don't want overall growth to slow down because annexing the city will produce extra unhappiness termporarily until you build some ''happy'' buildings. Otherwise you puppet a city to have no effect on unhappiness but you can't control whats built in the city. However you still get wealth, culture and science benefits.

 

[Gordon Brittas]

What exactly do you mean by criteria?
If you invade a city you have the options of puppetting, annexing etc. You generally want a lot of hapiness in your empire if you don't want overall growth to slow down because annexing the city will produce extra unhappiness termporarily until you build some ''happy'' buildings. Otherwise you puppet a city to have no effect on unhappiness but you can't control whats built in the city. However you still get wealth, culture and science benefits.

Puppeting still gives unhappiness.

 

[cccv]

When I no longer care about getting SPs. So far I have yet to fulfill that criterion in any game.

 

[Keejus]

Well, there's no point in annexing before the rebellion ends, unless you wish to raze the city. After that, you just do it when you want that city to become a fully-fledged city of yours (though it will cost 4 GPT with a courthouse) with the ability to build units and wonders and control its growth, but slowing SP gain.

 

[MadDjinn]

Annex requirement:

*after* the time of puppeting to allow the rebellion to settle down.
OR
(just tried this one)
*after* you selected the RAZE option and then it hits a very low population. (stop the raze, sit out the 1-2 turns of rebellion, then buy the courthouse)
-- this one is useful if you need a place to buy units for the front, and a place to upgrade units, but don't want the high population that's there.

Otherwise, Annex when:
The puppet grows too fast and your global happiness is suffering for it (even with converting everything to trading posts)
-- happiness buildings are generally last built, but needed more

You captured a high science city, but the puppet would work gold rather than science.
You captured a high production city, and want to use it as a core city

Otherwise... it's mostly to give you control over a city and be able to rush buy things there. You could also annex a city to delay an SP pick if you're about to switch eras but will get the SP first.

Or, in a very late game domination attempt, you could be using Police State to keep some happiness under control while you're taking a large number of cities at the same time.

Also -
You want to abuse the courthouse bug... (get more happiness than you should)

 

[sav]

My criteria is simple - do I have 600g for a courthouse? Yes? Then annex!

 

[basta]

I'd only annex to raze or if I need a unit production city--for example, to churn out destroyers on a side of the map my port city can't easly access. Otherwise, puppet then trade-post spam it to keep the population small and your gold high.

 

[Lose]

does it increase culture policy costs if you annex?

 

[cccv]

.

does it increase culture policy costs if you annex?

yep.

 

[Misterboy]

Annex requirement:
(just tried this one)
*after* you selected the RAZE option and then it hits a very low population. (stop the raze, sit out the 1-2 turns of rebellion, then buy the courthouse)

Brilliant! Wish I thought of this yesterday. I kind of needed a coastal city in my current game, but really didn't want *that* coastal city. If I had done this, I could have kept it with 1-2 pop and had a place to buy caravels.

Once again, thanks for the tip MadDjinn!

 

[Lose]

Annex requirement:

*after* the time of puppeting to allow the rebellion to settle down.
OR
(just tried this one)
*after* you selected the RAZE option and then it hits a very low population. (stop the raze, sit out the 1-2 turns of rebellion, then buy the courthouse)
-- this one is useful if you need a place to buy units for the front, and a place to upgrade units, but don't want the high population that's there.

Otherwise, Annex when:
The puppet grows too fast and your global happiness is suffering for it (even with converting everything to trading posts)
-- happiness buildings are generally last built, but needed more

You captured a high science city, but the puppet would work gold rather than science.
You captured a high production city, and want to use it as a core city

Otherwise... it's mostly to give you control over a city and be able to rush buy things there. You could also annex a city to delay an SP pick if you're about to switch eras but will get the SP first.

Or, in a very late game domination attempt, you could be using Police State to keep some happiness under control while you're taking a large number of cities at the same time.

Also -
You want to abuse the courthouse bug... (get more happiness than you should)

ch bug?

 

[MadDjinn]

ch bug?

It appears that the courthouse still 'removes' the unhappiness per city (3) from that city. In the Happiness chart (F2 I think) the numbers are all messed up. it'll show 9 unhappy for a 3 pop city, Ie the 'annexed' version, but it should only be 4. Then you can count all of the actual happiness gained/lost and find that you need more unhappiness to balance what it should be.

 

[spfun]

ch bug?

Courthouses remove the base 3 unhappiness in the city they're in & the base 6 unhappiness in the city they're in as India. This bug is as old as this game.

So if you love to annex everything you get a lot of bonus happiness.

 

[Drawmeus]

When I no longer care about getting SPs. So far I have yet to fulfill that criterion in any game.

This is the single biggest issue I'm running into post-patch. There are lots of adequate building sites available, but its not worth settling them and losing out on SPs. I can win lots of wars, and I can afford to annex, but I don't want to slow down my SP growth.

I actually don't mind the puppet state thing, but I would like some kind of Colony option for settling those unclaimed lands.

 

[Unhappy Ood]

I usually puppet except when I want a high production city near where I want to go to war. Before doing so, I make sure I have enough gold for a courthouse, and barracks

 

[Mark the Bold]

I usually always puppet unless its a Capital city. Capital cities are "theoretically" equal to your capital anyway so its well worth the added SP costs to annex and groom it to be another production / science powerhouse.

 

[mlund]

I usually always puppet unless its a Capital city. Capital cities are "theoretically" equal to your capital anyway so its well worth the added SP costs to annex and groom it to be another production / science powerhouse.

Except they don't keep the enemy's palace when you conquer them and the bonuses from your palace are the whole reason your capital is so much better from the start than any of your other cities. So they aren't even "theoretically" equivalent to your capital.

- Marty Lund

 

[Calouste]

Police State + Commerce tree + Big Ben = annex everything

 

[Callonia]

Main priority is that the revolt end first then its ok to annex.

Although its dependant on my GPT and following turns planning, really poor gpt = no annexing because courthouse would cost me 4 gpt. murderous on my income.

I prefer to have the autocracy bonus trait of +3 happiness per courthouse before i go on annexing spree tho