When to capture or destroy a city!

[FarbroBarbro]

Hi!

Yeah, the title says it all. I'm so irritated by the fact that when I invade an enemy, and capture a city, I can't see what is in it before I have to decide whether to keep or destroy it!!! If I do keep it, and discover that the city sucks, I can't get rid of it (I don't want to liberate it in this special case)!

So, I am asking all the experts here: is there any way to know what to do when capturing a city (if I don't have the ESP points to investigate the city beforehand)?

 

[JujuLautre]

Two main things:
- the f9 screen can tell you about wonders in that city
- zooming can show you which buildings are in the city

I must say I don't really care for what's inside (except wonders); placement is king

 

[6K Man]

Look really closely at the city.

 

[FarbroBarbro]

Okey! Thank you!

 

[John117]

Along the same lines; When capturing a city for the territory do you destroy a city, build your own and build culture (theatres, temples, hammers to culture) or do you keep the city and wait for the anarchy to end? I know it's very situational but lets say for argument's sake that you've captured a large-well developed city along a long border with no wonders.

 

[JujuLautre]

Situation dependent, as usual.

Speaking for myself, I will usually raze/not raze cities depending of:
- placement
- wonders/holy cities
- "can I afford it"
- development of the city
- date
What I mean in the last one is that I will often not raze cities that I capture when I go rampage on a civ, even if they are a little bit badly placed for example, mostly because I'm lazy and don't want to work again to build a new one. It includes some aspects of "can I afford it" and development in fact.

 

[Phrossack]

Upon, erm, "assisting" the peoples' citizenship, check to see if it's draining your economy via maintenance. If the answer is "yes", and you can't quickly exploit nearby resources, build a courthouse, or use it to heal your troops wounded during its, uh, "liberation", consider obliterating it. Just be sure to take into account any Wonders, Super Specialists, Holy sites, etc. Once a Wonder/Holy city's been destroyed, nothing short of Worldbuilder can bring it back.

Edit: Whoops, didn't read above post.

 

[Joshua368]

Regardless of all the advice above, I still really hate how this isn't possible. Annoys me almost every time I come across a city. Fortunately the lay of the land and any wonders are easy enough to locate, but what about settled great people? I could be razing down a great scientist just to move the city 1S or something.

Eh, just annoys me, seems like it should be an obvious feature. Expecially since you can do it for things as mundane as events.

 

[Mercenary82]

Yeah I think the city manager screen should come up when you get the option to raze or capture. I especially need this as I tend to go quite berserk when warring and raze everything including holy cities and wonders. I really hate paying all the city maintenance, so only cities that help the war effort get spared, but there is now way to tell what super specialists are in that city unless you have enough EP. Now that I have been hearing about people capturing AI cities with over 5 GG's settled in it, it may cause me to spare a city I would otherwise raze if I knew for sure there would be GG's there.

 

[Bushface]

If, and I repeat if, you have enough EPs against your target civ, you can see what buildings are there by simply mousing over the city bar, which will in that case display what is being built there. Or, again with enough EPs, open the city screen and learn lots about the city (including settled Great Persons) and the civ.
But remember that all culture-producing buildings will be destroyed on capture, and that there is a chance that almost any other building will also disappear. This means that early in the game, when you don't have the EPs to look inside, you do need to examine the list of Wonders and/or zoom in to the city, but even that isn't really necessary unless the target is a big place or a capital: smaller places won't have much that survives and are very unlikely to have lots of settled Great Persons. Holy cities can be identified on the Religious Adviser screen.

 

[Kip Beagle]

I raze almost all AI cities because their placement usually sucks. I don't care if it has tons of wonders, settled GPs, or is a holy city... I can't stand having my city placement scheme messed up.

In some games I play, if I destroy a wonder or holy city, I'll use worldbuilder to put it into one of my cities. Call it cheating if you want, I don't care, it's fun for me.

 

[UWHabs]

I was playing a game before, and captured a city. It was too close to mine, so I razed it. Then 3 axemen sprung up from the dead to "defend their honour" or some nonsense like that. Grr. That's gonna make me think twice about razing others...

 

[Kip Beagle]

I was playing a game before, and captured a city. It was too close to mine, so I razed it. Then 3 axemen sprung up from the dead to "defend their honour" or some nonsense like that. Grr. That's gonna make me think twice about razing others...

I think that's a random event... sometimes when you raze a city, defenders pop up afterwards. It doesn't always happen though. I used to get it all the time but I haven't had it happen to me for quite a while.

 

[Joshua368]

I think that's a random event... sometimes when you raze a city, defenders pop up afterwards. It doesn't always happen though. I used to get it all the time but I haven't had it happen to me for quite a while.

It's the partisan event and it's not supposed to happen until the civilization adopts emancipation... for it to come earlier is a serious glitch from BtS v3.13. You need to use Bhruic's supplementary patches or update to v3.17.

Personally I found it annoying and unrealistic enough even with it functioning properly, so I modded it to only occur in Nationalism instead... the civic makes more sense to me (expecially since partisans are always draftable units) and the AI tends to run it less frequently.

 

[UWHabs]

I think I was running 3.01 at the time, so I guess it's fixed by now. Just reminded me a bit back in the Civ 3 days of guerilla troops popping up on every square around a city after I captured it.

At least I know it's not supposed to happen until emancipation, I can raze in peace now

 

[Draknith]

When I am warring against a rival civ my general rule is to capture the cities, but if I'm going to leave the civ alive I will capture all cities plus one more level of cities which I then destroy. This allows my newly captured cities to grow better.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

AI usually only settles GP in one city, usually the capital.

 

[Mortac]

I agree about this and I have actually brought it up before. The only solution I have, while really annoying, is to save the game before you attack the last defender. You can then take over the city to inspect it and make your decision after that, and then reload, attack again and raze the city if you decide not to keep it.

Since we can't inspect a city before we make the decision, at least add a "raze this city" option within the city screen, but both options would've been nice.

 

[WithTea]

A couple of things on info available without espionage points, if you forget to check the info screen wonder wise. Holy Cities have a star on their religious marking. While technically all of the wonders show up on the main screen, I can only really see the large ones like the Pyramids, Taj Mahal, Schwedagon, and of course Colossus.

 

[MATTIMUS]

Regarding how to see what wonders are in the city you just captured (and are considering burning down), I read once that when capturing the city, press f10 to bring up your capital city screen and press the left arrow to go to the city you just captured. I haven't tried it though.