When you capture a large city (10+pop) do you...

[Pyrrhos]

A pop 10+ will starve down to pop 5-6 rather quickly anyway, even if you rush culture and marketplaces, so why not use that pop before it melts away. I usually cash rush settlers as they come in handy to found new towns in the gaps left between AI towns. Add another settler and your new town is up and running. If you add two settlers, you have an "instant" science farm in a single turn.

 

[DWetzel]

I'd like the "it depends on how close I am to eliminating them" option.

 

[Aabraxan]

I voted "raze for slaves," but there is another option I would have liked to see in the poll: Put it on a starvation diet and rush workers. Whether I raze or rush workers . . . well, it depends.

 

[Tone]

Starve it down if my culture is OK. Otherwise raze.

 

[ZzarkLinux]

I pretty much raze.

I like playing higher difficulties, so not only am I behind in culture, but my military is always urgently needed, and has no time to monitor a flip risk.

BTW I remember hearing that the 2 biggest factors in flipping are foreign population and tiles occupied by foreign culture. Is this still correct?

 

[timerover51]

I voted to "rush culture", but it really depends on if I am playing the standard Conquests game, one of my resource-only mods, of one of my more detailed mods. In a standard game, I might raze it if it is too far from my main core, unless I am thinking the Forbidden Palace in the near future. Same with resource-only mods unless is has a good resource base. In one of my more detailed mods, I normally have the city productive in one or two turns, and continue to march.

 

[anaxagoras]

Whether I raze or keep depends largely on what the city has to offer me and how I assess the flip risk. If it is a high flip risk and I can't mitigate the risk by continued conquest, I'll just raze. On the other hand, if there are wonders there and I want one of more of them, I'll starve it down. One problem with keeping a city when the flip risk is high is that culture also plays a big part in quelling resistance, and you can't rush workers until the resistors are gone. If I can afford the WW, sometimes I induce the AI to retake a couple of times to get the number of resistors down to a manageable number.

 

[Aabraxan]

. . . . One problem with keeping a city when the flip risk is high is that culture also plays a big part in quelling resistance, and you can't rush workers until the resistors are gone. . . . .

But there is a workaround. You can't cash-rush, but you can still complete worker builds by disbanding. One disbanded cannon = 10 shields . . . the same as a worker. I seem to recall a game a while back where the only other civ on my continent was crippled and I used that technique to rush workers out of a resisting city, probably the last large one on my continent. I had many more cannons that I needed at that point, and put the city on the starvation diet and disbanded a cannon every other turn.

 

[dexters]

I voted "raze for slaves," but there is another option I would have liked to see in the poll: Put it on a starvation diet and rush workers. Whether I raze or rush workers . . . well, it depends.

I do this too

 

[Rodent]

I usually raze, but sometimes i convert the entire population of the City into Beakerheads to get some good research for a few turns

 

[Bartleby]

Another vote for "it depends".

 

[eldar]

Typically raze, because most AI city placement allows me to re-fill the gap left with 2 or more cities of my own.

Obviously if there's stuff in the city I want (read: good Wonders!) or if it's strategically vital (say it's got a resource I need, and I've no settlers immediately to hand and there are known third-party settlers sniffing about the area...), I'll keep it - but normally this will be after razing every other city around it to absolutely minimize the flip-risk. In situations such as this, I will starve for slaves/settlers, even if it's the last city of that AI.

 

[darski]

I am more likely to build workers than settlers. Settlers give your new city a bad start.

 

[Globex]

I find it takes too long to quell the resistors so I would probably raze. However, if I don't want to damage the AI attitude towards me, I usually bombard the city down to 2-3 pop before capturing it.

 

[dexters]

In communision rush building with pop works wonderfully.

 

[timerover51]

Posing a slightly different variant of the question, how does anyone deal with capturing a Japanese city in the WW2 scenario that comes with the game? In that scenario, building settlers is not an option, so I really do not like to raze captured Japanese cities as I need them for stepping stones to get to Japan. I am open to suggestions.

 

[Pyrrhos]

Switch to fascism/communism and pop rush?

 

[timerover51]

Switch to fascism/communism and pop rush?

Switching governments is not an option in the WW2 scenario, nor would I do that in any circumstances. In that scenario, because the US has such a limited number of productive cities and a 50 turn time limit, you cannot afford ANY lost time for a government change. I guess I could try and see if a population rush would help. Unfortunately, the way the scenario is designed, you cannot build a significant enoough culture edge to reduce resistance quickly. Even playing the US, Britain, and the Netherlands hot-seat does not help that much with respect to dealing with resistance.

 

[Spectre X]

Starve it down of course.

Unless it does not work with my current city placement. Then, I raze it.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

It all depends largely on whether I'll keep the civ to which the city belonged around or not. If the civ's going to go anyway, then why shouldn't I keep the city? The flip risk will be zero if the mother civ is dead and there's no cultural pressure on the city.

But if I keep such a city then I think a settler or two to fill up the gaps is a damn good idea.