Tech through Conquest: Bring it back?

[patcon]

Originally posted by Max Sinister
Why should anyone ever answer the question "Sire, our 8 newest captives, I mean newest citizens, have knowledge of construction and mapmaking and have left us an aqueduct to study. What information shall we extract, I mean learn, from them?" with "No"? There's no drawback, it's always an advantage...

"RNG" means "Random Number Generator".

Yes, it's a "which" not an "if" question.
You can only get ONE tech through the capture of a city, so you have to choose which information to extract, I mean learn. Evil thought - perhaps the attempt to extract information will cause either increased resistance or possible death of your newest citizens, whether this attempt is successful or not. Perhaps even worse if unsuccessful.

The reset culture counter to 0 was for the conquered city for the purposes of city radius re-expansion. Under current rules, the cities culture goes back to 0 and all culture-producing improvements are destroyed.

The reason I based the probability of improvement destruction on the health of the unit which actually does the initial occupation is twofold.
1. simplicity - no need to keep track of length of siege, other units lost or damaged, etc.
2. I think it's reasonably realistic - is the command and control structure of the occupying force intact to keep the troops in line and how pissed off are the occupiers. It wasn't the expressed policy of US forces in Vietnam to commit atrocities, but remember what happened at My Lai.

[La Diva]

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Originally posted by patcon
You can only get ONE tech through the capture of a city, so you have to choose which information to extract, I mean learn. Evil thought - perhaps the attempt to extract information will cause either increased resistance or possible death of your newest citizens, whether this attempt is successful or not. Perhaps even worse if unsuccessful.

My intent was to "award" RPs for only one tech. The difference, as proposed by Kuciwalker and others, is that an entire tech is too great. Following the lead of some other posters, I suggested that the awarded beakers (or RPs) be applied in a logical fashion. If you're 60 RPs away from getting Feudalism and AI chooses that you get 200 RPs toward learning the secrets of Chivalry, you should be able to "pay off" Feud and use the other 140 to get a jump start on Chiv. If AI awards you RPs toward Engineering, however, you'll have to finish Feud before you get a 200-RP head start on Eng.

improvement destruction ... no need to keep track of length of siege, other units lost or damaged, etc.
... is the command and control structure of the occupying force intact to keep the troops in line and how pissed off are the occupiers.

The AI can handle the calculations, that doesn't bother me. I do care about AI deciding that a few atypical troops in my peaceful, culture-loving society go off half-cocked. That's not the way I run my game, and unless the offending unit is a mercenary, that kind of vandalism shouldn't happen.

It wasn't the expressed policy of US forces in Vietnam to commit atrocities, but remember what happened at My Lai.

I do remember, as well as the lesser sins at Abu Ghuraib prison in Iraq. But those are the exceptions, not the rule. You can't equate Abu Ghuraib humiliations with the brutal beheading of innocent, well-meaning civilians. Neither did Genghis Khan and Napoleon pillage and plunder equally.

If my civ is historically a non-aggressive nation, I have a right to a strong AI probability, based on the criteria I outlined in my previous post, that my troops aren't going to continue violence once a city has been captured.

Your ideas are good, patcon. My style of play favors some tweaking, that's all. Along with several other ideas proposed in these many threads, the most important feature Firaxis can include in Civ4 will be the ability to turn off some of new options to simplify gameplay.

The reset culture counter to 0 was for the conquered city for the purposes of city radius re-expansion. Under current rules, the cities culture goes back to 0 and all culture-producing improvements are destroyed.

These threads are to request changes to the current paradigm. This is one I'd like to see changed. If my civ pursues culture with a passion, then I should be able to preserve and benefit from a decent portion of the city's heritage after bringing them under my flag. After all, the British Empire didn't destroy every temple and library during their global expansion, and a significant amount of native culture continued for the those "managed" ethnicities.

IMO, these changes would lead to a more civilized game.

[Heresson]

My idea of it would be that a civ could only take knowledge by capturing a city, if it itself was researching it, and had more than 50% ready. It makes sense in real world, and it will allow restricting tech conquest a bit; Mongols may take knowledge in each city.

Another idea is that a civ could take tech that was needed to build whatever the conquered city was just producing. I think it is good idea, it will add interesting and realistic strategic feature.
I thought of it, because in Civ1, sometimes I took a city producing something I didn't have a proper tech to produce, and kept on building it.