Pillaging

[IsenMike]

Whenever I invade I'm always torn about whether I should pillage or not. On the one hand, the extra cash is nice, and it hurts my opponent. On the other hand, I'm trying to grab that city as my own, so in the long run I'm making more work for myself.

Particularly in cities that may have some culture difficulties after I caputre them (ie, not too far from their capital), or in cities that the AI might try to take back some time soon, I usually feel like I want to keep those improvements intact so that I can start building up the city ASAP.

Any thoughts?

[axi]

Just pillage iron, copper or horse to keep them from building powerful units.

Of course, in my latest game I didn't pillage horses and that kept the Egyptians building war chariots, which were quite ineffective against my praetorians. If the only thing they could build were archers with city defense, I would be in trouble, just as I was with the Spanish before that. The fun thing is that I went for the Spanish first because I was afraid of the Egyptian UU (And because I wanted the holy city for Buddhism.)

[Quillan]

Typically, I first pillage the strategic resources to prevent them from building more of certain units and luxuries to cut off his happiness bonuses (I can't stop my opponent from trading for them after I've shut him down, but I can at least deny him his own resources). For pillaging others, I decide whether this is going to be single war or not. If it's a single war, meaning this war won't end until my opponent is gone, I don't pillage beyond the resource hookups. Most of the time, it isn't. I'm going to fight for a while, sign a peace treaty, do a bit of building and consolidation, and then go to war again later. In that case, I try to leave the cities I'm going to take AND HOLD intact, but anything I plan on razing and anything that I'm not going to get to before signing that peace treaty I'm going to pillage like crazy. First, any hamlets/villages/towns are lost, and take a long time to regrow. Second, he has to spend a lot of worker-turns just restoring the lost improvments. All of that hampers my enemy, giving me an advantage the following war.

[Hauptman]

If mansa musa across the sea is getting ahead of you tech wise, send over a few boats and pillage the bajeebus out of his land... Ive had more than one Pillage war. But if you want the cities, then its obviosly best to NOT pillage, much.

[MasterDave]

This is one nice thing about going for the conquest victory. Once you are close to your 60% of land area, you have to raze the rest, and then you can pillage these lands like locusts. By pillaging upwards of 100 gold per turn you can run big deficits and still be ok, while leaving a glorious scorched earth moonscape in your wake. (or if you prefer, a pristine wilderness).

[ben_sphynx]

One of the nice things about state property is that one doesnt feel guilty pillaging towns for vast amounts of cash, then replacing them with water mills if one captures the city.

Newly captured cities are rarely good choices as commerce cities due to the lack of libaries/unis, or markets/grocers/banks.

So just grabbing cash from a few towns before one even captures is is nice.

[Blake]

I never pillage. It's the principle of the matter, I find pillaging despicable and it would be hypocritical of me to pillage.

AI's exist for one, and only one reason. To build stuff for me. It would be ungrateful of me and self-destructive to pillage the stuff they build for me.