Refugees

[Badtz Maru]

I was thinking about city razing, and I thought of a good way to make it's consequences more interesting.

When a city is razed, a portion of it's population (I'd say no less than half) should be redistributed to nearby cities. I'd make it so that it all went to the nearest friendly city until that cities population was increased by 50%. Once that city reached the 150% original population limit, the remaining population points would go to the next nearest friendly city, and so on until all the population is redistributed. If there's no room among the cities of the same civilization (i.e. the civilization has 4 cities of size 12, 4, 2, and 1 and the size 12 city got razed), the excess would go to the nearest city of a civilization that has open borders. If there are no civs with open borders, it would go to the nearest city that the civilization was not at war with. If there were no other civilizations which they were not at war with, they would go to the nearest city from a civilization not responsible for the city razing. In a situation where that's not possible (i.e. only 2 civilizations left in the game), they would go to the nearest city in the razing civilization that shared a religion. Of course, I don't think the last couple of situations could come up as long as there is Domination victory enabled.

This would have a lot of interesting repercussions. In a very happy empire, having a city razed would at least increase the productivity of nearby cities. In a not-so-happy empire, this would result in unproductive and unhappy refugees in nearby cities and quite possibly stavation. If the civilization is near being wiped out, razing a city could benefit or cause problems for nearby civilizations not involved in the war. You might give civilizations the option of turning back refugees ("2 points of population from Rome want to join your empire, shall we allow it?"), but this would seriously hurt your relations with the civilization the refugees came from and slightly hurt relations with their coreligionists and civilizations with certain civics. If nobody wants the refugees, they could become barbarians - use the type of unit that drafting would produce for their home empire and convert the population to that unit type using that ratio - 3 points of medieval population might become a barbarian maceman that roams around whichever civilization last turned them back.

[yin26]

I proposed something like this a while back (as have others, I think), but it's great to see it surface again. The refugee situation in the Middle East certainly brings this back to mind. Just some twists to this now that you've reminded me of it:

* The refugees should carry their religion with them to the new cities. This could have interesting repercussions, of course, if an Islamic state gets flooded with Christians...would it change state religion?

* This could give the U.N. a more active role in the game...like providing aid to refugees (and billing the aggressor?). Not sure on this one...just thinking aloud.

Frankly, I have turned off razing cities because I find it too gamey. Therefore, for me, for this idea to work, don't cities lose population after a take over, too? Or during seige? I can't recall, but it would be nice to see this mechanism without having to sack a city.

[Harovan]

I found the Civ3 solution pretty cool. Razing a city produced about half of its population worth of workers. Imbalance aside (it was rather bad, that foreign workers didn't cost upkeep), the fact that they could be added to your native cities and got very slowly assimilated, was a rather nice feature. Add to that their unhappiness, if you went to war with their homeland.

[Thedrin]

I'd like to see it - I'd also like to see sities that have trade routes with the razed city get its fair share of immigrants.

[iapetus556]

I also support this idea.

It should also apply when population is reduced by starvation. Possibly even when a city has very high unhappiness (unhappy citizens moving to another city).

If the refugees move to another civililization, then that should alter the nationality of the city they arrive in.

[yin26]

I even had the idea of extending this to life expectancy issues...even within your own empire. So if you currently just make some foul, high-hammer cities with little regard for health, you might see populations shift within your own borders.

[Prussia]

[MasterDave]

I am not sure if it makes sense to have lots of population survive a city razing, especially in anceint times, where there was no modern transportation, and "international aid" would more likely have consisted of caravans of opportunistic slavers coming around to take advantage of the situation.

What I would like to see (and probably simplier to implement) would be a general diplomatic penalty among all AI civs for razing cities and wiping out populations. Perhaps a general -1 for razing any city of size 5-10, -2 for 11-15, etc. I do not think that razing a small city should cause this penalty, since barbs and AI's tend to start lots of cities in horribly inconvenient places. Also, killing a few hundred people in a new city that noone has heard of should not hold the kind of notoriety that a larger scale razing would earn someone. I also like the idea of Partisans appearing from a razing a la previous civs.

[Nubianmercenary]

:Yeah I support this idea as well, but wouldnt one CON be that if that paticular razed citiy's inhabitants are spread throughout all the remaining cities, (yours), then continueing war with that nation would give more "unhappiness" since you are casing war with those refugee's "mother-land"??
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:Just a thought nothing more.




NubianMercenary

[Thedrin]

Unlikely. Refugees go to other parts of their own nation or to nations which allow them in. The civ that razed the city in the first place wouldn't be allowing normal trade with the civ of the refugees.

[Nugog]

Originally posted by Thedrin
Unlikely. Refugees go to other parts of their own nation or to nations which allow them in. The civ that razed the city in the first place wouldn't be allowing normal trade with the civ of the refugees.

Yeah, not too many Iraqui's are currently heading off to the US.

However the original idea is great.

[Tattila the Hun]

I'd like to be able to prevent razing of cities above certain size. You can't just torch a metropolis...

Another thing, I'd like to see defensive penalties in newly conqured cities, partisans at work. Or/and in cities where your adversaries culture/nationality is strong.

[Tarkhan]

Why not have them go to any neighboring area that is either in their nation, or in a neighboring nation with a relationshop better than a certain level?

Maybe less people are distributed based on the city strength when the city fell. If you've been beating it down with catapults/artillery, more of the citizens would likely be killed.

[Prussia]

Originally posted by nugog


Yeah, not too many Iraqui's are currently heading off to the US.

However the original idea is great.

Yeah, and not too many Iraqis are heading off to Saudi Arabia, Iran, or any of those countries, either.

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
I'd like to be able to prevent razing of cities above certain size. You can't just torch a metropolis...

If we wanted to be realistic, we should probably prevent the razing of any city larger than size 1 or 2 unless a lot of nuclear weapons are involved. City razing was not as common or as thorough as described in accounts written at the time. There's strong archeological evidence that in the most famous instance of a city being razed, when Carthage was "destroyed" by Rome, that this was highly exaggerated by the Roman writers of the time. There was a significant population fo people living at the site of Carthage within a few years - certainly less than one turn at that timeframe at standard gamespeeds. In those times 90%+ of the population was rural and a percentage was constantly pouring into the cities (this is the only reason cities were able to grow in population for a long time, as the deaths from disease and other crowding-related problems were greater than the birthrate). Even if you successfully removed or killed every man, woman, and child in a largish Classical-era city (unlikely), it would still be a good city site and have some remaining infrastructure, and would soon (at least in Civ4 terms) be full of people again.