Refugees

[yin26]

Originally posted by alms66
You're right, they are. Where's my option to turn off the gamey religion and gamey great people though?

That's the decision we all make as gamers, you know. Does the game give you enough control over the things that matter? If religion and great people don't have appeal for you, and since these are not optional other than the fact that you can just try ignore it, a good part of Civ 4 wasn't made for you, I guess.

The bigger reason I turned off razing cities isn't for realism, etc. It's because taking a city now has much longer term effects in terms of maintenance...holding the city with troops, etc. Sure, I could just give the city away, but I only do that when it's clear the city will be swallowed by nearby culture in a few turns no matter what I do.

True, it does feel great to burn down a bastard AI's cities sometimes. True, having razing turned on makes it all the much more important not to lose your own cities to the AI, but having played both ways now, I just find the warmongering game a lot more interesting when taking a city represents a longer term commitment.

[alms66]

Originally posted by Generaldoktor
Well tell us how you really feel? Er, where we going with this, anyway? I thought I had some issues with Civ4. You could consider shelving the game. (I'd suggest Ages of Man, but I don't think you'd like that either. It's a game, too.)

As for razing cities; it happened in the real world, as has been brought out here and can happen again. That's not too gamey for me.

Well, I'll just put it this way, I love the premise and concept of the civilization games and am completely addicted to it so I could never stop playing the game. I would only make one change there in fact - lead an empire not a civilization. What I would like though, is a more realistic, less gamey, and more in-depth implementation of it. I'll never get that from Firaxis, I understand that and I understand their reasons for not doing it, but I'll criticize them for it still, until they make me a tester anyway .

And if it ever sounds like I'm being too serious, which seems to be what you suggested with your opening sentence there, realize that I'm probably lacing the post with sarcasm or some sort of humor. It's a rare day that goes by that a sentence comes from me that isn't at least partially based in humor - unless I'm working.

As for razing cities, IMO, it's not gamey at all, and I usually leave it on, but only use the option very rarely. I'm usually the victim of it much more often than I use it.

Originally posted by yin26
That's the decision we all make as gamers, you know. Does the game give you enough control over the things that matter? If religion and great people don't have appeal for you, and since these are not optional other than the fact that you can just try ignore it, a good part of Civ 4 wasn't made for you, I guess.

see my comments above... I was just giving you a hard time for saying razing cities was gamey, since it is actually realistic...

Originally posted by yin26
The bigger reason I turned off razing cities isn't for realism, etc. It's because taking a city now has much longer term effects in terms of maintenance...holding the city with troops, etc. Sure, I could just give the city away, but I only do that when it's clear the city will be swallowed by nearby culture in a few turns no matter what I do.

True, it does feel great to burn down a bastard AI's cities sometimes. True, having razing turned on makes it all the much more important not to lose your own cities to the AI, but having played both ways now, I just find the warmongering game a lot more interesting when taking a city represents a longer term commitment.

Well, that does make sense in a way, but to have the best of both worlds, ,you could just leave razing on (giving you risk) and never practice it yourself (giving you the longer term effects you want). It's just a simple matter of willpower, I do it all the time.

[patcon]

I almost never raze cities. (Unless they're in a really bad location for resource use, and then I've usually prepared a settler to go in and establish a city in the newly-cleared area.) My reasons are two-fold.
(1) If I raze a city to clear an area with the idea of moving in later, it seems that frequently a civ (that I don;t wnat to war with just then) will plop a settler down into this location.
(2) I may be wrong, but it seems to me that taking a city pushes back the cultural borders more than razing it. I know that a newly-captured city has no cultural radius. What I mean is that if I attack a city two or three tiles behind the border and keep it, I tend to get at least a corridor of either friendly or neutral territory to that city which allows occupying troops to get there quickly and attacking troops to plunge deeper into enemy territory. If I raze that city, the border tends to remain as it was for at least a few turns, slowing down the advance.
My style is that I usually try to avoid war, but when I go to war it's generally to eliminate the other civ as quickly as possible.
OT (not like most of this thread hasn't strayed from the OP) - The AI doesn't seem to smart in recognizing threats. I'll prepare for an invasion by massing troops right on the border in plain view and the AI doesn't seem to respond at all. It'll leave huge stacks of defenders in core cities and leave the cities on the borders less-well-defended.

[Generaldoktor]

I haven't noticed these "corridors," but after the initial unrest is over, I do see something of a culture bounce in my favor if I kept it, even if there hasn't been time for me to build a lot of culture there yet. Got a real boost in a recent game when I captured Madrid; not sure why as a lot of the buildings were destroyed; there was a seat of religion there.

Regarding the border "bounce" if I do raze it and then my group's culture fills the void. I haven't found this to be too terribly long, but it depends on the original, pre-war location of your own cities, obviously.

Regarding AI defense, maybe they hold back in those core cities as sort of a Fabian strategy. (Or maybe they're just dumb. I'm still holding out for real AI in ten years or so.)

[Yosho]

Yeah, taking a city does seem to help the border, and that's especally true one you've quieted the resistance (at which point the squares around the city would nominally be yours, even with no culture)

[Xorbon]

The difference between city razing, and religion and great people is that religion and great people are fairly big parts of the game. Ignore them and you're missing out on quite a bit. Turn off city razing and you're not missing much.

However, turning off city razing would make victory by conquest pretty tough, if not impossible - unless you turn off Domination victory as well.

Edit: And I don't find razing to be too gamey - unless it's a city with wonders or a religious capital.

[Xorbon]

Originally posted by patcon
(1) If I raze a city to clear an area with the idea of moving in later, it seems that frequently a civ (that I don;t wnat to war with just then) will plop a settler down into this location.

You could always include one or more settlers with your invasion force. That way, if you come across a city you want to raze in order to re-settle the area, you have the settler all ready to plop down. (Although I think it's a good idea in theory, in practice I find I normally don't think about it until the pop-up asks me whether I want to keep the city or not. )

It's a similar idea to including workers in your invasion force - to rebuild the conquered area as quickly as possible.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

I raze about half the time. More in the early game - I just can't afford to maintain all those size 2 piece-of-crap cities that the AI spams in every nook and cranny. Quite a few of those are razed automatically, anyway.

Later on, I'll raze cities along the stop line of my offensive, to create a bit of a cultural buffer area. I know the AI will fill in the space, but at least it'll be filled with a city starting with zero culture, and thus less likely to culturally overwhelm my newly captured cities.

On topic, I like the idea of refugees in theory - a population boost, perhaps? Or they could put cities into unrest for a period of time.

A fun idea would be to give the civ with the closest city to the razed city the option to accept the refugees. If they decline, the next closest civ gets the same option, and so on, until all the civs on the continent have had that option.

Of course, if nobody accepts the refugees, they wander around the map, invisible, suicide bombing the improvements of the civ that razed their home city.

[sprudl]

Originally posted by Xorbon
It's a similar idea to including workers in your invasion force - to rebuild the conquered area as quickly as possible.

I never do this. On rare occasions I will send a second wave of with a mop up force and escorted workers to hook up important resources or build a railroad. Usually I wait until the area is safe and primarily use whatever workers I capture.

My troops don't like to babysit civilians

[Blaupanzer]

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...

What about Carthage? The city was razed. The fact that others moved in after a generation or so doesn't dismiss the original event. Essentially, there were no refugees, just slaves (represented in the game as part of the $ received upon the city's capture).

What about Kiev? Once again a city entirely destroyed, population slaughtered or sent into slavery. This time by Mongolians. We have written records of the fore and after by merchants who watched in horror from a distance or who regularly traveled there and saw the differences.

Point is these are large cities destroyed. Rebuilding did occur but not by the occupants there at the beginning of the siege. Many sites in Asia and Europe show several levels of cities with the new city layers built on top of the old. As often as not this was due to destruction of the old sometimes by nature, mostly by war.

Modern sensibilities would greatly condemn these behaviors of destruction and enslaving, but scholars found various justifications for this at the time in the bible and other religious texts.

The game offers appropriate penalties, in my opinion. As I have noted before, the advantage of Civ being a game is that no mothers cry at the loss of their sons, no cowards who ran away have to be dealt with, and the population in each city is there due to planning not the rather horrible conditions that caused people to change venues (rural to urban) that actually occured in real history. We don't even know the percentage of each city that is slaves, and the technology "slavery" is actually more related to human sacrifice or working people to death.

So, I am against the refugee concept as a random spread, but rather liked the idea of 50% become workers. However, I would force the capturer to resettle the refugees as he chooses or give them away to other civs, not use them as free workers.

[patcon]

6000-year-old-man mentioned something that got me wondering. If you attack a city and it is automatically destroyed because of lack of population/culture, do you take a diplo hit for "razing a city"?