Something that bugs me ever since Civ3 vanilla

[Fistleaf]

Cultural buildings are autorazed upon capture.
The purpose is of course to prevent invaders from gaining culture points from other civ's constructions.

However, a better way to do it would be to keep the buildings but not generate any culture for the conqueror (like how Wonders work currently). If you want the culture, sell the building and build one yourself. Alternatively, let culture generate only when certain conditions are met, like for Fascism.

Currently, huge captured cities are quite useless as you lose all happiness buildings and science buildings automatically. Not to mention, you get high revolt chance, encouraging the starvation of huge cities.

Perhaps a mod can alter this?

[vmxa1]

Why? It seems just right to me. You should have a chance to get a revolt in a large city. You should lose those structures and have to rebuild them.

[eris]

Actually, you do not lose all happiness improvements. The marketplace sometimes stays. I find that if I have control of enough luxuries, this makes a huge difference in the overal start of a newly captured city. It is inconsistent to have some buildings maybe stick around and others definitely disappear. I can justify the religious buildings by envisioning that everyone has their own state religion that is incompatible with all others, but that is stretching it. A common tactic is to incorporate the old religion into your new one in some form or another, either by design or by happenstance. And besides the historical example of the burning of the Library of Alexandra, I can think of no reason an invasion is guaranteed to destroy a library or university. It is especially inconsistent when the culture effects of Wonders is handled so cleanly. I understand it as game play, where the new city is a challenge to manage and that becomes part of your war plans and execution, but it is a little clumsy.

Then again, so am I. And so is life outside of Civ, for that matter. Maybe this is all more reflective of "reality" than I first thought.

[Robert]

Why not keep the culture?
If Russia invades Egypt the pyramids didn't suddenly lost all their cultural value.

Just name it 'foreign culture', and as long as the people are in resistance, the culture is against you. But as soon as you are the obeyed ruler of a city, it adds to your own culture.

[spy14]

Maybe this should depend on government type. Before the Taliban were removed from Afghanistan they erased everything that was non-islamic. However I have'nt seen the Americans or British razing mosques in Afghan or Iraq.

[vmxa1]

Well maybe not on purpose, but I am sure that in any conflict of any decent size, some structures are damaged or destroyed.

Palace and hotels took damage and some religious things were damage. This could be by the invadoers or the resistors.

[Last Conformist]

The in-game effect of temples and cathedrals is to make the population content. In a situation of occupation, the native religion often does everything but help the conquered accept the conquered.

[Kuciwalker]

Why Libraries and Universities, though, or especially Research Labs?

[alva]

Wasn't this done to balance things?

[vmxa1]

Lets remember it is not a simulation and does not have to be realistic. Many things were done to make the game play better or for convience.

[Whoha]

Re: Something that bugs me ever since Civ3 vanilla

Originally posted by Fistleaf
Cultural buildings are autorazed upon capture.
The purpose is of course to prevent invaders from gaining culture points from other civ's constructions.

However, a better way to do it would be to keep the buildings but not generate any culture for the conqueror (like how Wonders work currently). If you want the culture, sell the building and build one yourself. Alternatively, let culture generate only when certain conditions are met, like for Fascism.

Currently, huge captured cities are quite useless as you lose all happiness buildings and science buildings automatically. Not to mention, you get high revolt chance, encouraging the starvation of huge cities.

Perhaps a mod can alter this?

Dont station troops in the City, and let it burn. If it revolts just use the guys you have outside to take it back. Thats the work around anyway.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Kucinich
Why Libraries and Universities, though, or especially Research Labs?

Good question.

Tangentially, I've always wondered why Research Labs produce culture. I'd say that modern science has very little to do with national/cultural cohesion and pride.

[Robert]

Of course it doesn't have to be realistic, but I think it's fun to have 3 temples in your city. 1 ancient greek temple which attrackts millions of tourists and gives you only cultural points / tourist money. one ancient egyptian temple idem.

And of course your own modern temple in which the people worhship their modern selves.

And by any war it should be possible that improvements get damaged. A damaged temple could be as cool as an intact temple as well, for culture / tourists.

Of course there must be a good I said good city view in which you can see the things your city makes famous.

And of course *micromangament alert*
- see how many french people visit your city and how much they spend (rich nations spend more)
- see how many german people visit your city etc.

if you're inwar with the french, no french will visit your city. If there's war around your city, no tourists at all.

Good relations with your neighbourse results in more tourists and more money.
Of course it must be possible to micromange things in your city to allow more tourists / cheapen things / etc. etc.

If you dislike micromangament, the AI will do it all for you. I would *love* it to micromange some big cities like that in my empire.

[Fistleaf]

It just seems that Firaxis arbitrarily decided to autoraze all cultural improvements after city capture to prevent any confusion about ownership of culture.

If the structures are destroyed during war (% chance of happening), I am fine with that, but not with autorazing.

I have nothing against the city revolt chance. It's just that with this autorazing, it discourages owning of huge cities and encourages starvation of cities. They should at least give some chance that a surviving temple may be present to alleviate the unhappiness. Surviving libraries also help to increase the asset of capturing the city.

[Plotinus]

I agree that it's daft. I like the "foreign culture" model. Alternatively, it makes sense for cultural buildings to retain their benefits but lose their culture, just as Wonders do. You could always make such buildings more likely to be razed in a capture, but not definite.

By the way, the Library of Alexandria seems to have been gradually lost over a long period. Part of it was burned down when Julius Caesar invaded, and much of the rest was probably lost when Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria destroyed the temple of Serapis in the late fourth century. It was not a single library building, you see, but spread out over the city in a number of locations, together with the Museum that accompanied it. The story that all the books were burned by the Caliph to heat his bathwater when the Muslims invaded (because any book that disagreed with the Koran was blasphemous, whilst any that agreed with it was superfluous) in the seventh century is just a myth.