Conquest Catch-22

[Nerrolken]

Hey, I'm a life-long Civ player, and I just started playing Civ5. So far I'm loving it... except for one thing. Do occupied cities EVER become fully integrated? I captured a city-state or two and it said "Occupied" and gave me a bunch of unhappiness. Fair enough, I did just burn down their homes. Then, over TWO HUNDRED turns later (marathon game, but still!), the city is still considered an occupied city, and the damn Courthouse that would take away the unhappiness is nowhere near completed!

Do annexed cities EVER become un-occupied and fully integrated into your empire without building a Courthouse? And if not, is there a way to speed up the 600(!!!) production cost of a Courthouse in my 2-3 hammer early-game city, which MIGHT be nearing completion by the time I'm colonizing Alpha Centauri?

When early game cities have just 2-3 hammers, and Courthouses are 600, and unhappiness slows down production across the entire empire, how is it possible to capture more than a few cities without grinding your empire to a standstill... forever?

-Alexander Winn
Nerrolken

[Nikolai]

Don't annex until you are ready to, some cities perhaps not at all. Consider razing some of the cities.

[Proteus_MST]

The only thing you can do to speed things up (aside from setting your city manager on production) is, to start a few golden ages

[OzzyKP]

You can buy it.

[Proteus_MST]

You can buy it.

Nope, Courthouses are probably the only thing you cannot buy

[fani]

It is the only common building that cannot be bought and this is to prevent fast expansion via conquest as i understand it...

[quinalla]

You can buy it.

No, you can't buy the courthouse. Golden ages will help, chopping forests if there are any left and of course as the city grows (if it is growing) that will help too.

[OzzyKP]

Oh. That's kind of lame. *shrug*

[Hermann the Lombard]

Hey, Quebec isn't fully assimilated into Canada after 250 years. "Je Me Souviens" as they say.

[pdxsean]

If the city is small (and only producing 2-3 hammers) then your best bet is to raze it and replace it with one of your own, imo. However if there are a couple of mines nearby and the city has a modest production and a few buildings in place, you're probably better off reassigning the workers and building the courthouse. There's probably a viable puppet plan, but I haven't embraced it yet.

When I take over an AI city, I always liberate it and take a look and see what it has. If it's worthless, I raze it, but if it's any good I'll take the hit to build that courthouse. It helps if you have plenty of happiness to spare before going to war.

[Jaybe]

There was this one time, when I got a great engineer, didn't have anything better to do with him ... and rushed a courthouse!

Well, it WAS a large city.
Yes, you can do it. Yes, I did it. Do I expect to do it again soon? No.

[Ming]

If you are playing a great people strategy, you do sometimes end up with tons of great people... but using an engineer for a courthouse...

[JackRudd]

What about the Communism social policy? That gives you a substantial production bonus, yesno?

[Proteus_MST]

Yes...
but it comes very late in the game

[Zoetstofzoetje]

it might be an idea to add a rule; 20 turns after a courthouse is built it disappears and the city becomes "native".

that way, you don't drag down you economy *eternally* just because of a large conquest.