How Can I destroy a city?

[Pratell]

Stupid people keep invading my lands and building cities, which are interfering with my other cities' production. I know I can just change who takes what square for production but sometimes it changes without my input. So I was wondering, is there any way to destroy a city?

[Ben Kenobi]

There are a number of different ways.

1. Send spies to poison the water supply of the city until the city reaches 1. Then you attack, capture and raze the city.

2. Capture the city, and then starve the population until the city reaches 1. Then build a settler or engineer to disband the city.

3. If the city has more defenders than population points, simply defeating the defenders will destroy the city.

4. Nuke the city to halve the population, then capture and starve the city.

5. If the city has walls, and you don't want to poison the water supply, you must first destroy the city walls to
reduce the population through defender attrition.

6. Bribe the city and starve the population.

[Pratell]

Ah, thank you!

[duke o' york]

I agree that it's a pain when the squares change. I tend to check worker distribution at the end of every turn, but in my current game I have a city using a wheat special that just happens to find itself in the middle of the highway the Celts are using to plough troops along en route to crushing the Spanish. I wasn't too bothered that they'd land an elephant on the square and then move on, because I'd just use the ocean to bag some extra trade, but when the worker didn't return once they'd b*****ed off then I just got tired of having to do that every time and stuck an archer on it. Being within my city boundary then I escaped unhappy people and if the Celts decided that they fancied a sneak attack then this outdated unit wouldn't be too great a loss. I do like having an irritant city among the enemy's though, and plonking a decent defender down on one of their specials to steal it for yourself and stacking spies with it. This is entirely legal and entirely annoying for them.
If you can't just leave a dip moving round their territory in the hope that they snap and declare war on you then having a unit in your city radius and theirs is fun too.

[rah]

The one nice thing about CIVIII, the disband city option.

[Ben Kenobi]

This is entirely legal and entirely annoying for them.

Especially on high defensive terrain, such as gold and wine. It is a real bonus if you can found a city on the special.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by rah
The one nice thing about CIVIII, the disband city option.

I'm surprised they didn't hail the feature on the box.

[rah]

Originally posted by obiwan18
Especially on high defensive terrain, such as gold and wine. It is a real bonus if you can found a city on the special.

If it's in the middle of their territory and far from yours, you had better be in Democracy or have tons of cash, because the AI will usually bribe the city quite quickly, when it's small and cheap.

In MP, playing no city bribe, this is always one of the most fun things to do. (especially on gold) the other player will want to take the city out while it's still size one, and will usually expend considerable resources to do it.

[Heresson]

Originally posted by obiwan18

2. Capture the city, and then starve the population until the city reaches 1. Then build a settler or engineer to disband the city.

No. Capture the city and start building settlers, changing their support city as soon as they are build. Sometimes disbanding a city this way is pretty hard, but at least You've got lots of settlers.

[Ben Kenobi]

By starving the city from the outset, you open up the city squares for the established city. Your solution would cost more for a larger city.

Another advantage of starving the city is that you can earn beakers and taxes for Xinning before the city collapses.

Either way will eventually disband the city.

[Heresson]

I prefer my way. You see, I always miss settlers. And I don't want to build them in my normal cities, as they would get smaller that way. by building setllers my way, You can get many settlers practically free of population reduction, as a small city regenerates very quickly. Of course, if your only goal is to disband the city, your way is easier and probably better

[rah]

Build your settlers when you're celebrating and the pop reduction is meaningless.

[Old n Slow]

Before spies, I ususally build a Settler, may rehome or not depending upon other considerations. Sometimes I'll disband the settler as shields towards the next settler.

Be sure to move the citizens to low food, high other things spaces (trees are a favorite) & sell off the infrastructure along the way.

[Heresson]

Originally posted by rah
Build your settlers when you're celebrating and the pop reduction is meaningless.

I do not understand

[DrSpike]

Build a settler and your pop drops 1, so you can't ordinarily produce a lot quickly (even with the resources) without a cost in terms of the state of that city. When you are celebrating (celebrations in republic or demo increase pop) its just the resource cost that is important to weigh.