Scorched Earth Strategy

[Quantum]

I am very excited about the addition of culture to Civ III. I think it will greatly enhance the game in several ways, not the least of which is by discouraging ICS. But I wonder if culture will end up encouraging another unrealistic strategy, the scorched earth strategy. One of the stated purposes of culture is to encourage civs to build infrastructure and not concentrate only on military build-up. But will it? Lets say I am a militant with a strong army and low culture rating, and my neighbor has a strong culture but weak military. Supposedly I have to be careful because my citizens will become jealous of the other civ and might rebel. If I attack the other civ and take some cities, these cities have a high chance of revolting and going back to the original civ. Instead of trying to keep those cities, lets say I instead use the 2-5 turns I own them to demolish all cultural improvements. That way I can gain cash for myself, weaken my neighbor, and most importantly slow the rise of my neighbors culture rating.
Then when the city revolts and rejoins my neighbor, so what? The city is worthless anyway.
What do you think? Will the threat of economic sanctions be enough to discourage scorched earth tactics? Or should there also be a "culture penaly" for destroying cultural improvements (kind of like the world condemnation the Taliban got when they blew up those statues)?
Quantum

[KrazyHorse]

Why should there be a culture penalty for destroying said cultural improvements? You already lose culture points just by not having the improvements around any more. By getting rid of the city, your borders drop back, and any territorial gains you made by its conquest are wiped out.

[Ralf]

Re: Scorched Earth Strategy

Originally posted by Quantum
One of the stated purposes of culture is to encourage civs to build infrastructure and not concentrate only on military build-up. But will it? Lets say I am a militant with a strong army and low culture rating, and my neighbor has a strong culture but weak military.

Whos says its even possible to build a "strong army" by ignoring (or at least down-prioritizing) city-improvements, trade-relations, Civ-alliances and more organized government-types?

Remember that armies now are supported by money, which only partially can be "harvested" within your borders. An increasingly bigger share must also be obtained by establishing multiple trade-routes with foreign AI-civs.
Also; In Civ-3, every unit has its resource prerequisites: each unit-type is tied to one or more special resources. And a gradually bigger part of these resources must be optained by trading your own resource-types with types thats only available on other other parts of the map, owned by foreign AI-civs, beyond your control.

What happens if the AI-civs, in responce of your cruel behaviour, decides to establish counteracting trade-embargos (= your armies stands the risk of disintegrating because of lacking money-support) and resource-embargos (= you are severly limited by what type of units you can build)?

[Quantum]

KH: You are right, any territorial gains are wiped out if you lose the city. But you will gain cash from selling off the improvements, and you also gain turn advantage by damaging your opponents infrastructure.

Ralf: I agree that in late game, the scorched earth strategy would be useless for all of the reasons you mention. Earlier in the game though, say 20- 50 turns in, it might work. If I spent those turns building as many military units as my (addmitedly weak) economy could churn out, and my neighbor spent it building cultural improvements, then I will certainly be stronger militarily than my neighbor. I could sack a city, sell the improvements, and use the cash to support my army or start building my own cultural improvements. Early in the game chances are I would only have contact with a couple of civs and wouldn't have many trade partnerships established anyway, so sanctions might not be a big deal yet. After I have weakend the neighbor sufficiently using scorched earth (ie neighbor is left with a bunch of improvement-less cities), I could then transition to a more cultural strategy, having gained significant turn advantage over my neighbor.

Of course I admit that the only way to know for sure whether the strategy is effective is to wait for the game to come out and try it . I just hope it is something Firaxis thinks about and includes measures to make scorched earth unattractive in the early game. Maybe it already is in the current version of the game - who knows.

[Inverse Icarus]

whats wrong with such a tactic?

its been done before, the conquering, burning, and destuction of cities.

Paris under Nazi rule, most of the Art was burnt.

[TechWins]

Quantum, I don't really get your point. Well I get it, it just doesn't seem to make that much sense. A pretty terrible strategy if you ask me. You may be hurting your enemy, but you're not helping yourself much.