City Capture Options

[BeBMan]

Ok, we can now take a city, or destroy it.

I like the idea, but I think there should be a loss in the "culture" score if you destroy cities. Also I think this loss should be lower in ancient times, and higher in more modern ages.

[Earthling7]

Sounds like a reasonable idea. It's hard to make friends when all you do is raze cities.

Am I right in that conquered cities stay pissed for a while, as in real life? That would be cool...

[Urban Ranger]

What happens to the destroyed cities? Or maybe I should go look on the site

[UKScud]

The news item mentions that cities can be razed in ANY age??

If so, OMG!

Can you imagine it, near the end of game, 2001. A hostile force sends marines into a big, big city...say pop.15+ and they raze it!

What happens to the population? Slaughtered? Some become partisans? Refugees perhaps?

Is this something that would cause an international incident in the same way that the Civ2 spy planting a nuke in a city was?

I can understand the "realism" of having a medieval city razed to the ground, you might even expect it in an early industrial age, but modern age???

Does that sort of thing happen without international consequences? Should it?

[Lordfluffers]

I think this idea of razing any size city is a little inaccurate and will probably unbalance the game. It is logistically unlikely anyway not to mention the resistance that it would receive from the inhabitants. Although many cities were effectively destroyed in ancient times, these cities had very small populations. Secondly nobody really has the power to level a city. Napoleon's Russian conquest led The Russians to raze Moscow, but it still survived. What about WW2??? Will it be possible for the Germans to destroy any city they capture???

Ultimately I think this will lead to an unbalanced game. Players can build huge armies, destroy a city, and go on and ravage another. The whole game will be based on surprise attacks on major cities to cripple the enemy. As a result players will have to build huge defenses to counter such a threat. In reality, civs have to occupy their captured prizes.

I agree with razing cities of a certain size or starving them out (although I think this should create resistance). I also think that shelling and bombing should damage city improvements and populations, but razing a city whatever its size is absurd!!!!!

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
What happens to the destroyed cities? Or maybe I should go look on the site

It will be burned to dust.

[Rince]

There has to be a hard penalty for destroying cities. If you conquer a city, you should have to deal with the consequences. Just loosing your reputation isn't enough IMHO. I remember from previous civ sessions that i never cared about my diplomatic contacts anyway. Maybe this will get impossible in Civ 3, but still, destroying cities really isn't realistic.

Rince

[Asmodean]

OK...razing a city with a size of 1, 2 or even 3....that sound fine to me. But bigger cities, come on...Where's the realism in that. Just imagine razing a city the size of New York, or Berlin. In realistic terms, it can't be done without the use of nukes.

In Civ I or Civ II, I missed this feature so bad , because the AI would sometimes place cities within the city radius of one of your own cities. But now...with the border system, I don't even care that it's in. Firaxis: please tell us what prompted you to include this.

Asmodean

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Rince
Maybe this will get impossible in Civ 3, but still, destroying cities really isn't realistic.

Unfortunately it is absolutely realistic, at least in ancient or medieval times (e.g.Carthage). However, I agree with all here who say there should be a penalty for doing this in industrial/modern ages.

[Earthling7]

I think destroying a city up until 1750, Earth terms, should be fine. It should not be tolerated after the beginning of the industrial age. Also, Republics and Democracies should be punished for doing it. The people would go bananas.

If it happens in the above case, it should be treated as an atrocity. Maybe the UN Council couls vote on if it is an atrocity. Maybe the victim has been terrorising the whole world with their militaristic madness...

If it's in, it should be implemented properly.

[Asmodean]

Originally posted by Earthling7
If it's in, it should be implemented properly.

IMHO a proper implementation of this would be to limit this to the early ages - not later that middle ages to be sure. And to implement a limit of, say, city size 6 or 7. I can see cities of those sizes getting razed. Imaging however, razing a metropolis of 8 or 9 million people. Buildings can be destroyed or burned, but killing that many people - wiping out an entire city. Even Hitler couldn't bring himself to do that, and God knows he had the chances.

I know Firaxis are balancing fun and gameplay over realism, but come on...

Asmodean

[Lordfluffers]

If it's in, it should be implemented properly.

Good point!!!

You should really only be able to raze a city with nukes. Or there should be a very, very heavy penalty for it in the later stages of the game. It is very hard to destroy a large city with conventional weapons, even today. Stalingrad survived, just, after 10 months hard fighting, bombing, shelling. So did Berlin, so did Warsaw. It is so difficult and expensive to destroy a huge city. London and its suburbs is hundreds of square kilometres in area and has millions of inhabitants. The ordinance required to level it would be vast and the army to maintain order while it did so would also have to be huge. If it is done, especially in the industrial/modern era, then there should be harsh penalties. I personally think this is massively unrealistic and should be kept to the smaller cities.

[Tventano]

In SMAC it counted as an atrocity. So although military it could have an advantage it had very severe diplomatic consequences.

[Jason Beaudoin]

The question that comes to my mind when I hear that you can raze a city is the following:

In terms of gameplay, would it be better to raze a city? You wouldn't have to occupy that city. You wouldn't have to worry about uprizings. I wonder what it will be like to actually occupy a foreign city with potentially hostile citizens.

Firaxis... you can give us away some secrets, after all, EBWorld is reporting that the release date is on 30 October 2001... about one month away! Woo hoo!

[BeBMan]

Well, often you may need the captured city as a base for further operations...