Enemy cities - no improvements?

[Grifman]

Why do I hardly ever find any improvements in a captured city? In prior civs you may have lost some, but I've taken size 9 cities from the Greeks, Romans, and Aztecs and 99% of the time, they have no improvements in them. Given that corruption takes some much after conquest, it's a real pain to get anything out of these cities - I'd be better off razing them to the ground and building new ones.

Grifman

[dexters]

I think they are destroyed?

I believe when you capture a city, culture wise, you start from scratch (zero) if you had captured a temple, it would be problematic.

In anycase, I've bombarded many cities before I took them and I can tell you that in my bombardments, I've hit barracks, temples and cathedrals.

AI civs on the easier settings doesn't seem to be too keen on markets and other improvements :-P

[Soren Johnson]

Re: Enemy cities - no improvements?

Originally posted by Grifman
Why do I hardly ever find any improvements in a captured city? In prior civs you may have lost some, but I've taken size 9 cities from the Greeks, Romans, and Aztecs and 99% of the time, they have no improvements in them. Given that corruption takes some much after conquest, it's a real pain to get anything out of these cities - I'd be better off razing them to the ground and building new ones.

Grifman

When a city is captured, all cultural improvements are automatically destroyed. (This seemed to make some historical sense, and we wanted to avoid situations in which you had to manually sell a temple so that you could build a new one to produce culture.)

[Grifman]

Thanks for the response but . . .

Ok, but these are size 9 cities not by a river. No aqueduct? No barracks? No marketplace? No granary? I can't believe the AI is building size 9 cities, keeping up with me or surpassing me, and yet a size 9 city has nothing other than a temple or library.

Something doesn't seem right.

Grifman

[Soren Johnson]

Originally posted by Grifman
Thanks for the response but . . .

Ok, but these are size 9 cities not by a river. No aqueduct? No barracks? No marketplace? No granary? I can't believe the AI is building size 9 cities, keeping up with me or surpassing me, and yet a size 9 city has nothing other than a temple or library.

Something doesn't seem right.

Grifman

Non-cultural improvements have a 50% chance of being destroyed when a city is captured. If youa re ever curious what kind of improvements the AI is building, just investigate the city via an embassy or spy.