Has Anyone Been Capturing and Keeping Cities?

[Daveraver]

So here's how my current game worked itself out... I have a continent, that I fought long and hard to have by myself... after centuries of cultural and scientific domination, I decide to destroy the rest of the world... only... I realize I have far too many cities as it is...

So I blitzkrieg with like 100 modern armors... and well... I keep the cities, which are complete wastes of time. They're corrupted to one shield... three of them converted back (killing my six or seven tanks stationed there...how peasant rabble can overcome a tank brigade is beyond me).

So my question is... is it really worth keeping these cities?

I started burning all of them to ground... which, as it turns out, is sooooo much more gratifying.

[Peets]

it depends how you play
I "use" the cities when I'm comunism, they won't revert back then. It may be lame but it's a solution for this corruption rate.
If I'm democrazy then I raze the cities that are not usefull, but I keep the ones where are resource in the city radius. I also try to get a high culture of my own in the city then to keep them stay with me.

You can also kill the civ. when you have a lot of cities of him, easier to keep them

[campmajor!]

The problem with razing can be that the AI will settle new cities there. No problem if it is a civ you are at war with, but a pain in the ass if it is a civ you have peace with....

So I keep them usually, but don't do that much with them, just keep them fot the territory!

[rid102]

So my question is... is it really worth keeping these cities?

Late in the game, I'd say 'no'. It makes a lot more sense to either just raze them or raze them and quickly build a new city in the same place.

If you really want to keep it (e.g. it has a Wonder) then bombard it down to a manageable size (e.g. 3 or 4) and/or starve it for a bit while putting a decent sized garrison in place.

At the beginning of game, I think it makes more sense to keep cities as the boost can be quite large. Also, I think other Civs frown upon razing cities and so it can make diplomatic relations a bit harder if all you do is raze.

If you are going to wipe out your nearest neighbour(s) early on then I normally keep cities I win because they're small and don't revert too easily but more importantly also provide all important forward bases to put the boot in some more on your enemy. If you want to take a more peaceful approach then you can also use them to build up culture bombs and gain control of even more enemy cities. This only tends to work well quite early on though (otherwise the enemy cities are getting too large and this can then work against you).

[Grumbold]

It is possible to keep the cities if you want them (like for a dominance victory or to obtain a wonder) but on the whole unless I intend to sack the enemy capital every turn until their nation is completely wiped out I prefer to destroy their cities and place my own settlers instead. This conveniently means that you will never need to pay for your workers because you have a whole army of foreign nationals to do terrain improvements for you.

[Venger]

I always keep cities - as was mentioned, razing them just makes fertile ground for the AI ICS...

What's the point in conquering the earth, turn it into pasture?

Venger

[PN]

I've been struggling with the reversion problem too, especially as the AI seems to wipe out all the happiness/cultural improvements before you take a city.

I think I'm going to try to turn up on enemy continents with loads of settlers of my nationality in my next game and add them to the city population after I take it. Hopefully this will reduce the probability of reversion. I think that I'll also need cash (or units I can convert into shileds) to make sure that I can quickly build improvements. The most important one for the first city you take on a new continent is the Harbour I think so that all your own civilzation's happiness making luxuries and resources can influence the population.

[Boracks]

I keep them. Its hard enough to keep the 'friendly' settlers out as it is when the cultural boundries shrink. Bloody real estate salesmen are everywhere.

[Morganstern]

My approach has been to keep cities that have Wonders, and perhaps a couple others sprinkled in, but raze most of them and quickly build my own. My experience has been that my cities grow to the same size as the retained cities quickly, and are much more manageable. The retained cities have converted at about a 50% rate, despite my civilization's overwhelming cultural dominance. I guess the many years of "being Aztec" takes precedence in the new CIV 3 paradigm.

[Mokael]

Here's what I've found in the manual - when you absorb/conquer the city, it's citizens (the ones that keep their nationality) will be upset everytime you are at war with their original civ. I've found it to be true 100%. This totally sucks if you're planning on taking over the whole civ - the first cities you conquer are in danger of reverting back until you conquer the last cities. I've found the only true way to combat this - make all citizens in the acquired city happy by hiring entertainers. If that leads to starvation - even better, less citizens to worry about But do try to finish your war as soon as possible. If the war starts, I usually try to finish off the civ completly. (I'm yet to play on the huge map though)

[Mokael]

Originally posted by Peets
it depends how you play
I "use" the cities when I'm comunism, they won't revert back then. It may be lame but it's a solution for this corruption rate.

Hmm, cities revert back even under Communism. It happened in my recent game on several occasions. Darn Greeks and their baklavah ... (no offense intended)

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Daveraver
So I blitzkrieg with like 100 modern armors... and well... I keep the cities, which are complete wastes of time. They're corrupted to one shield... three of them converted back (killing my six or seven tanks stationed there...how peasant rabble can overcome a tank brigade is beyond me).

Quote from the game Civilopedia:
"Resisters can be quelled by ending the war or garrison strong military units in the city - the more the better".

In short: after your blietzkrieg-campaign of 4-5 cities, you must end the war. As long as the war continues without a peace-treaty, quelling those resistors is much more difficult. You can always brake the peace later - use the truce-period effectivelly by switching city-merging/city-reducing settlers and workers between founded and conquered cities.

A MIXED conquered city population is much more manageable during resumed wars against old enemys.

If you STILL have problems, then open your Civilization III map and doubleclick the "Civ3mod" icon; Then click the Culture-tab. There you guys can tweak back and forth how big the conquered Civ resistance-chance should be regardless what cultural opinions neighbor Civs have of you. The default figures is:

Conquered citizens is distantful of your culture = Initial resistance-chance 90%. Continued = 80%.
Conquered citizens is dissmissive of your culture = Initial resistance-chance 80%. Continued = 70%.
Conquered citizens is unimpressed by your culture = Initial resistance-chance 70%. Continued = 60%.
Conquered citizens is impressed by your culture = Initial resistance-chance 60%. Continued = 50%.
Conquered citizens is admirers of your culture = Initial resistance-chance 50%. Continued = 40%.
Conquered citizens is in awe of your culture = Initial resistance-chance 40%. Continued = 30%.

Hell, you can even tweak the RATIO for each of above culture opinions - and add new ones, as well. Check it out.

Just remember: The easier you make it to oppress/assimilate conquered AI-cities, the easier it is for the AI-invader to oppress/assimilate your cities as well. Its a double-edged sword, you know.

Finally, I remembered one Firaxian saying something about 1 martial law-opressing combat-unit for each conquered foreign citizen. I dont know if this thumb of rule still applies with that new patch, and if it does so regardless difficulty-level. Anyway, with the changes made under that CivMod-editor Culture-tab, at least the probabilities, and the duration of it all, can be made much shorter, if one prefers that.

I havent tried it out myself, but its riskfree to do so, since one can always choose the editor-menu Rules -> Restore default Rules if something goes horribly wrong. Or back up the CivMod file.

[Travathian]

They won't revert back when you use Communism to rush build something that'll use up every population point but 1, then grow it back to a decent size with your people. Or better yet, rush a temple, cathedral and library. You'll be at a 100 culture for the second border expansion in no time.

I usually raze unless its got a needed Wonder. Then I use all of my original workers to build up population quickly, and use the foreign workers for terraforming.

[mattcj]

I keep only the smaller cities (6 or smaller). Big ones... I just raze them and build a new city there. It's would be too disappointing to lose it. Incidentally, I've yet to have any of my captured cities revert to their former civ.

[Antonin]

Originally posted by Mokael
the first cities you conquer are in danger of reverting back until you conquer the last cities. I've found the only true way to combat this - make all citizens in the acquired city happy by hiring entertainers

I have a lot of success keeping cities by having huge labor gangs fast-building roads right behind the spearheads of my offensive. When I capture a city, I am often able to connect it to the rest of my empire the same turn.

The immediate infusion of luxuries seems to help convince the conquered population to accept the inevitable.