Useless Capitals

[PapaLenin]

Now what do u get if u capture enemy capital... Absolutely nothing. I think that when a capital is captured the palace won't just be reconstructed immideately to other city. There should be BIG disadvantage when capital is captured!!!
U agree, have any suggestions?

[Worthingtons]

Yep, Completely agree it should have a bigger effect, on Civ II you could destroy a civ by taking it's capital..

[Spec]

Re: Useless Capitals

Originally posted by PapaLenin
Now what do u get if u capture enemy capital... Absolutely nothing. I think that when a capital is captured the palace won't just be reconstructed immideately to other city. There should be BIG disadvantage when capital is captured!!!
U agree, have any suggestions?

Absolutly, I agree! You should get atleast half of the conquered's treasury and some techs that you haven't learned. Well.....Someting or other.


Spec.

[The Andy-Man]

should send the civ into disorder and posibly anarchy for a few turns (3-6). should cut off trade deals, and resources shouldnt get to a city, and a palace HAS to be built. unless there is FP, then palace ges there auto after disorder and everything is back to normal.

[korn469]

actually from my testing it seems that if you give the palace a defensive rating that if you city gets sacked by barbarians they can burn down your palace and it won't automatically reappear, also it doesn't seem like you can build a new palace until your old one is dead

i'm not sure about any other changes though

i'll test more and report back to you

[PapaLenin]

Yep I agree with u all... There really should be major effects like those u said. Thx for answering

actually from my testing it seems that if you give the palace a defensive rating that if you city gets sacked by barbarians they can burn down your palace and it won't automatically reappear, also it doesn't seem like you can build a new palace until your old one is dead

Cool so we propably won't have to wait for next pach. Thanks korn

[Purple]

I like The Andy-Man's idea about promoting the city with the Forbidden Palace to the capital. The FP could automatically become the Palace, and a new FP could be built elsewhere.

Without an FP, a new palace should be built from scratch, although it wouldn't have to cost an arm and a leg.

One question, though: how would the absence of a palace be reflected in waste and corruption?

[sachmo71]

I like the anarchy idea, but maybe instead of them automatically getting a new palace they should have to build one. In the meantime, the city could automatically get a much less effective building that acts as a mini palace until they build a new one.
I guess I can see why they have it so that you automatically get a new one, as the resources devoted to a new palace might cripple a smaller civ from continuing a war, but a less effective building would probably be more fair (dare I say realistic?).

[nato]

I guess I will be the obligatory dissenting opinion...

I don't think taking the capital should be too damaging. In Civ2 it was just too easy to devestate huge empires on the first turn of war with a sneak attack on their capital. With the ability to abuse right of passage agreements, this would be even easier.

Losing the capital is a big symbolic blow, but I don't think it should devestate an enemy. I don't think in a serious war a nation will stop fighting because it lost its capital. The unconquered lands should not be hurt by it.

One idea I have to add is maybe your form of government should affect how much losing your capital hurts. Highly centralized governments like communism would probably be more hurt than liberal democracies.

[sachmo71]

Nato, I agree with you for the most part. I don't think it should stop it, but if a capitol is taken, it would disrupt communications, business, and generally be a blow to the psyche. That's why I think a less powerful palace, sort of temporary capitol, should be the result. That would make taking the capitol more of a strategic objective. Maybe the temporary capitol could gain more influence as more tuns pass, as the government settles into their new digs...with an initial penalty to building, science, and tax collection that gets lower and lower as turns go on. If they suceed in building the palace quickly, the penalty is eliminated.

[Skanky Burns]

Im surprised no-one has mentioned this before, but what is the effect of the palace?? It determines the amount of corruption in other cities and also determines the chance that cities will culturally flip.

So what happens if you destroy the enemies capital, and it is not rebuilt. You have created a palace-less enemy.

Now each enemy city will have no corruption (no distance from capital) and will never culturally flip for the same reason.

I agree that a civ needs to be punished when their capital falls, but doing that isn't the answer

[Kilroy_Alpha]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Im surprised no-one has mentioned this before, but what is the effect of the palace?? It determines the amount of corruption in other cities and also determines the chance that cities will culturally flip.

So what happens if you destroy the enemies capital, and it is not rebuilt. You have created a palace-less enemy.

Now each enemy city will have no corruption (no distance from capital) and will never culturally flip for the same reason.

I agree that a civ needs to be punished when their capital falls, but doing that isn't the answer

This is true. Prior to 1.16 you could even do this yourself provided you got lucky enough. If you started close enough to a rival civ, didn't build a city, and managed to conquer a rival with units you got from goody huts you'd have your first city, with no palace. And no palace = zero corruption.

[Pius Popprasch]

Without a palace corruption is endlessly high and not low because the distance to the palace is infinite. In Civ1 where corruption was a minor issue it worked like that. Corruption was high.
In real history it had a major impact - to say the least - when the capital was taken. E.g. after Paris was taken by the Germans 1940 France surrendered.
In Civ3 there could be 3 turns of Anarchy and not more. It's a game and the balance should be maintained.
Korn's mod seems interesting if there is no other fix.

[Ironikinit]

One bonus to taking the capital is that it seems to generate leaders. I say seems because I can't really prove it or anything, but I'd say 2 out of 3 times that I beat the last defender in a capital (it has to be the original capital, it doesn't seem to work with the next in line capital) with an elite unit, I generate a leader.

One idea I had was if you take a capital that you could force a revolution to the same government type as yours as part of the peace negotiation, but you have to give the capital back. It would probably just be a needless complication tho. Nato made a good point about how easy it is to wax a capital with a sneak attack.

[fezick31]

bring back civil wars

I'd like to see a signifiganct chance of Civil War. Especially if war weariness is high, they are a totalitarian govt, or there is rampant corruption.

I also think that there should be a probability of losing diplomatic ties or embasies with other civs, and having to reastablish them.

Something else that might be neat, although probably not feasable currently, would be a chance that you caught the leader in the capital when you took it. The result would be a new leader for that civ.