Abandon City & Reputational Hit

[Catt]

Has anyone figured out whether or not abandoning cities (with the 1.21 patch) causes a reputational hit?

In late game warfare, the obivous exploit when conquering large cities is to: (1) take the city (i.e., not raze it), (2) move your own settler right next to the city (assuming RR access and so no movement point expense), (3) sell off all city improvements, (4) abandon city, and (5) build new city with you settler that is pre-positioned (perhaps in the same tile as your modern armour / tanks that expended all movement points in attacking the large city).

Bingo, you have acquired the territory, you have a city in place of the prior city, and those 8 - 12 resistors have magically disappeared. Downsides to this are obviously lower population and slower growth, and loss of city improvements which survivied your attack. But upsides include no resistors (so no need to provide strong garrison), much less culture flip worry, etc.

If there is no reputational hit, why would you ever raze a city (unless you need some slave workers) ?

Anyone?

[Jaybe]

Sounds reasonable, but if you happen to have the luxuries, happiness enhancers and a few units to spare you might want to try just keeping the city unless it is huge. Culture flipping doesn't occur that much anymore. If the war doesn't last forever and you have stronger overall culture, there may not be much reason to start over.

If you have LESS overall culture, keeping the city turns a little iffy.

[Catt]

Jaybe, I generally agree . . .

. . . and in normal circumstances I almost never raze and almost always keep the city and suppress the resistors with units, happiness (i.e., rushbuilding temples, marketplaces & cathedrals), and my generally superior culture.

I adopted the above strategy in my current monarch game with UN, Cultural and SS victories disabled, year currently +/- 2030. I got so far behind in score early that there is no chance of a histograph win, so I need a conquest or domination (more likely) in the next 20 or so turns. I simply can't spare 20 units to garrison a captured city with 12 resistors (I am capturing size 22-26 cities without the luxury of time which allows massive aerial or artillary bombardment to reduce city size).

Although I may only use the tactic in special circumstances like this, it may be useful elsewhere -- provided I understand whether or not my reputation takes the same hit it would take with just razing the city.

FIRAXIS, any comment?

[DrSpike]

I doubt this will work in practice. Any unhappiness from the city is likely to be transferred to another upon abandonment, but I haven't tested it. Just raze........reputation is overrated.

[Promethus]

At that point in the game your reputation does not matter anyway, you are going to be ar war with everyone anyway.

[Catt]

Well, in my particular game rep doesn't matter much at this point. But I think the abandon city option can be a very powerful later game tactic (late industrial / early modern), and I'm a builder at heart -- reputation, diplomacy and trade are important components of many of my games (I turned culture and SS victories off in this game only because I wanted to test some later-game mods I'm toying with and didn't want an inadvertant win too early in the tech tree) .

While I understand much of the game can be won or lost in the ancient era, I also believe that the later game seems to garner less critical player attention than it merits (judging from the posts here and elsewhere from obviously very accomplished and successful players).

[Grrr]

AFAIK the resistors and unhappiness is transferred. I prefer to get 20 workers and build the city up, and starve off the resisters.

[Panag]

Re: Abandon City & Reputational Hit

Originally posted by Catt
Has anyone figured out whether or not abandoning cities (with the 1.21 patch) causes a reputational hit?

In late game warfare, the obivous exploit when conquering large cities is to: (1) take the city (i.e., not raze it), (2) move your own settler right next to the city (assuming RR access and so no movement point expense), (3) sell off all city improvements, (4) abandon city, and (5) build new city with you settler that is pre-positioned (perhaps in the same tile as your modern armour / tanks that expended all movement points in attacking the large city).

Bingo, you have acquired the territory, you have a city in place of the prior city, and those 8 - 12 resistors have magically disappeared. Downsides to this are obviously lower population and slower growth, and loss of city improvements which survivied your attack. But upsides include no resistors (so no need to provide strong garrison), much less culture flip worry, etc.

If there is no reputational hit, why would you ever raze a city (unless you need some slave workers) ?

Anyone?

hi ,

before putting the AI's city out of action , buy settlers , you can put them with other city's , and normaly they have your nationality , ..

have a nice day