Razing and flipping

[Myrddin]

The problem with captured cities culture flipping seems not to be the flipping but that Civ3 only gives you the options of razing the city completely or accepting a city which is likely to flip.

I would like to see the 'razing' option replaced by a 'plunder' option which would:

reduce the population, say by half
destroy city improvements, say half
reduce the captured city's culture by 90%
produce some conscripted workers
generate cash, from looting

and leave the remaining population with a serious happiness problem.

A reduced population should make flipping less likely and the culture reduction would make rushed cultural buildings more effective, although countermeasures to deal with the unhappiness would need to be used for much longer.

[Space05us]

I still like the razing. but your idea is good too. perhaps if it had all three.... perhaps.....

[W4r_Machine]

Yes, like what the barbarians do when it attacks with massive force to take your city. They fall in line to take gold from your city.

You don't get to keep the city if you plunder and in the process It will likely defect to your civ.

[Coracle]

Plundering actually makes some sense - a lot more than that illogical Culture Flipping bullbleep.

Razing is a form of mass genocide on a scale undreamed of by Hitler, and performed with ludicrous ease and efficiency. It belongs in a Fantasy game, even more than Flipping.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Although I've never had a "Culture Flip" problem in Civ3, I have had something like this happen to me in "Birth of the Federation" where a planet has revolted against my rule!! (Damn those insolent retches!) Before you say "what has that got to do with Civ3?!" In order to stop this situation, you had a number of "improvements" like martial law, re-education centres and the like. My point is that, aside from my obvious beef that culture should be just one of a number of factors behind a decision by a city to break away (as I have mentioned in previous posts!), you should be able to build improvements like these which both reduce the chance of flipping, and increase your assimilation rate of captured cities! The flip side, of course (no pun intended) is increased unhappiness, especially in neighbouring cities!
Oh, and for the record, I think your idea is absolutely brilliant Myrrdin!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker

[Ninot]

i only raze cities that have higher culture, and even then i like to take them whole.

but if i really hate someone, i dont like to see their face no more, so i raze.

[Kryten]

Please forgive me for repeating one of the posts that I put into another thread....

"....in all my history books I can find NO record of any Democracy EVER razing a city (Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were close, but even these cities still exist and were not 'wiped from the face of the earth'). Likewise, although Communist governments tend to kill a lot of their own people, I can find NO record of them EVER razing an entire city. The same with Monarchy; many cities sacked yes, but none razed and totally wiped out so that the city no longer exists.
I'd therefore think that only Despotic governments (such as the Nazis and Mongols) should be able to raze cities (I know that the Roman Republic razed Carthage and Corinth, but when you consider their harsh taxes and inhumane treatment of slaves....well, they may have called themselves a Republic, but to the people they conquered they were Despots! Certainly all the Roman emperors should be classed as despots, even the good ones!)."

So I agree with Myrddin's idea and think that it is a very good suggestion

[Jethro83]

Yes. The above suggestion definitely makes more sense than what exists now.

But you should still be able to raze on top of that, only when you do raze, you get extra gold on top of what you gained from entering the city, and a worker for every pop point of the razed city. I've lost count of how many times the settler-puking expansionist enemies have plopped cities down in terrible places. I want to at least still be able to remove poorly placed cities, and relocate their people to a proper location.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Kryten
Please forgive me for repeating one of the posts that I put into another thread....

"....in all my history books I can find NO record of any Democracy EVER razing a city (Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were close, but even these cities still exist and were not 'wiped from the face of the earth'). Likewise, although Communist governments tend to kill a lot of their own people, I can find NO record of them EVER razing an entire city. The same with Monarchy; many cities sacked yes, but none razed and totally wiped out so that the city no longer exists.
I'd therefore think that only Despotic governments (such as the Nazis and Mongols) should be able to raze cities (I know that the Roman Republic razed Carthage and Corinth, but when you consider their harsh taxes and inhumane treatment of slaves....well, they may have called themselves a Republic, but to the people they conquered they were Despots! Certainly all the Roman emperors should be classed as despots, even the good ones!)."

So I agree with Myrddin's idea and think that it is a very good suggestion

Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were razed for all intents and purposes. However, I would agree that the nuked cities are different. Rome was certainly a republic at the time of the Punic Wars, though non-Romans had no say in the government, of course. America was certainly a democracy when they destroyed villages in Vietnam, though the Vietnamese had no say in the U.S. government. Rome was a monarchy when they razed Jerusalem. And tribal politics, not despotism, were in vogue when the barbarians destroyed Rome.

[YuMMz]

I think razing a city with a population higher than 6 is too harsh altogether. I takes more than one tank assaulting a city to totally raze it. I also definitely am all for a middle of the line option like plundering. Instead I am forced to sit their and starve the city every turn until the population is at a little more reasonable level, and starving them just makes it a better chance that it will flip.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki,

All represent massive air bombardment. This is akin to reducing an enemy civ city via massive arty bomabrdment. It is however, nothing like what CIV3 allows you to do namely ultimately use a single warrior unit to eliminate an entire megalopolis.

[frostycreep]

I agree. We do need another option. Currently I raze every city i capture and replace it with one of my own. I do this because culture flipping really annoys me, so this is my only option. But im starting to feel kinda guilty when razing size 15 cities, so I for one would certainly welcome a third option.

[jshelr]

The right cure is to really allow a large enough garrison to completely eliminate flipping. Then, you don't have an incentive to raze and the realism that the population has to be kept under strict military control is maintained. What frosts us is that you can have a stack of ten offensive units in a city and lose the whole thing. At worst, they should kick the enemy out of town. If they could kill the enemy, we wouldn't be in their town in the first place.

[SomeOneElse]

I was under the impression that in one of the last patches, a sizable garrison WOULD help prevent flips. There might have been a chance, but that's just to keep the game interesting, i think. To tell the truth, I've never had any problems with conquered cities flipping. Its happened, but never bothered me much, because it felt like I was fighting the enemy resistance, and I dont stack huge garrisons in those cities anyway, I always need those units to help fight the war.

[Kryten]

To Zachriel: it's unusual for you and I to be on opposite sides in an historical debate! (ah, but I've now joined "the dark side" an am begining to question some Civ3 features ):-

Vietnam: small villages razed = many, civilians killed by artillery/bombing = lots, major CITIES with 10,000 or more population massacred and razed to the ground so that they don't appear on modern maps = none.

Romans: as you know, unlike medieval monarchies, the Romans had no hereditary right of succession. ANYONE could be emperor, even the son of an emperor, but only if they had the army backing them up. Nowadays we call anyone who needs an army to stay in power a dictator or despot, not a king.

Barbarians: tribal leaders, who ruled for as long as they could hold power. Later this evolved into a hereditary monarchy. And in Civ3 the most primitive form of government is Despotism (Anarchy of course is the lack of a central government).

(....no further questions. Your witness. )

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To Myrddin, YuMMz, Ogie Oglethorpe:-

Here's an idea....why not have each individual unit perform it's own sacking & pillaging.
So when you first capture an enemy city, each unit that enters that city gains a handful of gold, destroys one building, and kills one population. Moving say 6 units into the city would gain 6 times the gold, destroy 6 buildings and kill 6 population. If the city had a population of 7 or more, then it would be severely sacked, but survive. If it had less than 7, then the troops have gone too far and the city would be destroyed. Really large cities would need a large army to raze them, but would still be sacked & pillaged.

(And I'll ignor for the moment the question of how long a democratic government would remain in power once public & world opinion discovers that they sanctioned the murder of hundred's of thousands of unarmed civilians.... )