Firaxis: Option to turn off Razing

[whosurdaddy]

I know i've brought this up before, but I want to keep this issue on the Firaxis radar so that we dont have to wait for another patch after the scenario abilities are realeased to deal with this.

Basically, there must be away to turn off razing of cities in scenarios, because many scenarios simply will not work properly if cities can be razed or abandoned at will. Imagine for example, a ww2 scenario where the computer controlled Germans raze all the cities of France after capturing them, then there will be nothing left to fight over. Just think about it Firaxis, all Im asking for is an option to leave razing on or turn it off. If something is an option, then everyone is happy!!! hooray!!!!

[Inverse Icarus]

do you mean razing after capture? or abandoning cities? or both?

[Harlan]

I so 100% agree.! I've written almost the exact same post before. Imagine for instance how much easier Napoleon would have had it if he could have just deleted half the population of Europe and planted French cities everywhere. That kind of thing just ain't gonna fly in a lot of scenarios, where there's a greater emphasis on historical accuracy.

Razing cities after capture and abandoning cities both should have on off flags. Actually, abandoning a small town would be okay - ideally if you build a Settler before the population of city reaches three, you should be asked if you want to abandon the city or wait until it reaches the proper size.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Harlan
if you build a Settler before the population of city reaches three, you should be asked if you want to abandon the city or wait until it reaches the proper size.

you can do that.

EDIT: EXPLINATION:

make a city a 2, and make it so theres no food suplus (stagnate).

when the settler is done you have the option of disbanding the city.

[whosurdaddy]

Originally posted by UberKruX
do you mean razing after capture? or abandoning cities? or both?

I am talking about both abandoning a city you own and razing a city you already own. You should have the OPTION of turning both of them off for scenario purposes, or even in a normal game if the person playing the game doesnt like those features. In a game such as the spanish conquest of america, where many indian settlements literally were razed, it would make sense (to allow razing), but in a scenario such as the Napoleon one mentioned by Harlan, we cant have Napoleon abandoning or razing all his conquered cities after taking them and leaving a map of Europe completely empty with the exception of France.

[Cyclotron]

I think adding the abandon feature was a bad idea in the first place, because it is used 90% of the time as a way to raze without everybody hating you.

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
I think adding the abandon feature was a bad idea in the first place, because it is used 90% of the time as a way to raze without everybody hating you.

I like the abandon feature, because say I found a city and 40 turns later it's still only producing one shield out of ten. Well, I can adandon it and have one less burden on my empire.

However, a good way to make you happy would be to attach a flag to the city you capture. If you raze it within a set time limit, the AI hates you.

[Cyclotron]

If I want to correct a poor city choice as per your example, I just starve it down to 2 pop and build a settler, or rush settlers until it's gone.

[Harlan]

UberKrux,
I did not know you could do that. However, it still would be good to have this as an option. What if you can't balance the food growth at zero, for instance? This can happen if you don't have the right terrain to balance at it zero, but are stuck at choosing either +1 or -1 or the like.

This also brings up a larger question, the issue of ethnic cleansing and self-genocide. Its wierd - I saw Mike B from Firaxis on another thread intimating that the game didn't have things like a Fundamentalist or Fascist gvmt because it wanted to remain a family game, yet at the same time you can kill off your own people far worse than Hitler or Stalin ever did, without much penalty at all. Wiping out millions of innocent people is actually the smart thing to do much of the time.

Take Cyclotron7's example. Even if abandoning and razing were turned off, one could just slowly starve a city to death. You get some unhappiness as a result, but not enough in my opinion. In reality, any city that was being that rapidly starved would certainly rebel and break off from your rule. In the game, the Communist gvmt is seriously broken because the AI will regularly pop rush and/or draft huge cities literally down to population of 1.

This makes for poor play for both the AI and the human player. The AI who essentially kills itself through pop rushing and the draft, and the human who doesn't have to make tough management choices cos its easier just to completely kill off citizens or cities you don't like. Some starvation and pop rushing is good, but please, increase the penalty the more you do it, and teach the AI to have some restraint! And it should be even more costly to do under certain gvmts. Allow us also to be able to set the diplomatic penalty level for using nukes and razing/ abandoning cities - these are set far too low.

What we're left with now is both bad gameplay, and encouraging immoral action far worse than the worst leaders in history, with almost no penalty.

[Harlan]

Oh, another thing. I never use governors, and one reason why is because I hear that if you set the city management to anything but maximizing food, the governors will literally choose to starve your cities. Dumb! Please fix this - so much time was spent making the governor feature, yet it remains unusable because of this.

Its one thing to have natural disaster cause famine, which happened all the time. But to have the leader choose to starve a part of the country - that just doesn't fly without major rebellion. Imagine if today Pres. Bush just decided to cut off all food from entering California, and had the military occupy all the fields to prevent any food harvesting. You think people in California, not to mention the rest of the US and the rest of the world, might just be a little upset? Killing millions of his own innocent people might even cause him to lose the next election?!? Yet this game actually encourages that kind of population "management".

[Random Passerby]

Er... huh? Are you kidding? If I ever use governors and tell them to concentrate on everything BUT food, they will still not only keep a food surplus coming in if possible, but will actually give weight to food production and try to keep the surplus at least at 3-4 food if possible (the rationale apparently being that a bigger city has better production and more commerce period, which mostly works unless your city's about done growing and you'er racing for a wonder).

[Harlan]

Random,
That's what I've heard - as I say I don't use governors cos I hear they have problems. Perhaps it has been improved in a recent patch. In any case, one should have more overt control over this kind of thing, like selecting maximize science and keep growing, maximize science but no growth, etc...

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

For my part I feel that, if you have an option in the editor to switch off City Razing and Abandonment (and I do!) then you should also have an option limiting the Max City Size you can abandon or Raze and, possibly, an option for max city size you can abandon/raze without diplomatic penalty.
On a related topic, there should also be an editor function where you can grant Nukes the ability to destroy cities UNDER size X (editable), as well as the ability to vary Nuke strengths within the editor (to differentiate between an a-bomb, H-bomb, Tac-Nuke, ICBM and thermonuclear warhead!) The two functions should appear under the same editor Tab!!
Anyway, just a thought!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Tassadar5000


I like the abandon feature, because say I found a city and 40 turns later it's still only producing one shield out of ten. Well, I can adandon it and have one less burden on my empire.

why wouldn't you have seen that prior to founding it

[Yurt]

Abandoned cities should stay on the map as "neutral" cities. Abandoning a city means just leaving it; the current option is more like "destroy city".