Razing With a Human Face

[dexters]

This isn't related to Civ 3 per se, but I thought it important to mention it.

Late last night, I was watching an old documentary (likely from the 1950s) concerning the people of a town in Checkoslovakia. The German SS was apparently hunting several assasins who had killed a Reich official. I'm not clear on this, but I believe they made a connection between the assasins and the town of Lidice. What did they do?

They killed all the men in the town, sent the women to concentration camps, and gassed the children. Then, they leveled the town.

Yes, they razed it to the ground.

While I'm a proponent of razing in Civ III (foreign nationals in your cities can be annoying) I thought it was appropriate to mention the historical context of such acts. and how cruel it is.

[smellymummy]

that's a good point, but in your example the act of razing was commited by mass murdering lunatics. The SS were not nice folk after all.

How about looking at it in this context:

Your amazingly advanced culturally supreme civ (culture 20k) takes over a few cities of a backward civ (culture 1k). You raze the city and promise the citizens a better life among your own people. Technically theres no place that says raze the city, and gas the people/burn the people. For all we know, we could raze the city while the inhabitants are cheering your military units

[dexters]

Oooops. I thought I was posting in the general forum. Mods, please move this thread to General forum

Thanks.

[Kc7mxo]

Um. yeah right. while you're burning down their homes you're magically moving them back to your empire. while noticing no population influx, no horde of unemployable primivitves suddenly showing up at the welfare line. . . . .

i think its more probably that you demolish their city and while most die in the resulting week of looting, pillaging, murder, rape, and other enjoyable activities, the few survivors simply scatter and starve.

And the ss weren't the first to do this you know. its about as old as warfare itself. Many ancient empires (mongols, romans) used it as a tactic. burn down one city and put every citizen to the sword, and the next one will probably be a bit more interested in surrendering.

.

[DK36]

I agree with kc there.

Besides, who the hell would listen to someone saying "I'll give you a better life, but first let me burn down everything I see that you once held close."

Razing the city is cruel. It's not the prettiest thing to do. And we all know all those citizens (in the form of workers) aren't volunteering to help you with public works. You basically come in, destroy, kill, rape, all that happy stuff, and then bring up a few thousand people back in the form of slaves\concentration camps\whichever way you want to view it. I guess it depends on the society though. The more ancient ones lean toward hording back slaves, while the latter is more like with the ss as described.

[inca911]

Razing Cities: 1940s style

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
And the ss weren't the first to do this you know. its about as old as warfare itself. Many ancient empires (mongols, romans) used it as a tactic. burn down one city and put every citizen to the sword, and the next one will probably be a bit more interested in surrendering.

.

And do not forget that many more modern empires have done it as well. A couple cities called Hiroshima and Nagasaki come to mind....

[MarshalN]

Yup, razed two cities and all of a sudden the Japanese were a lot more keen on surrendering.

Even though they probably were preparing for a surrender at that point already, like a lot of research said. Whether they were going to without the nukes, we'd never know. One thing is sure though.... it made things happen a lot faster.

[smellymummy]

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
Um. yeah right. while you're burning down their homes you're magically moving them back to your empire. while noticing no population influx, no horde of unemployable primivitves suddenly showing up at the welfare line. . . . .

when you raze a large city you do get workers that you can transport back to your own cities. You can then have them join your city. Haven't you tried this? Some do complain too after being installed as citizens though (i.e.: stop fighting our mother country!), but it doesnt take usually have much of an effect since you the player have an amazing civ and everyone is happy.

As for the rest, like I wrote, it depends on what context you're looking at it. It's not like you can see what's going on in the little civ3 computer world with the little civ3 people and there civ3 city improvements now can you? If you want to pretend you're razing the cities, burning and gasing the people - okay.

[Blaupanzer]

The AI ruler of the civ whose city you razed will never be nicer than annoyed with you after you do it. At least that's been my experience. It's a nasty and wasteful thing to do. If you don't want the city, sell it. I strongly suspect that's the real reason that option (city-trading) is in the program at all. Move your units out first, then sell that turn, so it doesn't revert.

[zapperio]

Originally posted by smellymummy

As for the rest, like I wrote, it depends on what context you're looking at it. It's not like you can see what's going on in the little civ3 computer world with the little civ3 people and there civ3 city improvements now can you? If you want to pretend you're razing the cities, burning and gasing the people - okay.

Sounds like you're feeling a bit guilty. Having a hard time sleeping at night?.

Zap

[MarshalN]

You can't always sell a city back..... what if you need something from those tiles? Some resource/luxury? A chokepoint? A lot of times you have to keep a city or it's space, and the choice is raze or keep...... if you know keeping the city will make things tough for you razing might be a good idea.

[KaiserKiser]

Re: Razing Cities: 1940s style

Originally posted by inca911


And do not forget that many more modern empires have done it as well. A couple cities called Hiroshima and Nagasaki come to mind....

no offense inca, my motl friend, but i HATE when people condemn the idea of dropping the bombs on japan.. reasons:

1 - the japanese are extremely patriotic, willing to die for their country, hardcore folk... they fight to the death... this showed them that hey, maybe, for once, surrending is an option

2 - SO many more lives would have been lost continuing island hopping... think of how bad the small islands were, then think of invading the mainland...

also, in reference to the anti-nazi thing, yes, the nazis were probably the worst people ever to inhabit our planet, but my grandfather was an ss officer, so i do kind of take some offense.. he didn't go around raping jewish women... he was just ignorantly indoctrinated

[MarshalN]

I think what gets me more is that Japanese now portray themselves as the victims of the war by virtue of having had two bombs dropped on them.

Nevermind that they started the whole thing, invading half of asia, killing lots of innocent people (the massacre of Nanking being the most famous), and got themselves into this mess in the first place.

[inca911]

Re: Re: Razing Cities: 1940s style

Originally posted by KaiserKiser
no offense inca, my motl friend, but i HATE when people condemn the idea of dropping the bombs on japan..

Hiya! Actually, I don't condemn the bombings at all. Although there may be some truth to the notion that the Japanese would have surrendered without the bombings, they had not yet done so at that point (oops). Certainly American lives were saved as a result of the bombings and the Commander in Chief has a duty to protect our people at all costs. There was also a large political motivation to use the bomb. Island-hopping in the Pacific was an insane activity. Sometimes Japanese who were going to surrender were shot by their own compatriots and every single atoll and scrap of land was highly contested. The only way the Marines could secure many of the islands was to eliminate every person on the island. I agree with you 100% that island hopping was one of the most unsettling aspects of the war and that most folks don't realize how insidious it was....

[IronSpam]

On the subject of city razing, I remember in Latin class a Roman history tidbit. After the Third Punic War, the Romans took Carthage, a Mediterranean city in the modern-day North African country of Tunis. They had fought two previous wars with the Carthaginians. During the second of those wars, Hannibal marched elephants through Spain across France and into Italy.

Needless to say, after three wars the Romans were not happy with the Carthaginians. The Roman general in charge of the African expedition, Scipio Africanus, had all the inhabitants of the conquered city enslaved. But before sending them off to their new life, he used them as forced labor to dismantle the city brick by brick, then had them plow the earth all around and sow the land with salt.

These are some cool quotes from historical websites I found:

“The Romans, deeply suspicious of a reviving Carthage, demanded that the Carthaginians abandon their city and move inland into North Africa. The Carthaginians, who were a commercial people that depended on sea trade, refused. The Roman Senate declared war, and Rome attacked the city itself. After a seige, the Romans stormed the town and the army went from house to house slaughtering the inhabitants in what is perhaps the greatest systematic execution of non-combatants before World War II. Carthaginians who weren't killed were sold into slavery. The harbor and the city was demolished, and all the surrounding countryside was sown with salt in order to render it uninhabitable.”

“For six days the Romans were forced to take one building after another. This sort of street fighting is virtually unheard of in antiquity; once the walls were breached resistance was pretty much hopeless and surrender followed. The continued Carthaginian resolve is a measure of their desperation...
...The survivors were sold into slavery. The town was stripped of its valuables and burned for ten days. The land was then cursed (the story that it was sown with salt is a later invention). Carthage ceased to exist.”

The Romans must have really wanted that city wiped off the map, because salt doesn’t wash out and renders the land completely infertile. To this day, I think there’s still a bald spot where the original city once stood on the Mediterranean. And this was during the Roman Republic. Just think of what the Empire would have done!

Later on the Romans actually revived the city. It was just too strategic a spot to pass up. Looks like gameplay sometimes imitates history.