To Raze or not to Raze, That is the question..

[Artifex]

When conquering the world and enemy cities. What factors into your decision making on wether to raze or not to raze enemy towns.

I don't know all the intracacies of culture and what makes a town flip. I assume generally that the enemies larger towns closer to it's capital stand a risk of flipping. Therefore I have played it safe and have been razing everything..since I would be pretty sad if 15 of my riders and an army resting in a town fliped on me. It would change the entire dynamic of the game.

Then again I am not sure what the risks are. How can you tell if an enemy city might be at a high risk of culture flip if conquered? When do you decide when to raze? I wonder if there is a way of gauginf your culture compared with enemy civ you are at war with and coming to a calculated conclusion.

I have been razing real valuable cities in my current game as China vs. sly India ..size 8,9,10 cities (700a.d)..just because I have no clue if they might flip or not. Ghandi seems to have ok culture (he is impressed with mine but not in awe), he has built a couple of wonders compared to my 3 but who knows..

[Artifex]

p.s. I read in another post that with the 1.21f patch you don't have to raze all of your enemies cities. That you can put in military units and build culture. But gave no specifics. I hate having to raze delhi because its got some nice wonders in it.

[cumi]

Hi,

this is a difficult question. I can tell you my strategy, but note that I am playing only on the second level (Warlord). At this level you have to work hard, to achieve an enemy city to be flipped to you. But when making war:

- First I decide before, if I am gonna destroy the target Civ or not . You have to know this before you beginn an offensive. If you are not the aggresive one, you also have to know how stronger you are.

- If the other civ attacks you, and you don't have big plans, simply raze his border cities. If you capture them, there is a big risk of flipping. And never, never keep huge armies in captured cities - you can lose them in a second.

- I don't see much reason to capture enemy city without a reason in later ages. You have to build everything from scratch. The only reason can be a resource...

- If you are planing to destroy a civ - I do it always like this, because there is no way to flip back - you can capture some of his last cities. In the beginning of the offensive never. And even send your own settlers into empty territory...

- When razing an enemy city, you are making space available for other civs to expand. Make sure that doesn't heappens.

- In modern ages I am destroying a civ in about 10 rounds. Close the Rigth of Pass. deal, send your tanks beside each of his city. Then send ICBMs on each of these cities (sometimes more than one) and raze the city with 1-2 Tanks. Then make colonies with the captured workers. - Oh, yes: build the national defense system before, because you will also get some nukes.

cheers

[frostycreep]

I always build about 10 settlers before going in to war. Then i raze everything, and get the settlers in quickly. That way, you dont have to lose any of you attacking units to defending newly captured towns! Ive also found that if you raze about two cities, the other civ starts pleading for a peace treaty and this is on monarch level!

[cumi]

...but if you raze too much cities, your "friends" can decleare war to you - this already heappened to me.

I think razing a city is like using nukes - but you need only 1-2 ICBMs to be a target of all civs. Your opponents will beginn to hate you and if you do so a lot of times, they decleare war to you.

- I forgot to tell this before: razing an enemy city is the best option if you need some workers....BRUHAHA

[Jawa Jocky]

I have actually developed a new strategy for culture flips. I call it "IDGAF ( I don't give a f**k). Someone else has probably already discovered and posted this idea, but I'll take credit until they call me on it.

Assume the city will flip and only put one injured unit in it. Have a couple of good units close by that can recapture if it does flip. You still need to defend the city from attack just not from inside the city.

Now if the city flips it will only get one defender and is easy to recapture (because you left units for this job). You have only lost one unit (an injured one at that). Only one city can flip per turn so you can't get behind as long as you keep recapturing.

[jshelr]

In the modern era, no one should raze any more. Caputred cities with twenty pop are hard to manage, but there is an easy way out.

After recycling is researched, you can sell the buildings surviving in the city after taking it over for shields as well as gold. The shields count toward a settler which can be built in one turn. Cities never flip on the first turn. So, using this strat, you can blitz without taking along your slow moving settlers and never worry about controlling captured cities. Just abandon the city on the second turn and rebuild on the spot with the newly produced settler. (There is a thread on this from a couple of weeks ago.)

[cumi]

To IDGAF Strategy

The strategy is good, I use it, too. But you can not do this after you sign a peace! Or just simply use the IDGAF strategy for peace aggreements, too???

[Arrian]

Ok, as I understand it, the following are the major factors in city flipping:

- Overall ratio of your civ's culture vs. theirs

- "enemy" citizens and/or resistors

- The number of tiles within the city's 21 tile radius which are currently under "enemy" cultural control (borders).

- Your culture IN THE CITY vs. theirs (you will be on the losing side of this for a while)

- relative distance to capitols

- civil disorder doubles the flip chance

- your military units help prevent flips. The more units you put in the city, the more of the flip factors will ne neutralized. If it flips, though, you will lose those units.

Therefore, it is important to:

- have strong culture
- push back the enemy's borders ASAP, wipe them out if you can
- starve down the city and allow it to grow back up w/your own citizens
- make sure the city doesn't go into disorder

The fact is, however, that preventing a size 20 city in the Modern Age from flipping is gonna be hard. That's a lot of enemy citizens and a lot of enemy culture in the city. Unless you have a SICK ratio of total culture, that thing's gonna flip on you. Accordingly, warmongering works better early in the game. The human can often get the jump on the AI in culture (particularly if you play a religious civ), so you have the advantage. Cities are smaller, civs are easier to wipe out, and your advantages snowball as you conquer civs.

When in doubt, either raze or use the IDGAF strategy.

-Arrian

[Incan_Warrior]

I tend to raze if the city's radius overlaps my cities (or is on unsightly tundra/ice).

A cool strategy (for religious civs) is to capture the city, use a turn to switch to despotism (there is a risk here, however, as cities are more vulnerable to culture flips in anarchy) and POP RUSH the big city down to a baby town. Use the population to build a temple, cathedral and marketplace - the happiness effects will counteract their unhappiness for working them to death (literally). Then switch back - it rocks! The baby town will be much less likely to flip (if you can make it through the government switches) with these buildings in place.

[Jawa Jocky]

Re: To IDGAF Strategy

Originally posted by cumi
The strategy is good, I use it, too. But you can not do this after you sign a peace! Or just simply use the IDGAF strategy for peace aggreements, too???

Correct. It only works during war. The raze issue just put me in a war thinking mode. I only use it when I'm taking out a high culture civ and I know that a few cities will flip back durning the war.

[Austin]

I simply bombard the city down to 4 or 5 pop, then take it. Problem solved.

Austin

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Austin beat me to it. 20 artillery kill all the citizens (and the improvements, too, o well). You capture a size 2 former metropolis. Station the troops there to prevent a flip. Within a dozen turns or so, the majority of the citizens are yours, there's little risk anymore.

However, if that city is too close to the enemy's core cities, I'd consider razing. I always build up my culture, so that part of the equation is secure, regardless of civ's traits. I've only lost 1 city to a flip in about 30 games. It flipped to me, flipped back, then I sacked it again later. Culture is key if you are any distance from their capitol.

[dawidge]

I don't even bother with bombarding the pop. Capture the city, station 1 unit/resistor (1 per citizen, if I can afford it) and move on. I'll only raze if I absolutely cannot hold the city, and even then I might let it flip back and retake it on the next turn.
After all, even injured troops will quell resistance, and they have to heal somewhere. When pursuing a very mobile campaign (cav or MA), razing the city might prevent me from being able to move on to the next city due to cultural border pressures. If I occupy the city, I get the 1 sector culture border; if I raze it, their cultural border may stretch out to 3+ sectors, halting/slowing my advance. To top it off, there are frequently useful improvements (hospitals, aqueducts, courthouses, barracks, etc.) remaining in the city. If you bombard beforehand, these get wiped out.

[Catt]

I won't post on the "To Raze or Not to Raze" as there are many excellent views already. But on a very closely related tactical decision (I don't think I'm going too far off-topic here):

If you've made the decision to raze (under whatever criteria), consider instead taking the city, selling off all of the improvements (for very little gold), using the effects of your "new" city's borders to allow for greater movement during the turn, and then just remember to abandon the city (right click on the city) before the end of the turn. You get the benefits of the expanded borders for unit movement, you get a few gold pieces, you may (it is unknown whether this is accurate or not) avoid the significant rep hit associated with razing; and you get this all for the reasonable "cost" of the extra slave workers you would have gotten from the razing.

NB: Some may consider this an exploit. I've only used the strategy twice, both in "non-games" or games where my primary purpose was to experiemnt with something rather than win, so I had no qualms about the "exploit" feel to it.

Catt