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A minor point, and one that may have been obvious to most of you, but just in case... (btw, for the purposes of this post, native refers to citizens/workers of my civ)
We all enjoy the benefits of maintenance-free workers, even if they are slow and lazy. The only real problem I've ever had with non-native workers is that they aren't replenishable, like native workers are, which makes them ill-suited for airfields, colonies, etc. to the extent that one uses them, but also puts a crimp on your non-native work force, since it becomes more a product of happenstance than design, to a large extent.
I'd noticed this before, but it never really clicked until my current game (the Germany one I've posted about). When building a worker in a city full of foreigners, the worker comes out foreign. I just always thought once that happened that I was still paying maintenance on that worker, since I did build him. Turns out that is not the case, creating a win-win situation when you've got an enemy core that you've conquered and now need to subdue. I should state here that especially on my own continent, I generally don't raze cities. As always at this point in the game, I've got many native cities that are small enough and unimportant enough to be worker factories, so my postwar method for those obscenely large metros the AI loves so much has become:
1. Get a Library/Temple up ASAP, and get those borders out, as well as building anti-flip culture, and markets as needed for happiness.
2. Queue up nothing but workers until the first native citizen shows up in the city.
3. As food allows, mine the over-irrigated tiles with my own workers.
4. Meanwhile, building up my worker force from my small tundra towns, those building aqueducts/hospitals, those squeezed between metros, etc.
5. Once the metro has been reduced as far as possible through creating workers, add a stack of native workers to get it back to optimum size.
This is primarily for former rivals on my continent, where I can still manage some semi-productive cities out of the AI core. The benefits I've found are as follows:
> lack of rep hit for razing
> no need to stockpile settlers during conquest (I abhor letting that many idle pop points sit around and, due to the rush of getting them at the right time, the loss of a few productive cities that could be building improvements/units)
> no need to rebuild any improvements your troops spared
> maintain some productivity, science and trade-wise, during the process.
> large force of free, non-native workers now available.
As implied, I've had my best success with this in my Ind/Mod wars. I don't know how it would work on smaller maps, since the scale of a huge map means the maintenance of building 20 native workers and keeping them doing odd jobs for 10-20 turns before they can be added to a couple of cities is merely a drop in the bucket.
Like I said, a fairly obvious premise, I just wanted to throw it out there for any of you who, like me, hadn't connected all the dots.
Of course, the drawback is a chance of flipping in the interim (small, the way I play, but YMMV)... and sometimes it's just fun to raze a size 30 city.
We all enjoy the benefits of maintenance-free workers, even if they are slow and lazy. The only real problem I've ever had with non-native workers is that they aren't replenishable, like native workers are, which makes them ill-suited for airfields, colonies, etc. to the extent that one uses them, but also puts a crimp on your non-native work force, since it becomes more a product of happenstance than design, to a large extent.
I'd noticed this before, but it never really clicked until my current game (the Germany one I've posted about). When building a worker in a city full of foreigners, the worker comes out foreign. I just always thought once that happened that I was still paying maintenance on that worker, since I did build him. Turns out that is not the case, creating a win-win situation when you've got an enemy core that you've conquered and now need to subdue. I should state here that especially on my own continent, I generally don't raze cities. As always at this point in the game, I've got many native cities that are small enough and unimportant enough to be worker factories, so my postwar method for those obscenely large metros the AI loves so much has become:
1. Get a Library/Temple up ASAP, and get those borders out, as well as building anti-flip culture, and markets as needed for happiness.
2. Queue up nothing but workers until the first native citizen shows up in the city.
3. As food allows, mine the over-irrigated tiles with my own workers.
4. Meanwhile, building up my worker force from my small tundra towns, those building aqueducts/hospitals, those squeezed between metros, etc.
5. Once the metro has been reduced as far as possible through creating workers, add a stack of native workers to get it back to optimum size.
This is primarily for former rivals on my continent, where I can still manage some semi-productive cities out of the AI core. The benefits I've found are as follows:
> lack of rep hit for razing
> no need to stockpile settlers during conquest (I abhor letting that many idle pop points sit around and, due to the rush of getting them at the right time, the loss of a few productive cities that could be building improvements/units)
> no need to rebuild any improvements your troops spared
> maintain some productivity, science and trade-wise, during the process.
> large force of free, non-native workers now available.
As implied, I've had my best success with this in my Ind/Mod wars. I don't know how it would work on smaller maps, since the scale of a huge map means the maintenance of building 20 native workers and keeping them doing odd jobs for 10-20 turns before they can be added to a couple of cities is merely a drop in the bucket.
Like I said, a fairly obvious premise, I just wanted to throw it out there for any of you who, like me, hadn't connected all the dots.
Of course, the drawback is a chance of flipping in the interim (small, the way I play, but YMMV)... and sometimes it's just fun to raze a size 30 city.
I didn't know that about recycling. good tip 
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