Should I keep all conquered cities?

[dragonalvaro]

I'm playing domination against 11 opponents. When conquering the minor cities of the opponents... Should I keep them o raze? I really don't care about grievances, but I'm getting close to negative gold balance due to cities maintenance...

What should I do? If I only conquest capital, I probably lose them due to pressure...

There is any problem about razing them all?

[jonnin]

If you don't care what the AI thinks there is no real effect. You lose any wonders or other coolness the city offered.
I raze the small ones just because loyalty and META. My rule is capture and keep the first time, if it rebels, it gets razed unless it is very large (6+ population) or has wonders and districts and things I need.
Money problems: this should be fixable. In the short term, burn some districts and tiles for money. In the longer term, build some commercial hubs and slot the envoy=gold card and next time, consider playing a tiny bit of religion that has gold per city as a perk, then convert as you smash. Conversion helps loyalty too, so its a win-win, and pillaging yields faith so you can inquisit them to your religion easily and cheaply.

[dragonalvaro]

Początkowo opublikowane przez jonnin:

If you don't care what the AI thinks there is no real effect. You lose any wonders or other coolness the city offered.
I raze the small ones just because loyalty and META. My rule is capture and keep the first time, if it rebels, it gets razed unless it is very large (6+ population) or has wonders and districts and things I need.
Money problems: this should be fixable. In the short term, burn some districts and tiles for money. In the longer term, build some commercial hubs and slot the envoy=gold card and next time, consider playing a tiny bit of religion that has gold per city as a perk, then convert as you smash. Conversion helps loyalty too, so its a win-win, and pillaging yields faith so you can inquisit them to your religion easily and cheaply.

Thank you very much for your answer. I'll keep in mind this for the next time. Razing the little ones an keeping the larges seems very interesting.

I have to admit I never care about religion, I think it's a little boring, but I really need to explore some of theses bonuses

[jonnin]

religion assists all of the victory conditions, culture more than the others, but the different bonuses are good for anything if you choose wisely. You don't need to focus on it heavily to get those things. basically,
make a couple of high yield holy sites depending on map size etc. Until you have a prophet, do the prayers thing. Launch inquisition asap after getting established with a temple. Convert your own cities. Then send 3 inquisitors with you when you go to war. There are a variety of bonuses to pick, so pop more apostles to evangelize when you can. Again, gold / city is a good one. But look at the wiki list and decide what you want to go for, keep a couple of backups in case the AI grabs one you wanted.

[dragonalvaro]

Początkowo opublikowane przez jonnin:

religion assists all of the victory conditions, culture more than the others, but the different bonuses are good for anything if you choose wisely. You don't need to focus on it heavily to get those things. basically,
make a couple of high yield holy sites depending on map size etc. Until you have a prophet, do the prayers thing. Launch inquisition asap after getting established with a temple. Convert your own cities. Then send 3 inquisitors with you when you go to war.

Thank you again for the tips :)

[jonnin]

re-read it, I added a tiny bit more. Good luck!

[bchrac]

It is cheaper to keep them than rebuilding them! Religion is a hole, unless you get the money. Haha

[jclovis3]

There is like a 3 point bump in loyalty if the city has your religion when you first take it. You can bring an inquisition to quickly change people who have a strong preference towards another religion so as soon as you take it, if you're going to keep it, convert it. You can create a sort of loyalty break by dumping any city that is too close to one you just captured. This helps reduce the pressure on the cities you captured, and it leaves some land open for development for when you want to build your cities your way.

There are numerous other benefits to religion, even in a purely conquest game. Loyalty is just one factor though. You can often gain additional gold and sometimes promote your Apostles to behave like healers, which work on military units without costing charges like the Gurus do. When you get an Apostle, you get one promotion. Its random what you can get until late game when you can get a card to have access to all of them, but I like to use the one that converts 75% of the existing pressure if I can get it, as well as the +20% strength in religious combat. I specifically purpose those for conversion and combat respectively. Defeating enemy religious units is a great way to reduce their influence in nearby cities, and you can go into theological combat without declaring war.

In my last game, I played against only one AI. I went to war with him once and took a bunch of cities. Then I allowed him to rest. I kept all those cities and ending the war allowed me to gain their loyalty better. Then with the next war, I just razed every new city I took because I was nuking them and running in with the giant robot (doesn't take radiation damage). With a nice open patch of land where his cities once stood, I burned all his remaining tiles and reduced his city to zero health, then let him rest again. My other cities that I took from him were not affected by any loyalty problems because he had already given them up in the previous peace negotiations.

You may find that having so many cities can slow you down as each turn gets longer and longer. I eventually just kept them doing batches of carbon cleanup and even got the CO2 below -2000 units but sea levels didn't recede and nor did the ice begin to grow back. I did manage to stick the stage though to IV so it never really reached full apocalypse (will try that later). Even the temperatures dropped to -4.6 degrees from the start.