What, No Monuments?

[mfly6148]

When annexing a city from an AI civ, I have been amazed how often I will have to build so basic a structure as a monument. (This of course is after a courthouse has been constructed in the annexed city.) Which leads me to wonder: Does the AI really not think it worth it to build monuments? Or do some basic buildings possibly get destroyed during the annexation process?

[Damsteri]

Buildings are destroyed when city is captured with a military unit. Some type of buildings are destroyed always, while some buildings have random chance to get destroyed.

Examples:
- All world wonders survive
- All national wonders are destroyd
- All culture generating buildings are destroyed
- All defence buildings are destroyed
- All military buildings (exp boost) are destroyed
- All espionage buildings (constable, police station) are destroyed
- Other buildings have percentual chance to survive, most common value for survival is 66%

I might have forgotten some buildings, but this is the mechanism how it works.
There might not be any buildings left (except world wonders), if the city changes ownership couple of times.

Some buildings are also destroyed when city is aquired trough trade (or peace deal).

[mfly6148]

Oh, wow; this explains a lot. Thanks, Damsteri!

[ajhartman65]

Actually, after your troops took the various cities they pulled down all the statues of Sadam/Stalin/whoever, therefore you have to build all new monuments to "proper" heroes.

But to add/clarify to Damsteri's list, I have on occassion captured a city with a "guild" in it if it is one that my civ has not actually built yet (but could build).

[Damsteri]

Originally posted by ajhartman65:

But to add/clarify to Damsteri's list, I have on occassion captured a city with a "guild" in it if it is one that my civ has not actually built yet (but could build).

This is quite strange, and might be unintentional.

All info about the buildings I have is from Civ V XML files. For example building XML files from BNW expansions can be found in folder: "..\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Assets\DLC\Expansion2\Gameplay\XML\Buildings\".

There is two XML elements which define what happens to the building when city ownership is changed. Building is always destroyed if an element <NeverCapture> is set to true, like monument. Other element is <ConquestProb>, which is the percentual value for survival. All world wonders has ConquestProb value of 100, while for most other buildings has value of 66. Usually either one of the two elements is used, but some buildings lack both, like Mughal Fort and... National Guilds. For this reason (bug?) those buildings are untouched when city is captured.

[ajhartman65]

Pretty sure that i've captured all 3 types of guilds over different play throughs. I play without mods and have not altered any of the game's coding, so...

[m.d.nealy]

Yeah I have captured a few guilds as well. It is always one you haven't completed yet. You can sell it and rebuild it in a better location.

[Damsteri]

It seems that default action is to survive the conquest for buildings which don't have NeverCapture or ConquestProb set. But was it intentional to leave Guilds without an action... And why the Mughal Fort has no action (which one I found out by accident). Normal castles are destroyed by conquest, but Mughal Forts are not? I will happily test this, next time I had Gandhi in my game.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Damsteri:

It seems that default action is to survive the conquest for buildings which don't have NeverCapture or ConquestProb set.

You can actually see the defaults in the table at the top of each document.

<Column name="NeverCapture" type="boolean" default="false"/>
<Column name="ConquestProb" type="integer" default="0"/>


The interesting thing is that this should mean that guilds are always destroyed, but I can confirm that they are not. I assume that has something to do with the great works. It seems like the devs wanted to protect them from being deleted as much as possible, because if you look at other buildings with great work slots then you'll see that they've all set their conquestprob to 100 (even though they're culture buildings, yes, Civ 5 changed that "You can't capture culture buildingss"-rule with BNW), so I assume there's a mechanism in the core files that protects great works from being deleted if that doesn't break the Building Limitations.

[Damsteri]

Mmm.. protecting great works not to be destroyed, that could be the reason. Forgotted to check if there is default values in those XML files.

[Grumpy]

Originally posted by mfly6148:

When annexing a city from an AI civ, I have been amazed how often I will have to build so basic a structure as a monument. (This of course is after a courthouse has been constructed in the annexed city.) Which leads me to wonder: Does the AI really not think it worth it to build monuments? Or do some basic buildings possibly get destroyed during the annexation process?

Stop playing below Immortal (this isn't a slight or insult at you or your skill level) and you will soon be capturing crazy developed cities.
On Immortal, by turn 10 (standard speed) most AI have a Granary and a Monument build and that is no exaggeration, now consider how long it takes you to build just one of those!
Bascially as you bump up in difficulty settings, the AI cities get crazy good.