The power of pillaging

[Mudtowner]

I'm a relatively new player to Civ in general. I've started using the pillaging feature with mixed results. I'm looking for some clarification on how this works as it doesn't appear to be working the way I believe it to be (possibly). Recently, I used this against my largest foe in a prolonged game... Japan. They had built such a massive empire that I thought this would be a great tool of attrition. Slowly taking their border cities by sending in troops, pillaging, and holding ground for as long as possible. Then when I finally take over the city, fixing up the tiles and moving forward.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't pillaging supposed to give my units 25% of their health back? I guess I don't see this happening when I do it. Is there a length of time I need to wait for this to happen? Also, this is denying my enemy all the food, gold, production and science on the tile, yes?

Thanks.

[invishiro]

I too have noticed that Pillaging seems to work differently than it is supposed to. I usually get gold instead of health when pillaging. It does "break" the tile improvement until fixed. And any tile in enemy territory which has your troops on it denies them from working that tile altogether as well. I'd love to use pillage to grab some extra health on my troops, but it doesn't seem to work that way for me.

[Staryn]

Pillaging is supposed to heal your units, but there are exceptions. Unfortunately, the tooltip doesn't tell you this, and gives you bad advice. You will only heal if you pillage a tile improvement.

You do not heal if you pillage roads or railroads.
You do not heal if you are not using Gods and Kings.

When you heal, it is 25 HP every time. You can only heal a unit from pillaging once per turn, regardless of movepoints.

Edit: If you pillage a tile, the improvement is lost. Whatever bonus that improvement gave is taken from the enemy city. This is also a good way to kill off an enemy's strategic resources.

[Mudtowner]

So it removes the improvements such as the ones provided by mines, trading posts, and farms and/or/also the innate bonuses as well (such as a tile that provides +1 food prior to being settled/owned)? I'm curious because I would like to know whether I'm completely removing the bonuses from my enemy or just the improvement. Also, just to clarify, the only thing I'm removing from my enemy if the tile has a road/rail, is the ability to use said road/rail.. the rest of the improvements stay attached to the tile and continue to servie the owner?

I play with just the core game, not Gods and Kings.

[Staryn]

Just the improvement is lost. The original tile yield is still there. The pillaged improvement is not destroyed, it is simply damaged. So it won't take long to rebuild.

Since you are playing the base game, the only thing you get from pillaging is gold. You also get to slow growth and production in enemy cities and take out their resources, but that's all. There's not much strategic need for pillaging in that version.

[SpaceBoat]

Does it matter which tiles you pillage in terms of resources?

I wondered if I hit a gems or gold lux it would give me gold. If I hit say cows or wheat, it would heal you.

I am unsure, would like more clarification.

I need to test this more now, because the healing wasn't working the other day, and i lost a few units due to it. I swear it wasn't a road only tile, there was definitely a worked lux resource there.

[invishiro]

Originally posted by Solomon Grundy:

Does it matter which tiles you pillage in terms of resources?

I wondered if I hit a gems or gold lux it would give me gold. If I hit say cows or wheat, it would heal you.

I am unsure, would like more clarification.

I need to test this more now, because the healing wasn't working the other day, and i lost a few units due to it. I swear it wasn't a road only tile, there was definitely a worked lux resource there.

Are you playing with G&K? If it's just the base game then you just get gold. It's always seemed to be the same amount when I do it, no matter the tile, but I haven't specifically tested this!

The tile will still be "functional" but just with the base bonuses from the type of tile, not anything added or improved by a building/improvement. Also note that as long as you have a unit there, they are unable to work the tile at all with their citizens, so you might be better off attacking if you have a superior force and will take their city soon (this assumes no G&K healing possible).

[Fish]

When you pillage a tile, it destroys the improvment, say, mine, farm, trading post, road, citadel, and landmarks(made by great artist). Once that improvment is destroyed, it must be repared by a worker to function again(example: mine with iron must be repared for the player to have its iron again.) Same thing here with unit healing. I pillaged a tile because my unt had only 1 hp left, and it did nothing exept give me gold. Now with tiles and bonuses, You must keep your unit on that tile to remove the bonuses and food from that tile.

[Biggbosss]

ragan explains all thne feature of pillaging! and what about naval pillaging?ihave not tried yet!

[Staryn]

Same thing applies to water tiles.

[Lostlake]

When you play with mods, does that also prevent you from "scrubing " radioactive (pillaged) debris from a tile that was hit with a nuke or even hit with conventional weapons during the taking of a city or destroying enemy units on their own territory? I am having this problem after conquering a city. My workers cannot build even roads once a tile has been hit during a war. They just "work" for one turn and then they arestanding on the same tile after the new turn starts again. Help please?

[thedUWUmslayer]

Originally posted by Lostlake:

When you play with mods, does that also prevent you from "scrubing " radioactive (pillaged) debris from a tile that was hit with a nuke or even hit with conventional weapons during the taking of a city or destroying enemy units on their own territory? I am having this problem after conquering a city. My workers cannot build even roads once a tile has been hit during a war. They just "work" for one turn and then they arestanding on the same tile after the new turn starts again. Help please?

You mean that when you give your workers an order, they ask for more orders next turn, even if they didn't finish what they were doing, right? If that is what you're trying to say, well thats a bug, actually. There are several old threads here on the forums about it, I suggest you go have a look at them. Or google it, whichever works for you.

[Lostlake]

That is exactly what is happening, but I have discovered that this occurs after attacking other (AI) player's armies. If a feature on the tile that they were occupying is destroyrd (such as being nuked/pillaged) the worker acts exactly as you have described. Not too sure what to search for as far as this topic goes. I have tried various searches such as "radioactivity," "pillages tiles," "repair tiles," etc. To date, I have found nothing. Very frustrating, especially when I have progressed to turns in excess of 1000, in 3 games, and then find that my workers cannot repair/scrub the damaged/pillaged tiles. After that, the game is essentially over, as you cannot really do anything with cities and their areas even after you capture them.

Thank you very much for the reply and the suggestions mate. I will try Google. Really to bad, in that this could be a fantastic game except for the hundreds of problems that people seem to be having. I definitely would NOT recommend that anyone but this game ... especially if they have to use STEAM as a resource.

All the best to you ... and thanks again!

[Lostlake]

Originally posted by Ragan 651:

Just the improvement is lost. The original tile yield is still there. The pillaged improvement is not destroyed, it is simply damaged. So it won't take long to rebuild.

Since you are playing the base game, the only thing you get from pillaging is gold. You also get to slow growth and production in enemy cities and take out their resources, but that's all. There's not much strategic need for pillaging in that version.

I have discovered that after attacking other (AI) player's armies, if a feature on the tile that they were occupying is destroyrd (such as being nuked/pillaged), when I give my workers an order to repair the improvement or "scrub" the radioactive tile, they ask for more orders next turn, even if they didn't finish what they were doing. Not too sure what to search for as far as this topic goes. I have tried various searches such as "radioactivity," "pillages tiles," "repair tiles," etc. To date, I have found nothing. Very frustrating, especially when I have progressed to turns in excess of 1000, in 3 games, and then find that my workers cannot repair/scrub the damaged/pillaged tiles. After that, the game is essentially over, as you cannot really do anything with cities and their areas even after you capture them. Any suggestions please?

[Staryn]

The worker problems are well known, and were supposed to be fixed in the last patch. I know I've had the opposite issue lately, though. Plenty of threads on workers waking up every turn. It's got nothing to do with pillaging.

[Lostlake]

Ragan 651: thanks for the info. I appreciate knowing that mate; very helpful to kow that this is not something that just my game is doing.