City elimination option --> too good?

[Razor1952]

Perhaps early on enslavement or occupy is ok but mid to late game elimination is fantastic....


Get rid of your squalor and unruly population, keep the level of your settlement without the hassles and make a ton of money. Too good to be true!..

IMHO this option should at least reduce all buildings down one level , then I would at least have to pause before slaughtering everyone......

[Didz]

I must admit I have now adopted a policy of systematic city population extermination in most of my outlying cities.

It reduses city populations back to manageable levels and gives a real boost to income from those cities for years. Doesn't seem like a realistic tactic for city management though.

[andrewt]

It reduses city populations back to manageable levels and gives a real boost to income from those cities for years.

It doesn't give a boost to income. It just shifts the unit upkeep costs and wages to other cities you control. If you mean you need a smaller garrison and don't need to keep using low taxes, then I agree with you there.

The reason exterminate is so good is because you have high unrest and culture penalties when you get newly conquered cities. The population boom bonus, decreased squalor and higher garrison bonus counters both unrest and culture penalties. By the time those bonuses are gone, unrest and culture penalties are mostly gone or completely gone.

[The_Emperor]

I think what he means by a massive income is the vast amounts of cash you can gain from the mass looting that Exterminate allows.

Enslave only produces about as much looting as occupation, but exterminate can give you a massive finincial boost when you sack a major city.

[Bob the Insane]

I love it when after a hard siege battle where you only have 500 battered troops left, you can still go through a city of 30000 people and butcher over 20000 of them and nick (steal) all their stuff.... And they will be happier afterwards tah if you had left them alone...

[Longasc]

The "WAY TO GO":

Occupy or Enslave early conquered cities.

Enslave cities during your expansion phase.

Exterminate population after already having a healthy and strong core. No need to add more people, as taking the money and killing the buggers causes less unrest due to population and the money you get nets you more as the probably largely corrupt population mass of a city in a state of already being able to produce anything could achieve in decades.

[SpencerH]

Extermination is too easy to use, but given the lack of game options to control a large population, it's required.

[Jugurtha]

Yep, I'm at the extermination stage as well. I agree it is too easy as well, it should affect the buildings by one or two levels. Could it not take the building level down to the corresponding population level?

[Jambo]

It shouldn't affect the level of the buildings. Otherwise we'll have the same unwanted effect that was so prominent in STW and MTW - fighting low tech AI armies.

But I agree, exterminating is currently the only useful option when capturing cities in the late game. There should be more resulting issues in a city where the population is exterminated. That, or there should more incentive to enslave or occupy.

[Bob the Insane]

Perhapes if the population of the settlement greatly outnumbers the attacking army there should be a possiblility of an immediate revolt if extermination is chosen...

[Red Harvest]

It shouldn't affect the level of the buildings. Otherwise we'll have the same unwanted effect that was so prominent in STW and MTW - fighting low tech AI armies.

I disagree, because when you exterminate you are likely to kill off many of the folks that made the buildings what they are, drill instructors, artisans, etc. In fact, they are the most likely to fall under the blade. Most of the structures are meaningless without the people who run them.

Also, I don't think you will see the scorched earth effect, because the AI doesn't seem to do much province swapping in RTW. The province swapping in MTW is what caused scorched earth. It was fixed in VI by requiring you to actually win the siege before downgrades happened (before a simple invasion would do it.) MTW/VI still produced some weak armies because the unit production direction still encouraged low tech units even when the AI could build better. It also would not disband or retrain to get better quality.

[SpencerH]

One answer is that the amount of time to build or repair a building, or whether it can be used at all, should be dependent on the population. On the other hand, without a mechanism to control a captured city any changes would be useless.

[andrewt]

It's not that city elimination is too good. It's that the other two make it impossible to control cities that have reached at least large city status, especially ones farther away from your capital. Occupy means instant revolt while enslave means revolt somewhere else.

I have 2 suggestions in mind:
1. Add more ways to control public order and change existing formulas to be stronger in increasing public order. Especially as factions without arenas, you're very limited in the temples you can build. You can only get away with building the temples with other bonuses on a few core cities. Everything else needs the +10% public order per level temples.

2. Make population affect trade and tax income more. That way, there's more incentive to have higher population and it makes sense, too.

[Servius]

well, there are two great things about Extermination: a) the money, and b) no population hassles

While many of us would probably still use Extermination because of the large cash infusion, I think a good solution would be to make it easier for us to manage unruly citizens. In MTW, when fighting rebels, we could let them all go, kill the ringleaders, or kill all of them. When fighting non-rebels we could kill the prisoners or ransom them for money. And you ALWAYS got a hefty chunck of change whenever you sacked a province. It's a shame we don't have that kind of flexibility in RTW.

[Quillan]

I tend to think that exterminate should A) have a chance of damaging buildings during the ensuing rampage, B) increase the level of unrest, both in that city and others if you do it too much, and C) possibly cause additional casualties in your own surviving troops.

[andrewt]

The problem is, without exterminate as good as it is right now, reaching 50 provinces would require really drastic measures, like moving your capital right next to the province you're planning to conquer next and staffing all your provinces with 20 peasant units so they won't rebel while you are moving your capital around.

[LittleRaven]

Exterminate is too good, but also necessary to keep a city under control.

But the middle ground here is obvious.

Keep exterminate working the same way it does now. However, unless a city has the requisite population to construct a building, that building will not function.

That way you can keep cities on your borders pacified, but not pumping out top military units after feeling your loving touch 3 times in a row. It will also encourage empires to form a 'center' of powerful cities where most of the troops come from, which is pretty realistic. Right now, especially on the higher difficulty levels, I can frequently make more advanced units on the frontiers than I can in my capital, because the AI growth bonuses mean their cities grow faster. I just massare the population and start using the buildings. And that's just silly. (the fact that I can take advantage of it in this fashion, not the fact that the AI gets bonuses)

[LordKhaine]

Exterminate is too good, but also necessary to keep a city under control.

But the middle ground here is obvious.

Keep exterminate working the same way it does now. However, unless a city has the requisite population to construct a building, that building will not function.

That would solve a lot of issues. Would be nice if population drops for any reason also made buildings "inactive". That way a plague could cripple a city in the same way. Right now I'm pretty glad a plague hits. It keeps the population down, and rather oddly the city seems to get happier.

I also wouldn't mind seeing negative vices for generals who slaughter a lot. Right now you just seem to get a bonus trait if you slaughter thousands of civilians. I'm pretty sure you'd get some fearsome rep if you slaughtered thousands like that.

[Razor1952]

Some great replies thank you. Obviously there is a balance issue here to address, exactly how remains to be seen, but I think the suggestion for inactive buildings till the population recovers is not a bad one though its exact implementation is still unclear to me.

In all this IMHO I think the game needs to make the player think twice before he automatically presses that button. At present "exterminate" .."exterminate".. brings back echoes of Daleks!

[Didz]

My own view is that extermination should generate negative penalties for all other cities of the same culture. Thus the more often you slaughter men, women and children from that culture the more likely they are to revolt against your rule in the future and the more determined their soldiers are in future battles. A sort of hatred index.

However, that leaves us with a problem about how to deal with unruly cities.

My personal preference would be to boost the value of spies and assassins by giving them a role in quelling unrest and preventing the formation of People Front of Judea style organisations in your city.

Controlled slavery would also be easier of peasant units contained more than the nominal 200 people. One could then load them on ships and sink them in the middle of the Med.

[Een_Gekke_Nederlander]

2 bad you cant eliminat those cilivilatians in combat than rather the computer do it for you

[ah_dut]

Just a question, has anyone intentionally made their own city revolt to exterminate it? I have...had my 3 eygptian cities of Memphis, Thebes and Alexandria with about 45,000 people each, it's too much so I rinsed and repeated...TWICE

[Bob the Insane]

That would be a laugh... If you chose extermination you return to the battle map to face as many peasant units as the settlement can create up to a full stack of 20... Kill them and you have your extermination (this could represent all those strong enough to fight back and give an army of 500 something to think about before trying to exterminate 20,000 people...

[-Abbey.keeper-]

2. Make population affect trade and tax income more. That way, there's more incentive to have higher population and it makes sense, too.

i agree on that point totally.
Rtw simply made huge population a problem to human players rather than making it a boon. extermination is simply necessary if you do not want your newly captured provinces to revolt immediately on the next turn.

Interesting though.. i have never seen my rival's (Brutii and Scipii) captured city revolt, it's not unusual to see 120 Hastas holding down Greeks or cathage cities for more than 20 years. even though their public order hovers at around 60% (i kept an extensive spy network, a habit from Mtw )

i suggest that CA let buildings like sewers and city walls play a bigger role in reducing squalors, in addition to many suggestions made by players. it simply spoils the game, especially during late in the game.

[andrewt]

There's also a paucity of public order buildings compared to MTW. You basically only have religious buildings and another line of buildings. Romans have an additional option of throwing games and races but other factions don't. In MTW, you have religious buildings, town watch, brothel and the towers that all add to public order.

[Thomas Davie]

2. Make population affect trade and tax income more. That way, there's more incentive to have higher population and it makes sense, too.

But the problem with this is that back in Republican Rome 99% of the wealth was held by 1% of the population (a direct quote from Party Politics in the time of Caesar; a book). You simply can not apply the modern notion of income/population based taxation to this game. It is wrong. Period. The book, fyi is by Lily Ross Taylor.

Tom