Do you raid, burn & pillage?

[Conqueror]

After my conquest of Cicily & southern Italy, the red Romans have been a constant thorn in my side, blocking my ports and harassing my naval transports and sending waves of legionaries and doggies at me. And those Senate bastards totally surprised me by bribing Capua off me (never seen the SPQR expand before) which made me lose an experienced elite stack Of corse, I could not allow such insolent actions go unpunished, so I took the city back by force and exterminated the people just to set example of what happens to those who betray my empire. That gave me the idea to neutralize the red Romans without the pain of taking their lands (I'm having trouble enough keeping peace in Cicily and just want to have a moment of peace to develope my cities. I'm holding off attacking Rome itself untill I'm ready to finish the game)

I sent two armies to roam around northern Italy, with the objective to liberate the country of valuables, destroy infrastructure and spill much roman blood. In game terms: assault a city, exterminate the people, smash all the buildings and hop on to the next city, without even trying to maintain control of the province. After just four turns (and much fighting), Julii's Italian cities are now smoking ruins full of peasants (who decided to "revolt" after my forces had left) and it will take a long time before they can be used to launch attacks into my territory. My stacks are now on their way to west across the alps. I will not stop untill I've sacked & burned every Julii city on the mediterranian, thus eliminating their harbours. Their navy should then begin to crumble as they can't replace the ships I sink.

Do you ever go about rading cities just to weaken a foe? Or do you always try to keep every province you capture?

[pezhetairoi]

I...don't always do it. I value the population highly, and the buildings in it. I use them as advance bases for my troops, because you never know when you're gonna need it. But occasionally, when a city puts up too much resistance and costs me too much of my army, I exterminate it. Not burn the buildings, though.

[bubbanator]

His goal isn't to capture italy. Merely eliminate the Julii navies by taking their cities, leveling them, leaving, and letting them rebel.

I like the idea. I haven't done this really (except when I was taking Carthage as the Scipii). I think I will do this on my current spanish campaign. Kill all of the Roman cities, level them, and leave them with only one city each. See if they can come back.

Another thing I like to do is population control. I will give a problem settlement to a faction I am at war with, take it back, and exterminate. Gets you loads of money and makes them more loyal. This could be altered to fit your idea. Capture a settlement of theirs, offer it to them as a gift, walk you army back in, exterminate again, repeat. You could basicly kill all but a few hundred citizens in each city you just pillaged. And get TONS of mony from it too

[Somebody Else]

I do send armies out to randomly pillage, however, in my current Samatian game (playing RTR) I've found that I can keep hold of half of Italy just as easily...

[PseRamesses]

Do you ever go about rading cities just to weaken a foe? Or do you always try to keep every province you capture?

Yes/ No.
I basically play this game, as all TW´s, by the history books. The only faction that I would ever think of conquering 50 provs with are the Romans. The others I play according to history when it comes to expansion. To reach the aquired 50 province limit I simply turn the other factions into protectorates and then sack Rome to finnish the game.
If an ally betrays me I´ll go on a punative campaign pretty much as you described. If a neutral attacks I take and hold all conquered provinces intact until they begs to become my protectorate and then they can have their lands back. Usually I raise their temples and build my own so that they can become followers of the true faith, he he!

[RabidGibbon]

The first time I tried it was as the britons, I sacked a Gallic city that was being held by the romans, trashed the place and bugged out.

It didn't quite have the desired effect of weakening the romans however as the city rebelled back to the romans with a full stack army of 3 gold chevron peasents, who latter on kicked my blue painted ass off the continent

[Siris]

To me its always fun to watch the city buuuurrrrn horribly while my troops storm the city streets, why not? Just repair them, & have some fun!

[The Stranger]

i once sacked rome, and my onagers lit up the entire city. phah rome the eternal city ahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahaahhaahahhah

[Mikeus Caesar]

Rome the eternal fire perhaps? anyways, i don't always pillage, but i don't always leave stuff untouched. If you had included a sometimes option, or a GAH! option, i would have voted.

[Oaty]

Spain had the ships and I had the army. The bastards would'nt sign a ceasefire and kept spaming ships. So I trapped a family member on the field so the faction could'nt die. I then sacked every single Iberian city.

And quite often I'll do 50 years of raiding and pillaging on Egypt and they still do'nt sign a ceasefire. And boy is that lovely allying with the Selucids and giving Egyptian land to them.

I only massacre ship spammers and fools who wo'nt take ceasefires even when the terms are in thier favour.