Quote Originally Posted by pat the magnificent
here's the problem with that.

say you destroy a huge cathedral after sacking a city.

do you now have to restart the entire church string of buildings with a small church? It would take way too long to climb back up the building tree. And the cost of the process required to rebuild a city would make sacking actually end up resulting in a net loss of money... which seems entirely back asswards
But shouldnt that be part of the strategy aspect? If you sack a city and destroy a cathedral, and then choose to rebuild the city shoudnt it be expensive?

I do agree with the issue of destroying a cathedral means you have to start at the bottom of the tech tree if you do choose to rebuild. Perhaps you should be knocked down a level or two?

I think the main point is that the AI (currently) cant match a human in the land grab and specialization of cities. At least i am not seeing it, and in my humble view if you sack a city that has a cathedral and destroy it there ought to be some hell to pay from catholic factions, a very unhappy population, and more then likely an excom from the pope, or at a minimum a signifigant drop in papal relations.