Capturing cities is too easy and lacks long term consequences.

Population management

from Elemental Forums

Currently in the game you can capture an enemy city and that's the end of it, captured citizens are now your loyal subjects. I take issue with this and its a fault that occurs in a lot of games, not just this one. Pacifying a populous of a captured city needs more attention. Where are the resistance movements, the hit and run attacks by disgruntled citizens, where are production penalties for integrating two different races? Seriously you cant expect a fallen faction to just suddenly coexist with a kingdom faction, especially after it kills the military in that city off? Also where are the options about how to manage the new captured cities, and policy towards the inhabitants, do you want to treat them decently, enslave them, or simply commit genocide on a massive scale. I feel these should be implemented along the line. What are your thoughts? Here are my ideas.

1. Population management/integration: Newly captured cities cost double resources to maintain for a time as the new population settles in. Shorter if your faction alignment is the same, longer if different. Times are also factored in by your policies towards captured cities. However this is the "good path" and makes capturing and holding future cities easier. More about that later.

2. Cities can possibly revolt back to their previous owner, if they are close to their factions territory, or the number of troops stationed is low. This can also be factored by your military strength compared to the faction that they belonged too. Revolt possibility can also be determined by your treatment towards the people of that faction. More next.

3. "Race relations" Here we get to the good stuff, how to manage the population of the city, each has their pluses and minuses. Slavery, using the population as cheap labor/cannon fodder. This cares a production boost and cost reduction in the city, but carries a possible diplomatic penalty with other factions, and will make revolts more likely. Forced re locations: This is obvious you force out the current residence of the city to make room for your own. This carries a short term production penalty, and possibly penalties with other factions but prevents a city revolt. However it will make holding on to newly captured cities more difficult. (same with slavery) Now you can also treat the captured population decently(Which is what I like to pretend is happening in the current game version) In short this should have short term production and cost penalties as the newly captured populace gets integrated into your kingdom/empire. However in the long term it pays off as other factions see how you deal with civilians, making newly captured cities less likely to revolt.

4. Genocide. Obviously this one is plain and simple, when you conquer a city you kill all inhabitants immediately. While this one maybe satisfying in a certain sense it also carries the most diplomatic penalties and makes capturing new cities harder as the people will fight harder. The trade off is that other factions may be less inclined to fight you as they will be fearful of your wrath.

5. Scorched Earth. plain and simple you destroy the enemy city for a major loot bonus but this carries major diplomatic penalties with the faction you did the city razing too, and may also cause other factions to distrust you.

6. Race relations. There should be a population tally in cities based on what faction's citizens are living in a city. In cities you found obviously your people would be the major inhabitants but in captured cities the opposite is true. This could have economic issues as the new captured citizens get integrated however after X number of turn the new population will settle in and be "loyal subjects" and the penalties will cease.

Also a note on city sizes, obviously if you carry out the actions above on a small level 1 to 3 town the political fallout is less severe but when you use these tactics on a level 4 or 5 city the fallout is major.

Anyways these are my ideas, I am sorry for any spelling error, my spellchecker is not working. Well I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.

elemental
4,201 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

a lot of the problem is in the actual process of capturing: you should not be able to just walk from one city to another (often in one turn if there are roads), defeat the garrison and occupy the place in one turn. of course it doesn't help that a faction with a purported power rating of 300 can't spare more than three guys to deploy as a garrison.

the game should have a siege mechanic like in the total war games, giving the defender time to rally more troops to come to the city's defence. of course, when cities have no walls, this is quite an arbitrary decision, but imho the problem there is that walls are currently far too expensive and too far down the tech tree. why should i have to pay to maintain a wall but not run an iron mine? why do some walls have a building footprint and others don't? walls should be far more prevalent than they are. in fact, if all cities had some walls you could easily justify there always being a siege time. for example, one turn for standard walls, two turns for the first upgraded type and so forth.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

By the way, can you name a single game where citizens have a mind of their own ? Usually it's either "negative relations forever, because your main race is  X" or "unrest gradually decreases with time".

About walls: Heroes of Might and Magic 1,2,3 went so far as to link population increases to walls ! And yet, it made sense. Better walls mean more safety, so more people want to live there. I see two main ways to implement sieges:

Dominions style (higher level of abstraction): there's X turns of delay before or after the main battle until the city is captured.

Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic (lower level of abstraction): attacker can retreat from the battlefield. Sieges are actually series of battles fought turn after turn. If wall bonuses are big enough, the attacker may be too weak to take the city, yet strong enough to keep the defender in. Catapults and other siege engines can have limited number of shots per turn (per battle), and after killing a few units the attacker may want to retreat.

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Good ideas, but this topic has been brought up several times before including the concept of cities taking damage (buildings being damaged or lost after conquest).

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Great ideas sethai.  I like the required siege times and moving the walls closer to the beginning of the tech tree.

Polistes:  I like the possibility of the Sins style allegiance of the city maybe revolting and taking the city back.

with the genocide idea, I think it taking time, like a certain number of population is killed per turn similar to the MOO2 way of dealing with that would work well.

-Matt

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

The Age of Wonders series had a pretty simplified version of this.

If you capture a city who race you (aka the race you started with) don't get along with, they'll be surly.  I forget if it leads to lack of production or the like, but if you leave said town un(der)defended, there's a chance they'll rebel and kick you out :)

In addition you have the option to change it to a friendly race, either your starting one or that of a city you own.  It's based on the distance between the captured city and the closest of the race you've chosen.  They'll immediately rebel as above.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

A ) Defending cities should be given first strike.

B ) It should be much harder for ranged attacks to hit city defending units on walls (unless the trajectory of the attack is from above such as lightning).

C ) Attacking melee units should have to break through a wooden fence at the very least, or a gate. Even if stone walls are there, attacking melee forces can still break through the gate without siege equipment (but siege equipment would make it much easier).

D ) conquered cities should have a short period of disorder (five turns) where buildings/units cannot be build.

E ) conquered cities should have a loyalty period which ends when the city levels up. During the loyalty period, units built in that time have combat penalties because they are not as loyal as normal recruits and the city/units will rebel if not accompanied by normal forces. All penalties on units built under penalty removed as soon as the city levels up.