After taking a town..

[Verranicus]

When you're presented with the three options, what happens to the town if you massacre the people? I've always been scared to do it in fear of making the town useless. >>

[N3rull]

Not useless, but for a certain time it will be far behind your other cities.

Exterminating does this:
- high percentage of population killed (from a quarter to a half, I can't remember)
- high loot, a little higher than when you sack the city.
- high chance of razing buildings - if the city has them. Generally exterminating a city with 8 buildings may effect in 3 buildings damaged and 2 destroyed, more or less.

Exterminating was ok in Rome, where high population equaled insta revolting. Here it reduces your Reputation, increases general's and king's dread and does some other unpleasant things that may as well be made up by my imagination.

[mikeb32123]

Not useless, but for a certain time it will be far behind your other cities.

Exterminating does this:
- high percentage of population killed (from a quarter to a half, I can't remember)
- high loot, a little higher than when you sack the city.
- high chance of razing buildings - if the city has them. Generally exterminating a city with 8 buildings may effect in 3 buildings damaged and 2 destroyed, more or less.

Exterminating was ok in Rome, where high population equaled insta revolting. Here it reduces your Reputation, increases general's and king's dread and does some other unpleasant things that may as well be made up by my imagination.

Pretty good description, only two problems.
1) It kills more than half the peasants, something around 2/3 actually.
2) Loot from sacking is much better than loot from exterminating.

[Mr Harold]

Hello there.

Absolutly right, N3rull

Also ill add that I think when a city is lets say, 100% Islamic, and your faction is Christian, I beleive that by exterminating the population, the city becomes much easier to convert to Christianity. I think thats right anyway

XKillerX

[Callawyn]

The % killed is higher than 50%, generally more like 80% or better. Can see just by comparing the number you are killing to the number remaining. % = #killed / (#killed + #remaining). I've never paid much attention to the number of buildings that disappear with occupy vs sack vs extirminate. Damaged buildings however seem to be only a result of damage you actually do during the siege with your siege/cannons - every building the city possesses will be present on the battle map and are labled if you hover your mouse over them, if you blow them up during the siege, they're damaged after the battle too.

The cash you get for extirminating is not nearly as good as the cash you would get for sacking the city.

There are additional effects: If you extirminate, your general will usually get a +dread trait increase or two. Also, your faction's reputation will take a hit, making it more difficult to make diplo deals with all other factions. Notice that 'Occupy' has the opposite effect, you get +chivalry and +rep. Having high dread on your generals is nice, makes enemy rout sooner, but the reputation hits can be worth avoiding early in the game - at least until you're strong enough that you don't care who is at war with you.

I'm not so sure about the conversion rate, I've never really noticed any correlation between the size of a population and the rate of its conversion. Having high piety priests, or multiple priests, or high level churches however does clearly effect conversion rate.

Here's a tip tho: when you capture a city, and have the panel up offering Occupy/Sack/Exterminate, before you make a choice, scroll the map a bit so you can see the city. If the population on the city icon shows a red face, the city has a high population and you know you have little or no friendly religious% in that city, its often worth sacking or extirminating to prevent the city from revolting within a few turns. The higher the population of the city (can guestimate by number of ppl you'll kill if you accept extirminate option), the more likely you'll need to extirminate rather than sack to get the population under control.

IMO, its really only worthwhile to extirminate when you really need to, when you're taking a high population city (never extirminate a castle) and have not converted any of its population prior to conquest. After all, doing so much damage to its population level will result in that city being rather crappy for quite some time. On the other hand, capturing a city where you have no chance of preventing an early revolt, or can control only if you keep a large army AND a good governor in garrison for some time can be a real nuisance. Once you play around with this a bit, you'll quickly get a handle on when you can occupy or when you need to sack vs extirminate based on the color of the face on the city and the #population you'll kill if you sack/extirminate, and how happy you can make the population after capture, dropping tax rate to low and moving your general out.

On the other hand, sacking is great. It has no effect on chivalry/dread or +/- reputation so you can do it with any general. The cash you get is often substantial and the hit to the conquered population is by no means crippling. I usually choose 'Occupy' only early in the game when taking rebel cities, to get the +chivalry on a few early generals (then park them in castle or guild cities for the +population effect of chivalry). When fighting other factions, I much prefer +dread on my generals, which precludes choosing 'occupy', so these generals usually sack captured cities, occasionally 'extirminating' when I really have to. Once my economy really starts rolling, and I don't care if the whole world is at war with me, I'll extirminate a bit more than I have to (usually in crappy cities that will have pathetic income anyway) just for more +dread on a general.

[N3rull]

The % killed is higher than 50%, generally more like 80% or better.

Shouldn't be more than 50%... I'll check it out one day.

every building the city possesses will be present on the battle map and are labled if you hover your mouse over them,

untrue, not all buildings make it to the battle map if there are too many.

There are additional effects: If you extirminate, your general will usually get a +dread trait increase or two. Also, your faction's reputation will take a hit, making it more difficult to make diplo deals with all other factions. Notice that 'Occupy' has the opposite effect, you get +chivalry and +rep. Having high dread on your generals is nice, makes enemy rout sooner, but the reputation hits can be worth avoiding early in the game - at least until you're strong enough that you don't care who is at war with you.

bull's eye

On the other hand, sacking is great. It has no effect on ... +/- reputation so you can do it with any general.

untrue. Sacking reduces your rep by as much as occupying increases it. It's in descr_faction_standing.txt file.

Good post , +rep .

For my part, I always occupy. Not because I fear punishment for killing things, but because I like to play slowly (right now I have my timescale set to 0.5, which means that I'm in turn 60 and have ~800 turns to come and ~350 till gunpowder - finally my retinue longbowmen shall reign for more than 20 turns). It's more fun for me to make an economically strong country, then field a huge and advanced force and then carefully choose where to field it. Going "ATAKAAA" on everyone isn't nearly as much fun, if I want to play like that I choose Quake3 or America's Army (rambo-style).

[loquar]

I try not to exterminate as the cash is much lower than sacking. Only time I exterminate is if its far from my capital, the religion difference is big and Ive only taken the place with a small army so it would likely riot anyway.

Sacking nets more money initially and you have a higher population left to tax so if I can sack rather than exterminate I do.

Occupying is something I also rarely do, I save that for starts of campaigns when I dont want to upset the world too much and even then only if I dont want the cash

[King_Sulieman_YHWH]

Damaged buildings however seem to be only a result of damage you actually do during the siege with your siege/cannons - every building the city possesses will be present on the battle map and are labled if you hover your mouse over them, if you blow them up during the siege, they're damaged after the battle too.

Ahh .. so if i take a town with wooden walls via ladders instead of a ram, i wont have to repair the wall defense system the following turn, it wont be damaged like it is after taking a town by breaking the door down with a ram?

If so .. my Danish Vikings are going to shun rams .. heh.

[NoQuarter]

I usually just exterminate the populace. No rioting and a nice chunk of $.

[-Traiano-]

if you sack you earn much much more money than extermination!!!

i'm expert of sacking, i choose always to sack a city, onli if the city is particularry rioting so i choose extermination to decrease population and therefore squallor and unrest, in the same time you get the "demographic explosion" bonus the first years after extermination.

Occupation i think it's usefull onli when you get the first castles and you need more population to train units you still haven't in your provinces!

[Bob The Fearless]

Some nice touches here in this thread.

Never even considered extermination to help religon convertion rates or help control more unstable cities.

[masterbaker]

Yeah its useful where your religion is weak, so I use it a lot in Outremer when playing as a catholic faction, so that I can get a couple of levels of churches up.

[King Yngvar]

IMO, its really only worthwhile to extirminate when you really need to, when you're taking a high population city (never extirminate a castle)

Or if you are playing hotseat, going on a crusade against your friend who is playing as a muslim faction. Just to ruin his day

[Callawyn]

Don't discount the +Chivalry you get for Occupy, especially early in the game. For early conquest, use a couple of generals with the best chivalry and have them Occupy whenever they take a rebel province. Then swap them out with other generals and park your high chiv guys in castles for the +pop growth. You get +.5 pop growth per point of chivalry, which in a castle can make a huge difference in the number of turns it takes to get a starting castle to Citadel. If you happen to have a general with a squalor reducing trait, get him the high chivalry for the double effect of +pop for chiv and squalor reduction.

If I've enough generals, I'll do the same for the cities I want my merchant and theologian's guild in also. You can gain +chiv traits for parking a general in a city and keeping its tax rate low (general needs 100% mp's remaining at end of each turn, with increasing thresholds 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 turns for the 5 levels of the trait, with a minimum time in city of 3 turns). Depending on the starting chivalry of your general, this can have a huge effect on the population growth of a city. Take two adjacent towns, one with a general parked inside, other without, and you can make huge city while the other is still in large town.

[N3rull]

Right, I've looked it over and forgot to edit.

[Isotopesam]

For conquering general, wouldn't exterminating the pop be a better option so that it increase his Dread rating?

[N3rull]

If it only increased the Dread att it would be good, but because it has some other 'dreadful' consequences....

[Flogger]

When on Crusade, for example, it is far better to exterminate the cities you conquer - when you want to move your army out the population won't be as likely to revolt. And yes, money gained from sacking is a lot more than that gained from exterminating.

[Callawyn]

The kill % on 'Exterminate' is actually about 75%

Here's a few examples:
Exterminate killed 13340, population remaining 3763
Exterminate killed 4758, pop remaining 1587
Exterminate killed 2155, pop remaining 719

In my experience, a game is usually over before an exterminated city recovers.

[Old Geezer]

If you exterminate a city which is the target of a crusade then I do not think that you will take a diplomatic reputation loss. If you kill the excommunicated faction leader before exterminating or sacking the city then the faction gets reconciled immediately and you will lose rep, unless the faction heir is killed when relieving the siege, in which case you can sack the city apparently (which is what I did last night in an LTC grand campaign). Just check before you do anything rash and reload if there is a drop. If you do the unchivalrous thing your rep will plummet. If you just attack another catholic faction with whom you are not aligned, your rep drops only 1 level apparently. (It is so much easier just to blitz and get to despicable asap.)