Razing Cities: Why would you do it?

[ThatWhichThinks]

Does anyone ever choose to raze cities, other than for role-playing purposes?

It seems like a completely useless option: public order gets tanked, you get no money from capture (which makes no sense to me), all buildings are destroyed, and you keep the settlement. It would make some sense if you destroyed the settlement and didn't take it, or if you got a lot of loot, but there is nothing gained from razing a settlement that you couldn't get from occupying and destroying all buildings manually.

Similarly, sacking seems to be a bit underwhelming. I don't quite understand why looting and occupying yields less gold than sacking. Sacking grants you a little bit of gold and does some minor damage to the settlement buildings, but doesn't seem to help you or harm enemies very much.

It seems to me that sacking and razing should naturally be combined to make one viable option: an action that yields a lot of gold and destroys all buildings in the settlement, leaving a smoking crater for your enemies to spend time and resources rebuilding. It would make the option actually meaningful and give you the ability to slow down enemies as barbarian factions.

I may try and make a submod to do this (if I can figure out how), but I just wanted to see what people thought about the current system.

[FlashHeart07]

Question is if its even possible to remove one of the options? But one could just reduce all the values to 0 and have it do nothing and then use Sacking, rename it and add your new values.
You will find the different values and effects in the campaign_variables

[Fluke]

I can't agree more with this. It has also really bothered me for ages. I hope you do a submod and I hope v1.2 will address this. I would love to play as a barbarian faction that sticks to its own tribal lands but adventures out now and then to vanquish their enemies and destroy their lands. I don't want to have to expand and govern every settlement I conquer. I just want to hurt my enemies hard and then leave.

[FlashHeart07]

You can use this pack to play around with the numbers.
link

[ThatWhichThinks]

Thanks for the pack, FlashHeart! I think I will modify sacking to destroy buildings and maybe give more gold. I'll post to the submods forum when it's tested.

[TFCAliarcy]

Currently I just sack then raze to get some money for constructing buildings of my culture, if they are my culture I just occupy.

[FlashHeart07]

Kewl. If you need any further help dont hesistate to ask Still unsure whether you can remove the current razing option but again. You can always just set the values to 0 and perhaps change the UI to state the the option is currently not in use.
It wouldnt surprise me if these options are un-removeable like the diplomatic options.

[Dresden]

You can set what occupation options each culture gets in the occupation options table. If you add the whole vanilla table, you could remove razing.

[FlashHeart07]

@Dresden , Isnt the campaign variables enough for this? And about removing it. Would that only require the removal of the effects? Wouldnt the button in the campaign UI still exist? Could you by deleting the vfx tables remove it completely?

[Dresden]

If you remove the option in the occupation table - culture_settlement_occupation_options_tables it should remove the option in game. You would have to use the whole vanilla table and then remove those rows that have the raze as an option.

I know some players do use the function for various reasons, so I think leaving it as an option in the main mod makes sense. Also, as you pointed out, you can change some of the effects in the variables table.

[ThatWhichThinks]

I am currently testing a quick submod that should combine the effects of razing and sacking, but I am keeping razing as an option just in case someone wants to destroy all buildings and occupy. I may add some income value to it to make it a more extreme version of looting, though.

[FlashHeart07]

Ah. I see. On a small sidenote. Its amazing how messy the vanilla db files is. Ive seen entries that says Shokunate like they are remnants from Shogun.

[Dresden]

There are remnants even from Empire. References to Americas, to various ship types, etc.

[FlashHeart07]

Oh yeah. Saw them in the Assembly kit.

[KAM 2150]

You don't want to know what you will find in kv_rules then ; P

[chriswhr]

I find razing really useful for me. First of all I use the All Diplomatic options submod so that I can raze with any faction.
Sometimes when I conquer a city and I know that I cant hold it for long I prefer to raze it why?
1) If the AI recaptures the city than they are going to have to spend money to rebuild it.
2) If they dont recapture it than I will let some rebels take it, this way Ive taken away a city from my enemy and I have created a buffer zone.

And if the culture is different from mine and I dont have enough money and time to convert the cities than I can just raze every city and make a "Rebel empire", so in the future the AI will have to fight against the rebels I have created instead of me.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

Doesn't razing give you plus 30 or plus 50 public order in the latest version? Yes it destroys all buildings and kills all captured population, but it can be a good boos to public order when first occupying a region.

I mostly just raze Carthaginian cities as I play Rome, but occasionally someone else s up and irritates me enough into punishing them by razing their cities.

[PietrolEremita]

Interesting. I pretty much raze everything. The PO bonus is a godsend for continued conquest without having to tie down an army to pacify the region, and, given the extremely high conversion costs and times, I don't really feel I am losing much money.

Moreover, past the early game, the AI will have built those cities too much (lev 4 buildings everywhere) and wrong, so razing and rebuilding is actually the optimal strategy

[Frankly]

Yeah I've actually having to choose carefully when expanding as Rome. Razing is really useful just to keep things stable when I'm trying to take the final towns in a province without having to deal with rebellion.

However Looting gives sometimes more than 5k of gold + slaves but ruins public order for a long time and I'll have to rebuild everything from scratch anyway. Occupy seems useful when there's shared buildings between the cultures or the conversion costs are low.

[loony]

City razing is nice.
I usually do the following:
1. sack
2. loot
3. main army goes further to conquer
4. wait until city rebels
5. reinforcing army recaptures and razes.

Then i can use the cash from looting and sacking to rebuild, PO is nice only the happy people left alive, that is