Cities

[Igor]

Thinking that would be good if rebuilding a city will take some time (1-3 turns, depending on city income), I think about this: Why can units raze cities without any loss of time for that? Probably that's not so easy task to destroy all buildings in a city, then to dig down all it's walls and towers. It should take some time for unit who raze city, he should lose some movement points because of that.

[Chazar]

I really like the idea of losing movement points when razing or rebuilding a city!

However, I see a practical drawback: People would then just move away all units except for one measly 1 turn unit (e.g. Scout, LightInf, Orc, etc.) so it would have almost no effect.

Maybe a solution could be to lower the gold cost of razing a city depending on the stack that does the razing? This would give players an interesting choice to save some gold in exchange for having an army stuck in the ruins of a razed city for one turn?!

One could then increase the cost for razing as well, meaning that a single Scout/Crow has a hard time to raze an owned city, whereas 2-4 Infantry or Orcs units should be able to raze a city at about the current price. (Not sure whether the price should be linked to Strength Score or Pillage Skill Sum.)

[KGB]

However, I see a practical drawback: People would then just move away all units except for one measly 1 turn unit (e.g. Scout, LightInf, Orc, etc.) so it would have almost no effect.

You can easily fix this by giving a discount for each additional unit in the stack when rebuilding. Say something like 5% discount per unit so up to 35% discount (7 other units). Many players would then opt to get the discount at the cost of movement points.

Maybe a solution could be to lower the gold cost of razing a city depending on the stack that does the razing? This would give players an interesting choice to save some gold in exchange for having an army stuck in the ruins of a razed city for one turn?!

One could then increase the cost for razing as well, meaning that a single Scout/Crow has a hard time to raze an owned city, whereas 2-4 Infantry or Orcs units should be able to raze a city at about the current price. (Not sure whether the price should be linked to Strength Score or Pillage Skill Sum.)

The whole idea of it costing money to raze makes no sense. If I capture a city with 1 crow I can immediately raze it for 0 cost. But if I occupy that city then it immediately costs me gold to do what I was able to just do for free. Logically that makes no sense (esp since razing is essentially burning things down which is always going to cost nothing more than lighting a torch). It should always cost gold to raze regardless of when you do it (on capture or self raze) OR it should never cost gold to raze. The current model is stupid.

Now I know *why* it was done. There was a worry that players would pillage and then raze to get gold. That was maybe once a reasonable worry but now that pillage is a skill and most units that do solo raids for razing purposes (crows or sea serpents are the most common) have pillage skills of 5%, even if you do pillage you are getting maybe 10-20 gold from a city.

So its hardly game breaking to allow pillage followed by raze. Especially if razing costs movement points (say half of remaining movement) which will then often prevent the razing stack from escaping which is the most important thing the game can do. If players are still worried about pillage-raze combo then just make raze a skill like pillage and only give the raze skill to certain units (so Crows or Sea Serpents without hands/feet can't raze). So the best they can do is pillage on their solo missions.

KGB

[Igor]

I really like the idea of losing movement points when razing or rebuilding a city!

However, I see a practical drawback: People would then just move away all units except for one measly 1 turn unit (e.g. Scout, LightInf, Orc, etc.) so it would have almost no effect.

Maybe a solution could be to lower the gold cost of razing a city depending on the stack that does the razing? This would give players an interesting choice to save some gold in exchange for having an army stuck in the ruins of a razed city for one turn?!

One could then increase the cost for razing as well, meaning that a single Scout/Crow has a hard time to raze an owned city, whereas 2-4 Infantry or Orcs units should be able to raze a city at about the current price. (Not sure whether the price should be linked to Strength Score or Pillage Skill Sum.)

Players will not move units out if they will have worth not to do this.
I would offer such gradation:
1-turner can raze a city during 3 turns
2-turner can raze a city during 2 turns
3+ -turners and heroes can raze a city during 1 turn.
This is about city with 0 defence. If city have +5 defence, it will take twice more time to raze it, +10 defence will take 3 times more and +15 defence will take 4 times more time to raze the city.
It means that single scout can raze a city with defense +15 during 3x4=12 turns.
This is reason to use more units and more powerful units for razing of cities. And all of them will lose all their movement points.

[KGB]

No one is going to want a multiple turn raze option. Especially one that could take 12 turns (which might take weeks of real time to happen which would mean players would likely forget they even started the process)! Even 3 turns is WAY too long in a game where the the whole complexion of the game can change dramatically in just 1 turn thanks to units that move 20-30 squares.

The easiest solution to too much razing is to make the raze option a skill like rebuilding and only grant it to certain units OR require a stack to have a certain combined strength (say 40+ natural strength - ie no bonus's) in order to raze.

KGB

[Moonknight]

Or just make sure you're defending your cities. Why do we need to add complexity to the game to suit certain gamestyles?

Nothing makes me happier than a crow razing an opponent's city in the early turns

[Igor]

Or just make sure you're defending your cities. Why do we need to add complexity to the game to suit certain gamestyles?

Nothing makes me happier than a crow razing an opponent's city in the early turns

I think it's not good to be happy with the destruction of something.
Hope you have it only in game (unlike how this is in US government's thoughts about other countries).

Crow can't raze a city in 1 turn. To occupy - yes, but not to raze. It's one of impossible things that make the game looking unpleasantly unreal.

But Moonknight, should be you don't understand that this was meant about razing of own cities which were occupied earlier. When a player see that he can't hold a city he should spend time to raze it or leave some armies without movement to raze it in the same turn.

What about razing a city during of occupying it, I agree that idea of counting a summary strength of attacking stack (without bonuses) looks interesting.