Using +2 naval movement on pangaea. yuris125 of England

[yuris125]

It's T72, and Fire&Ice's city is still alive for now. He scrambled some untis, so this turn I attacked units rather than the city



Fire&Ice moved the Archer out of the city, and I moved in to kill him. The 4hp Sword in the south is irrelevant, in a battle of a 4hp Sword against a 5hp Longbow in forest Longbow should win, and I wil have insta-heal up next turn

Now I wonder if there is a logical explanation why the northern Longbow could hit the Archer this turn, and the other Longbow couldn't shoot at the city 2 turns ago. I don't see any

Later in the turn, I moved the Sword onto the hill next to the city. Now that I have a Great General around, I want to have all available units in range and ready to attack

I made a mistake by the way. I had just 2 xp left to get a GG, and there's my Trireme at the island in NW, attacking barbs. If I attacked with the Trireme first, I would've had the GG in position before the northern Longbow could shoot. As you can see from the attack forecast, he was expected to deal 10 damage with a GG around, and if this happened, the other Longbow would've been able to shoot at the Sword, just for a little extra insurance. Too bad I didn't realise it until too late

[Rowain]

Now I wonder if there is a logical explanation why the northern Longbow could hit the Archer this turn, and the other Longbow couldn't shoot at the city 2 turns ago. I don't see any

Neither do I. If anything it should be reversed (if you use CoSim-rules for LOS).

[yuris125]

T73

OK, I officially give up on trying to understand the line of sight thing



Why the game thinks the city tile is out of range is a complete mystery

Anyway, as you can see my southern Longbow is still alive. Fire&Ice did attack with the Sword; the Sword died, the Longbow survived with 1hp, and I used an insta-heal on him this turn - exactly the result I expected (although I didn't expect him to attack). Then I moved him E and shot at the city. The northern Longbow moved SW and also was able to shoot. Then the Sword took the city easily

I decided to keep the city. It doesn't have much production, so the fact that puppets don't produce units won't hurt me, and with so many river tiles it can be a decent gold-producing city. And it has 2 horse resources, which definitely are worth keeping

Interestingly, Fire&Ice finished Hanging Gardens this turn. Hmmm, doesn't he need more units? Anyway, all the more reasons for me to try to capture his capital, and finish him if possible

[Rowain]

The tile with the sword on should be hittable too. So yeah its strange. But this seems to be a problem with LB's alone. Never had it with Arti.

Did you try to hit it nevertheless in the hope that it is just a graphic glitch with the line?

EDIT: grats to your conquest.

[yuris125]

Thanks I believe Artillery has an Indirect Fire promotion, which removes the line of sight requirement. It only needs visibility on the target tile. Longbows can get this promotion at the 4th level (100 xp), so probably won't happen before they become obsolete

[yuris125]

I didn't post anything on game mechanics for a while, I think it's appropriate to talk about how city capturing works in Civ5

When you capture a city, you can
* Keep it as a puppet
* Annex it
* Raze it

Puppet
This is what the AI always does. When you go for this option, you get beakers, gold and culture from the city, but don't control its builds and can't micro citizens, it's done by the city governor. The city gives the normal amount of unhappiness, and you have to pay maintenance on whatever the governor builds. It never builds units or wonders, only buildings

An important thing to note is that new cities increase the cost of social policies and national wonders, but puppet cities do not. So if you don't need full control over a city, keeping it as a puppet is often better than razing and refounding

The main problem here is that you can't control city growth by citizen micro, and if it grows without control, it can cause too much unhappiness problems. The solution is to build trading posts around the city. The AI governor usually sets focus of the puppets to gold, which means it will pick tiles with higher gold yield over high food tiles. By building the right amount of trading posts, you can force it to work as many low food tiles as you need to keep its populations where you want it to be

The secondary problem is that the city can produce too many useless buildings you have to pay maintenance for, but if the city has enough production to do it, you usually want it annexed anyway, so it's rarely a real problem

A puppeted city can be annexed later

Annexation
When you annex a captured city, its status becomes "occupied". You have full control over the city, but it gives extra unhappiness (5 unhappy instead of 3 for a city, 1.34 unhappy instead of 1 for every citizen in occupied cities). To clear this status, you need to build a Courthouse, a building which costs 4gpt of upkeep. Once it's built, the city becomes exactly the same as any other city in your empire. So annexing a city is worthwhile if you need its production, can handle the temporary happiness hit, and can afford 4gpt of maintenance after the Courthouse is built

Razing
Any non-capital city can be razed. It's not necessary to raze a city right after you capture it; if you're not the original owner, you can raze it whenever you want

Razing is not an instant process in Civ5; when a city is being razed, its size decreases by 1 every turn, and it's razed when its size becomes 0. A city needs to be annexed to be razed, so you take a happiness hit while razing is in progress

You can stop razing a city if you change your mind before it's completely destroyed. If you start razing a puppet, and then decide to stop, it becomes an annexed city, because you change its status when you start razing, and you can't change an annexed city to a puppet

[NobleHelium]

The hill between the city and the longbow was blocking the shot. I guess the tile behind it was sufficiently far away that the arrows could arch over the hill and land behind.

[yuris125]

How is the hill between the forest tile and the city (T73 screenshot)??

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Yuri had the south-western Longbow selected.

[NobleHelium]

Oh. Whoops. No idea then.