So i have a few hostile cities left on my starting continent (industrial era) and was planning on gaining them through war and then absorbing them - since i'm maxed out on max. number cities. Now after a succesful war i realized that the cost was a WHOPPING 80k Influence minimum PER SINGLE CITY... so this is not an option. I have no idea why the cost is so high, givien that i recently aborbed another city on another continent for only 1k. That whole inluence / absorbing thingy seems broken to me. Anyways, my questions:

1)  Why is the cost for absorbing so high? Anything i can do to reduce the cost beforehand by reducing pop, shooting the city to pieces via ranged etc.?

2) Any other way to wipe the cities from the map then nukes (nukes still far away and the pollution from silos would kill me anyways)?

Thx in advance!

Cost appears to depend on 3 things.  1) Differences in infrastructure (cost of any infrastructure that is not in both cities).   2) districts in the city that will get absorbed.   3) territories in the city that is absorbing the other.  If you want an easier way, you can detach all the territories, ransack the main plaza and then plop an outpost there.

Ah nice, so you can ransack your own cities? I wasn't aware of that, thx!

Infrastructure seems by far the biggest chunk of the cost. Making sure you have exactly the same infrastructure in both cities reduces the cost to 7-10k, depending on your districts and attached territories.

Ransacking is a lot quicker, of course. But you'll lose all your pop.

Worked perfectly, i ransacked then found new outposts and attached them for 1/20 the cost i would have add otherwise. Thanks again for your input!

But i have to say, that whole absorbing mechanic needs to be more transparent and needs some real rework... well with what i`ve seen so far they could add that to a long list of things that need to be tuned ^^

I agree it could be a lot better if they eliminated the infrastructure difference part of the cost and had you just lose the infrastructure in the city getting absorbed. (like with the repeatables)

Liebguckerle wrote:

But i have to say, that whole absorbing mechanic needs to be more transparent and needs some real rework... well with what i`ve seen so far they could add that to a long list of things that need to be tuned ^^

Yeah, this game cries "Release date is around the corner, wrap it up and get it out" in a lot of parts.

Luckily they got their prios right, and seem to have delivered something that is still working well enough to be appreciated by the reviewers and sells well overall. Which means we might actually see a lot of improvement. At least that's my hope.