I could see changing it so that razing a Main Plaza /Admin Center, etc. cost you ~1/2 of the War Score needed to take it. (an razing your own stuff was prohibited, but replaced by a “return to outpost” constructible)

I see that more people are getting annoyed with inability to downgrade city to an outpost. Agree with that.

But if you can downgrade a city then that obviates the need to merge cities. This issue also intersects with the wonkiness created by Settlers - once they're available it's hard to resist a bunch of game-y moves to take advantage of all that free infrastructure. I'd suggest something like the following...

1) Remove the ability to self-ransack. It's unthematic and opens up a ton of problems and exploits. Give cities a "Remove District" option that returns tiles to their original state without applying Ransacked to the city. This would replace Clear Ruins, which doesn't work correctly right now anyway.

2) Make merging cities significantly cheaper than it is now.

3) Add something like a "Modernize" option for existing cities once Settlers are available. I'd like to see this as button on the city screen costing money and influence. It shouldn't be cheap - it's sensible historically that newly built cities have superior infrastructure. But it shouldn't be nuts either.

Merging cities is much cheaper than adding outposts IF the cities have the same infrastructure.  To make merging cities reasonable, they should probably remove the infrastructure cost factor and just have the merged cities infrastructure be lost

I've never been in a situation to directly compare the merging cost with identical infrastructure to outpost assimilation. I think it's fine to pay something for the infrastructure, just not as much as it is now. When a merge costs 30K in the medieval era that's just silly and makes you look for goofy self-razing settler tricks. Again, some kind of "Modernize" option would go a long way towards sensibility.

tppytel wrote:

3) Add something like a "Modernize" option for existing cities once Settlers are available. I'd like to see this as button on the city screen costing money and influence. It shouldn't be cheap - it's sensible historically that newly built cities have superior infrastructure. But it shouldn't be nuts either.

+1

Ransacking your own city just doesn't make any sense.
Merging cities need to be more viable (cheaper) and also a goal somehow.

More ways to raise city cap via research, money or influence should also be possibility.

Most insane city merge cost so far for me over 900k --- well no way.

jtakemann wrote:

tppytel wrote:

3) Add something like a "Modernize" option for existing cities once Settlers are available. I'd like to see this as button on the city screen costing money and influence. It shouldn't be cheap - it's sensible historically that newly built cities have superior infrastructure. But it shouldn't be nuts either.

+1

+1 - this is my biggest gripe. You conquer some 32 population shitter city with no infrastructure and you inherit all the problems. 

Yes, let us downgrade cities to outposts! [Feature request]