Reconquered Cities should be freely upgraded to Towns

[shell zinc]

When you conquer another player’s City, that City is converted into a Town. However, if the player reconquers their lost City, it stays a Town, and you must pay to upgrade it to a City.

This means it feels even worse to lose a City than previous entries of the series, where re conquering wouldn’t lose you anything. Making reconquered Cities automatically convert back to cities would fix this kick-em-while-they’re -down effect, and promote players continuing to play on, even in the face of adversity.

I can see some “flavour” appeal in having to re-establish power over the settlement, but I think from a user perspective, it’s not worth that.

[chrome eagle]

This means it feels even worse to lose a City than previous entries of the series

I'm not sure if this is true because in previous entries, buildings and population would be destroyed outright and not return when you re-conquer the city.

However, i do agree that taking back cities should keep them as cities since you already paid the upgrade gold.

[vital aspen]

I think there's a larger issue with not being able to "liberate" a settlement. There should be a time-frame (at least equal to the "unrest" timer) during which taking a settlement from it's conqueror would allow you to *liberate * it : return a former city to it's previous owner (even if not you) as a city and not town, bring back a CS that has been captured into the game ...

Hopefully such refinements will be added when they take time to improve the diplomatic aspect of the game, and possibly create a dedicated Diplomatic legacy path and victory (i can't help but think having diplomacy tied to to the culture legacy path is just a placeholder)