There is a bigger penalty to razing , and getting cities is generally good in the worst case you save a settler , most usually you save some time growing and building the city . Small cities don ' t cost you too many amenities , and big cities easily make up for it , so there is no real downside to keeping a city if you can . At the very least you can trade it back to the other civ to get something . If you really don ' t want a city , you probably shouldn ' t capture it in the first place , as all you are getting is a bigger warmonger penalty and using up time and resources to capture it . If you want to cripple the enemy civ just pillage around the city and move on . There are probably very specific cases where you want to raze a city if it is very bad and you would like a city a few squares away , for example . Or if you are going for a religious victory and it is one of the few remaining cities you would have to convert . Or if it would be really hard to defend but you absolutely must take it to prevent an opponent from winning .