Can I get some cheese with that...

I misunderstood what the suggestion was. You'll need to be more clear with the "suggestion". If it is as Norfleet says, then I have no real thought about it. I'd have to test it to see if it was enough of a stalling force. Not that I feel it would be, since Burning Things down happens before movement phase of the next turn (I believe) so they would still burn it, just with a scout every time they did it effectively increasing the Miromanagement.

Unless the turn sequence was changed to have things that are "Burned Down" affect after movement, then I could see a potential use.

Also there would be the element of having it retain ownership (if you want to have it pumping the owners dominion) and if that even happens. If they simply do not produce anything then it would turn into a factor of raid it, make it produce nothing then don't worry about it, since in order to reactivate it they would have to burn it down and rebuild it. Unless you also wanted to code in a 'reactivate Temple' command.

All in all, I still go back to the original, even if it was a good idea (undecided). Why do you need to change it to this? Is it Castling and it's unproven 'abuse' that causes this to change? Or is it 'lessen the effect of raiding'?