demanding cities

[Mountain Sage]

Well,

Keep those cities, rush a temple (and a harbor) and hope for a PP game.
Maybe in a distant future there will be some resources under them...

[DrSpike]

Yeah, no point throwing them away. 1 grassland square yields a worker every 10 turns even for the most corrupt city. And more cities usually reduces the support costs. As a last resort if you have too many cities you can give it away.

[Bonaparte]

The AI has never given me a city even when I was kicking the snot out of them, but if they did I would keep the cities...eventually (as is usually the case) I'll end up with a good income and I'll just start buying improvements for any distant cities and in time they become half decent. Also, keeping distant cities is good in times of war (especially if they have airports) as they serve as good jump points to launch invasions on otherwise distant civs. I could never have enough cities and as for the corruption, well, I'm used to it although it is, at times, annoying.

[vmxa1]

Bonaparte there have been many changes to the demand cities. So it depends on the version and patch level if it can be done with much sucess or not.

[Theseus]

* I believe that one can still gauge the value of AI cities (i.e., whether they have resources) by selectively checking which cities can be extorted.

* Another faaaavorite trick of mine: Take whatever nearby cr*p cities you can, gift them to far-off AI civs, and then smack the hell out of them by capturing those cities. Rinse and repeat.

[vmxa1]

Hum do I smell exploit here? Very mean.

[DrSpike]

I shamefacedly admit to doing this before also. It was a great way to proceed in older versions where on Deity you could be so many techs behind when you crippled the AI that whatever you got in the peace deal was peanuts. You couldn't get enough from them straight away, so a second Civ to kick was nice.

[East Street Trader]

Typically the cities which the AI will part with are small and remote ones with little development and no resource (current or future - they are precient on this) within the city radius.

They come empty of any unit (although I rather think the citizens also convert to your civ so you don't get a culture flip).

It is true that you get a tiny bit of production out of such a city but what nearly always happens with me is that if I just let the city stagnate along, building what little it can but not bothering to spend time and effort in sending it defenders and not spending cash on rushing, then at some point an enemy turns up on the doorstep (the AI is also precient about undefended - or lightly defended - cities).

Now I suppose I could then just abandon it or gift it away with nothing lost (but precious little gained either). But meanwhile what actually happens is that I come under a temptation to do something with the city. And I tend to succumb. So I do rush a building or two or I do mount a small expedition to take the city some defenders.

And once I make any sort of investment it becomes psychologically difficult subsequently to write that investment off by abandoning the city or giving it away.

So I relieve myself of the temptation. When, as is common, the only thing the AI can give for a peace is a city or two I take them and immediately disband them. That denies them to the AI plus it makes it easier to destroy that civ when the time comes to do so. But I don't suffer the distraction of what are, in my hands, highly dubious assets.

[DrSpike]

I think a free worker every 10 turns for as long as you want them is a far from dubious asset.

[Arrian]

15 workers every 10 turns aint bad. Or you could turn a citizen in each city into a scientist... 15 * 3 = 45 beakers/turn. That's nothing to sneeze at either. In that case, I'd order the cities to build catapults (once I had at least 1 defender in them - probably a partially rushed spearman).

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Oh, and are you saying having those cities is making your corruption in your core cities worse? Is that really how the corruption system works? I didn't think that was the case. I thought the OCN just meant that cities ranked over the OCN would have maximum (95%) corruption.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

Soon to be maxed at 90%.

[Arrian]

Yeah, I saw that.

Did you see Alexman's immediate test of the FP's affect on OCN, though? Oops.

-Arrian

[East Street Trader]

The value of a worker depends on where the worker is.

If he or she is on a remote island they are worth not much at all. And even if they are on the same landmass, but a looong way off, the chance of them safely trecking all the way to where they can be made use of is low.

Science does not require transporting to be useful. But your post illustrates my point, Arrian. For the (strictly limited) benefit of the science you will get drawn into providing the city with defence. And it is my experience that this is a losing game. Each bit of outlay draws you inextricably on into the next. And it is always disproportionate to that bit of science.

[Arrian]

Yeah, but the expense of defending those cities (token defense - 1 unit, just because the AI is awfully tempted by open cities) is justified in my mind by a combination of the following:

1) whatever benifit I would reap (workers, science)
2) whatever benifit I am denying the AI.

Cities that are clearly totally undefendable and/or a major flip risk I would probably give away to weak and/or overseas civs. The rest I'd keep.

-Arrian