disbanding cities

[Daddy-O]

Is there anyway to disband a city besides starvation?

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"Bonjour, you cheese-eatin' surrender-monkeys."

[Tizzy]

Build lots of settlers.
Each one you build takes away one population point from your city (except your capital, which you can't disband once it's founded, I'm told)
Eg, if you have a size 2 city, build 2 settlers before it grows again, and it will disband.

[Ming]

Keep building settlers... buy them up if you have to.
If the city has some units attached to it that you want to keep, remember to rehome them before the last settler is built.

If you are going to take a city from an AI and you know you are going to disband it, remember to take down the city walls before you attack so you can reduce the population, and make your job easier later

[DaveV]

... and it's a good idea to rehome the settlers to other cities (or use them to build new cities) as you crank them out. Otherwise, one of two bad things will happen:

1) Settlers will be disbanded due to lack of food or shield support while you're shrinking the city.

2) The settlers will survive until the city is disbanded, then vanish.

Other tricks: empty the city, and wait for the barbs or AIs to capture it. Recapture it. Repeat until the city disappears.

Another sly trick if you're taking an AI city is to first use spies to poison it down to size 1. Then you should be able to wipe it off the map when you occupy it.

[Daddy-O]

wow that was quick. Thank you.

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"Bonjour, you cheese-eatin' surrender-monkeys."

[rah]

Tizzy
That trick works for the capital only as long as it's your only city. (if you have more than one city it will disband your capital and you might as well restart) But the real cheat is that it doesn't empty the food bin when you create the settler. So in non- deity games when you get only one settler ICSers will try to build the settler before the city gets to two and it doesn't slow down growth of their capital. (except for the food support after it's built)

RAH
(I did this successfully in one non-deity game I played, but most games are deity)

[Tizzy]

Thanks for clearing that up, rah.
I wasn't sure about that - it was something I'd read here.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

An additional bit of good news: the final settler (the one who disbands the city) becomes a NON.

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Dig trenches, with our men being killed off like flies? There isn't time to dig trenches. We'll have to buy them ready made. Here, run out and get some trenches.
-- Rufus T. Firefly, the original rush-builder

[Albert B]

quote: Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly on 01-25-2001 05:49 AM An additional bit of good news: the final settler (the one who disbands the city) becomes a NON.

I don't think this is always the case. Recently I made my first (very lame) attempt at OCC. I didn't remember to save before going into a hut and of course I received an advanced tribe (not that I would have gotten it if I was looking for one ). Anyway, I decided that I would just rush build a settler and disband the city. I had hoped that it would be a NON unit and was going to use it as a bit of a cheat (because I was losing soundly anyway...) but it popped up with support being paid by my other city, so I disbanded it. My educated guess would be that it is supported by the nearest city much like hut units and is only a NON if the nearest city is foreign.

Albert B

[DaveV]

quote: Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly on 01-25-2001 05:49 AM An additional bit of good news: the final settler (the one who disbands the city) becomes a NON.

Actually, I think he is owned by the nearest city; he's a NONE only if that nearest city is foreign.

Edit: beaten to the punch by Albert B!
[This message has been edited by DaveV (edited January 25, 2001).]

[Sieve Too]

Actually this brings up a sort-of cheat you can pull off. Find an island or isolated part of a contintent that is nearer to an AI city than to you. Cycle through your city supported Engineers one or two at a time. Take them to a Transport or train of Transports to the isolated area. Build city. Start building an Engineer. Wait one turn to get at least one shield in the box. Rush buy the Engineer. Viola! A NON Engineer that is much cheaper than the cost of bribing an AI Engineer. This is especially good to do if you didn't get Leo's Shop but would like to upgrade your Settlers to Engineers without the annoyance of population loss or disturbing your city's production.

[Ken Hinds]

I can see another advantage to doing that. As soon as you built the city you would get the both the shield and food support back in the home city. Depending upon the city and your level of government this could be enough to kick in a We love day or knock several turns off the completion of a key wonder or other essential item.

Ken

[Julius Brenzaida]

quote: Originally posted by Sieve Too on 01-25-2001 08:51 AM Actually this brings up a sort-of cheat you can pull off. Find an island or isolated part of a contintent that is nearer to an AI city than to you. Cycle through your city supported Engineers one or two at a time. Take them to a Transport or train of Transports to the isolated area. Build city. Start building an Engineer. Wait one turn to get at least one shield in the box. Rush buy the Engineer. Viola! A NON Engineer that is much cheaper than the cost of bribing an AI Engineer.

Great idea. But I don't see it as a cheat, just a smart and probably not always easy to carry operation. In the same sort of idea, you can let the Barbarians capture one meaningless city and do your operations near there, without travelling far away. And if you put diplo/spies near the city, you can bribe cheap None units from the Barbarians, too.

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Oh Man, when will you understand that your greatness lies in your failure - Goethe