Giving away cities Tactic

[frankdog]

I used this tactic in my last game and I thought it was useful.

I was dragged into a war by a Mutual Protection Pact. The 3rd place Romans decided to take on the 1st place Greeks. (I was 2nd in the world). Foretunately, the war was not on my continant. Being a good Ally, I loaded up a boat with Tanks, escorted them with a few Battleships, and sailed off to Europe.

I patrolled the coast looking for Greek cities the Romans were attacking. After the Romans softed up the defences, I rolled in my tanks, took the city, loaded the captured slaves (er, workers) into my boat, got all my tanks back in the boats, and gave the city over to my Ally. A cheap source of workers and none of the hassel of trying to govern a far off city.

[lawren8]

I've read that if you give away a cities, the units in the city are
teleported back to your capitol. So, keep one city, load is with razed workers, and give the city to your ally and viola no more micromanaging the movement of your worker slaves back

[Qilue]

You can also plant defensive cities and give them away. In the attached image, Athina was founded by me and imediately given to the Greeks (later captured by the romans).

The position of it means the AI can't put a city on top of Kozume and the three jungle squares in front of the explorer will not be cleared. The reason being, any attacking army will be stopped on the jungle (move cost 3), the artillery in the fort where the samuraii is will then blast them into crap, then my cavalry (in Kozume) will mop up what's left.

[Aeson]

With the patch, the AI will no longer accept cities in trades.

[Qilue]

True, but you can still give them cities as a 'token of goodwill', which is what I did above and do regularly with those cities I don't want, don't need or forgot to raze when capturing.

[DilithiumDad]

I have stumbled on the coty giveaway strategy also. It solves all the problems of managing captured cities. Just be sure to give it to a weak ally, not a bully. Be sure to have a rightof passage with you ally you're giving the city to. The extra bases will increase their income, which means better trade deals for you. So you will get some share of the gold that the city generates even after giving it away. And you don't have invest in rush builds of culture improvements etc.

[Aeson]

True, but you can still give them cities as a 'token of goodwill', which is what I did above and do regularly with those cities I don't want, don't need or forgot to raze when capturing.

I hadn't noticed this, guess the few times I was trying to give away cities for free I had something else in the trade box. Giving away cities, combined with the strategy I outlined in "The Settler/Defender Strategy" would be an extremely effective way of building up an army.

The main idea was to demand all the worthless cities that the AI builds for a renegotiated peace treaty. "Worthless" cities are ones which cannot grow beyond size 2 without a harbor. When the city is turned over by the AI, the best available (depending on resources) defensive unit comes free of charge. By pop rushing a settler at size 2, the city is disbanded, giving a free settler and defensive unit. The AI will rebuild in the same spot, making another city you can do the same thing with later on.

With 16 AI, you can almost renegotiate a treaty every turn, as you have to wait 20 turns between renegotiations. By just giving the city back to the AI instead of disbanding by rushing a settler, you could follow a rotation so that each of these "worthless" cities would produce 16 defensive units every 20 turns! When you gave the city away, the free unit would be teleported to your capitol, meaning it could be used on other continents effectively as well. Of course this doesn't allow for the free settlers, but the production value of the cities would be much higher in this scenario.

This certainly could be considered an exploit, as founding a bunch of cities on barren terrain (ICS style) could quickly turn into a massive outpouring of defensive units. Musketmen would become viable offensive forces with the sheer numbers that they would be available in, not to mention Riflemen and later Infantry.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Qilue
True, but you can still give them cities as a 'token of goodwill', which is what I did above and do regularly with those cities I don't want, don't need or forgot to raze when capturing.

I couldn't do that. I could never give a city away. Most of them get pissed if I do.

[Baz]

Originally posted by DilithiumDad
I have stumbled on the coty giveaway strategy also. It solves all the problems of managing captured cities. Just be sure to give it to a weak ally, not a bully. Be sure to have a rightof passage with you ally you're giving the city to. The extra bases will increase their income, which means better trade deals for you. So you will get some share of the gold that the city generates even after giving it away. And you don't have invest in rush builds of culture improvements etc.

I do this a fair bit too, especially on large maps where conquered distant cities are really rubbish 1 shield, 1 commerce jobs. But you have to be careful, I've done this only to have the city defect from my ally to the origanal civ I nicked it off in a couple of turns. Still, they only got it back in seriously damaged condition.

One niggle I have is that you don't seem to be able to sell of improvements in conquered cities - It's a pain when you have battered a place down to one pop, and have to pay maintainance for it's now seriously redundant hospital when you take it. Also, you don't get culture from surviving improvements, or even from wonders. I have been left with libraries and temples I pay maintainance on that provide no culture and can't be sold so I can build new ones that I will gain culture from, and gone to all the trouble of capturing the Sistine Chapel, only to find it useless.

Almost an invitation to be a swine and raze the lot...

[Augusto I]

I don't think what you're saying normal. I don't remember if I ever tried to sell something in a conquered city, but I'm sure that caputre wonders give you culture. I remember a game where I conquered Thebes and kept it because of a wonder, but a cup of turns it fell because of the cultural influence. The situation repeated about three times until I could get rid of sorrounding cities. The thing is that the Histograph clearly showed the wonder's change of hands.

Another thing: Why were cities banned at negotiations in the expansion? It has let me do some very realistic and usefull deals in my first games (for example, return their cities if they gave me mine back). It must have been some kind of bug letting you get an advantage out of it, but I never noticed it. If you know, please tell me. In some situations it's just ridiculous.

[Aeson]

City trading was taken out because of exploits that it introduced. One was to build several "dummy" cities close together, and position troops near them. Trading the dummy cities for AI cities, and then taking the dummy cities back the same turn. It was possible to do this several times a turn, eventually taking over everything the the AI's capitol (which is now surround by your cities) without a fight.

It could also be used to prevent "flipping" as a given city's population becomes the nationality of the receiver. So taking over an AI city would allow the player to switch that city for one filled with their own citizens. And their troops still would still be positioned to take the AI city again and do the same thing.

[Arathorn]

Captured wonders do not give culture. You can never get culture for a building another civilization has created.

You do, however, get the other benefits of that wonder (granary in every city, extra ship movement, whatever).

I'm not sure if recaptured wonders produce culture for the original civilization any more or not. I've never been in a situation to find out.

Arathorn

[Baz]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Augusto I
I don't think what you're saying normal. I don't remember if I ever tried to sell something in a conquered city, but I'm sure that caputre wonders give you culture. I remember a game where I conquered Thebes and kept it because of a wonder, but a cup of turns it fell because of the cultural influence. The situation repeated about three times until I could get rid of sorrounding cities. The thing is that the Histograph clearly showed the wonder's change of hands.


Nope definitely happens to me, maybe it is a bug. Possibly no culture is gained if the wonder is already obsolete, anyone know any more about this?

[King_Gus_Man]

That sounds like a good idea. ill try it next time i play

[steven8r]

Re: Captured Culture

Doesn't happen. You get no culture points from any captured improvement/wonder. In fact, I've noticed that whenever I capture a city, all of a suden it has no temple/library, etc. All of the 'culture' improvements are gone (except WoW, but they don't give culture). If I want any culture in a captured city, I have to build it.

However, any other improvements in the city, i.e. walls, grainery, barracks, etc. you should be able to sell (perhaps unless the improvement was the result of a WoW--there's a grainery because that civ has/had Pyramids, etc. If this is the case, I don't think you can sell that improvement. At least you can't sell your own barracks after you build Sun Tzu's, etc.).