I've never used this tactic personally, but I have heard of success stories from it. It is basically build a city very close to the capital that will probably only utilize one tile and not have any improvements. We then use the "slave" city to trade to the AI for tech. Then a few turns later it flips back to us because of the overwhelming culture of our capital. So, tech gained, no city lost, win win for everyone :). I know it sounds a bit unethical, but just a suggestion.

Can you sell cities to the AI? Not sure you can except as part of a peace deal. You can give them away though. So you can give away the Great library to a weak civ before Education and capture it back when you need the tech progression. Or you can give half a dozen cities to a democratic civ the turn befor you declare war on them, declare war, capture them back and put the democratic civ into anarchy almost immediately. You can give a city to a civ so that you can take all their cities apart from that one - which is presumably an arctic hell hole just to keep someone alive for milking to a histographic win.

Not sure that you can sell a city though, but I could be wrong. :)

As an experiment, I just now tried to sell a city in my Deity game. None of the AI civs were interested in buying it.

They took out city selling in an early version of vanilla just for that reason, blackheart.

They took out city selling in an early version of vanilla just for that reason, blackheart.

Oh, as I said, didn't use this so I didn't know.

Absolutely Not!

As the leaders of this great nation, we would be doing a grave disservice to our citizens by selling them to foreign masters. Shame on anyone who thinks of selling Fannaticans as a viable tactic.

Selling cities was taken out WAY back in vanilla Civ3. ;) You can't sell a city for a tech, resource, or what-not. Probably because of just this exploit (and a few other reasons).

Nice idea, but impossible. No AI wil give gold, techs luxes or whatever as soon as a city is included in the deal.

Except for in peace treaties.

Lousy idea if we are role-playing as a nation that cares about its people. Good thing this tactic will not work.

Gamey proposal that seeks to abuse a game exploit. Very poor proposal for game entertaiment purposes

Gamey proposal that seeks to abuse a game exploit. Very poor proposal for game entertaiment purposes

I like to keep an open mind. Conquering (worker) slaves fits into this kind of deal doesn't it?

Given that it is an impossibility except for peace negotiations, I suggest closing this down and focusing on things we actually can do.