This may take a lot of work (and I'm also sorry posting another thread) but in terms of making the game more realistic, I have an idea. I know this would be bad for the wiki guides but instead of being able to gift a city right away to a spawning civ, which would make it the capital and then destroying the capital and the civ along with it, maybe it would be better to not be able to do that, and have people not be allowed to give cities until a civ has established a capital. This may be annoying, but, well, let's see what you guys think.

Also, when one plays as Spain, a common strategy is to build a chariot or horse archer and then destroy Portugal when they leave the city unguarded. Though i have employed this strategy before, it is a little cheap. Once again, what do you guys think?

I agree, exploits should be removed where possible, like the whipping exploit with rome...

I didn't know this exploit, you were hiding it from me, huh?
If what you are doing is gifting a city while contacting a leader (and not one of the cities that flip), it'll be enough to make the AI refuse any city in the first turns of life

I didn't know this exploit, you were hiding it from me, huh?
If what you are doing is gifting a city while contacting a leader (and not one of the cities that flip), it'll be enough to make the AI refuse any city in the first turns of life

Oh, no! There goes my favorite exploit!

Well, I suppose it couldn't last forever.

I didn't know this exploit, you were hiding it from me, huh?
If what you are doing is gifting a city while contacting a leader (and not one of the cities that flip), it'll be enough to make the AI refuse any city in the first turns of life

I've been using this again and again for dealing with the Portuguese, Americans, Arabians, Turks, and God knows whichever civ that appears later that the one I'm playing. I was even tempted once to do it with Russia as Germany but I couldn't build a horse or chariot fast enough (840 and 860 AD is 1 move). Maybe I'll try it next time by building a city right on the horse as the Vikings. (It's also in 2 or 3 of my strategy write-ups). :)

So, it has been fixed.
Just for curiosity, how long have you all known this trick and been using it? (And I imagine, speaking on this only on PMs to hide it from me :lol: )

So, it has been fixed.
Just for curiosity, how long have you all known this trick and been using it? (And I imagine, speaking on this only on PMs to hide it from me :lol: )

I have been using it ever since I started playing RFC (August 2007), it just seemed so natural to me. :lol: Didn't take me long to publish it in the wiki guides.

Exploit or strategy? Only Rhye knows for sure.

I've been giving cities to a rising civilization before switching to that civ. It definitely makes it faster to build a big empire to start with the resources of two civs.

To make the game really fair, the human player should be required to forget everything he or she knows about human history. Otherwise, you already have an advantage over the AI...

I did the Portugal thing once as Spain but I had to load it back; I can never bring myself to use exploits because then any efforts made afterwards were built on cheating (in my view anyways); I might aswell just go on WB and take all the countries I want if I was going to do that myself.

Didn't take me long to publish it in the wiki guides.

After the next patch you'll have to rewrite those guides :p

I am with aryann here.

OK, so in the future I'm going to stick with squatting, since I will not break any ethical rules there. Land is meant to be grabbed, civs spawning is just a fixed part of the mod. If Scipio didn't beat Hannibal we may very well have never seen the Roman empire, and there would not have been the French, German or Spanish empires.

You guys do realize that several of the UHVs are only achievable in emperor now with gifting cities...:lol: