You start with an organized (whatever) leader, and your partner has a souped up UU for the BC era. Now, what generally stops the bloodshed warmongering in solo games is capturing too many cities early causes just too much maintenance, and hence you have to halt else you lose all your units.

However, in teams, each player has his own independent treasury. So....

After some thinking, what happens when the souped up UU partner, keeps over running city after city, and gifts them to his ally, who does nothing but collect them? Eventually, the ally will go bankrupt, but that's ok. Because the UU master still will have a decent economy and continue steam-rolling about.

What happens when you gift a city to a partner who is making 0 income already? Nothing, it still stays at 0, and this seems to be the big exploit. You can't really have a negative ecconomy.

I have not tried it yet, but I wonder if it's a little over-powerful.

Thoughts?

I've been at 0 and getting -6 gold at 0% research...On one of the easier settings... :P

once u get to 0 and have negative money you start to lose workers/warriors and eventually can't actually do anything :(

If it was your ally in this situation im not sure what would happen

It doesn't matter that he loses units. He WONT lose cities or population. He can still hold on at 0 and just keep collecting more cities/debts. If he is at -200 for 10 turns, when he comes out of debt at the end of it, he does NOT have to pay it back. The plate is wiped clean.

Aye, but with no units in the cities, and being right on the edge of a border these cities could get culture flipped pretty easily if im not mistaken.
Without any units it would be very hard for said ally to keep all cities, his research would be terrible and so would the land he has.

Eventually though if you manage to destroy everyone else this ally would go down very easily.

Even with 0 income there is no penalty on building infrastructure OR researching science (through specialists). Also, his ally of course could park defenders in those cities, so that is not a problem.

They wouldn't be able to improve the new cities. As the capturer, you would need to set up a few cottages so the cities might eventually go to gold green, before gifting them. That way at least your teammate might be able to recover. Put it this way, I don't now anyone who would actually be willing to play that strat, cos the fun is had by only one player.

Partner can't park defenders because they'd just get disbanded at negative income. I'm not sure what would happen if you parked defenders in his cities. It would probably end up with you having massive unit costs and your partner having massive city maintenance costs.

If you did get it to work then it would seem like an exploit.

You could go for the less extreme version and simply gift your partner cities until you and your partner were at +1 gold at 100% wealth.

Sure this is somewhat exploitive, but it might be somewhat hard to pull off given that you can only gift units in the positive economy partners territory... Teams aren't balanced against AI at all though. Doubt you can get infinite cities against humans... They do know how to counter UU's... The positive economy guy need to keep all the troops and the workers, so obviously he'll pay quite some costs anyways too. Also any commerce for the negative civ is wasted, making you rely entierly on specialists, foods and hammers..

It's only mildly stronger than just playing rome by yourself. You do get some extra conquering time, but eventually those bills must be paid. Granted, you can pretty much own an entire continent this way then climb back, but it's not without its setbacks.

You don't have to pay the bills... Whenever a city goes profitable, just gift it to the positive economy guy...

What I meant is that eventually you have to get the cities to that point - but that process isn't instant and with only the conqueror able to have workers, and not many at that, it will take time. It basically allows you to level a continent while sagging in tech badly. IMO that's advantageous of course...just maybe not riggedly so.

How will you not be able to have workers? You can afford a ton of units if all your cities comes fully developed...

obsolete,

The one big flaw in your plan is that a bankrupt empire will be producing zero science. In team games the amount of science each team member produces is not the whole number they see, but in reality a number directly related to the number of team-mates.

This means that someone on a team producing very little is actually a hinderance to their team, rather than a help. In team games I often try to hurt the players one at a time, rather than wiping them out one at a time. I will often leave the enemy computer/players with one city in a poor spot just to hinder their team's scientific advancement.

A team member that isn't producing science is hurting your team, greatly.

You start with an organized (whatever) leader, and your partner has a souped up UU for the BC era. Now, what generally stops the bloodshed warmongering in solo games is capturing too many cities early causes just too much maintenance, and hence you have to halt else you lose all your units.

Like Darius/Augustus: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=283933? The organized partner has a strong economy and can easily absorb extra cities and get courthouses up quickly in them, while the warmonger partner keeps an offensive front alive and rolls over city after city.

I know, not the theoretical exploit you're talking about, Obsolete. But team games with frequent city transfers seem borderline exploit as-is, without the possibility of milking the "no negative treasury" effect. Here's a question about what would be a (broken) variation on your exploit: the organized partner controls all production cities, and the warmonger partner the finance cities. The organized partner is horribly in the red, but produces units only to gift them upon production to the warmonger partner (who is fiscally solvent, and thus can afford more units). Does this work? Or do the units go on strike before being gift-able?

EDIT: Actually this variation works better the other way around -- the fiscally solvent one should be organized, and actually doing the fighting. The aggressive partner produces and instantly-gifts units, and controls a production empire with no permanent units and minimal commerce.

I dont think thats an exploit, just good teaming. Each civ has its strenghts, good teams complement each other's strenghts.

Well, after experimenting in World Builder (vanilla), another variant of this bizarre sort of team exploit seems do-able: you can run specialists while striking, so one team member could build infrastructure and run scientists, as well as building units to insta-gift (units are only disbanded when you begin a turn with units, and you are on strike) while the other finances the units for warmongering. When a city has built enough infrastructure and grown large enough to be a positive financial contribution to the solvent partner, it gets transferred over.

The one big flaw in your plan is that a bankrupt empire will be producing zero science.

That is only for cottage-newbs. Anyone who's been playing their game for a while would be running specialists.

Interesting idea. Yes, it woud work. Yes, it's a flaw in the game mechanics. But I agree with TMIT and - more important - it woud mean exploiting a small part of the game and completely wasting many others (like your seconds partner free units, unit maintenance in foreign teritorry, etc.).

Also, the ORG teammate will have no units, and that's going to be a problem when you have another 2 HI team in the game.

well i may be wrong but I thought it was impossible to give cities to a teammate (I mean when you are in permanent alliance or when you specified the same team in the game settings).

well i may be wrong but I thought it was impossible to give cities to a teammate (I mean when you are in permanent alliance or when you specified the same team in the game settings).

You are wrong...

Also this strate certanly don't require an org leader...

Sounds good... make the non-bankrupt partner a roman leader, pangaea map, and nothing will stop you from world conquering.
You can even exploit it further by letting the bankrupt leader produce swormen (or a cheap jaguar) and then gift them to the romans ( I assume that a striking unit still survives for 1 turn).

That is only for cottage-newbs. Anyone who's been playing their game for a while would be running specialists.

Eventually, the ally will go bankrupt, but that's ok.

obsolete,

If I understand my civ mechanics properly (and maybe I don't) if you go bankrupt and on strike your cities will stop producing everything for that turn. Meaning no science. However, to be honest, I'm not too familiar with a striking empire and I could be wrong.

If I understand my civ mechanics properly (and maybe I don't) if you go bankrupt and on strike your cities will stop producing everything for that turn.

Nope. Your cities still can build units and buildings, run specialists of your choice, and work tiles of your choice. The slider is forced to 0% science, and if you have any units at the end of your turn, they will be disbanded.

I think this strategy could work well for a team empire that conquers a whole continent early, and then finds itself struggling to pay the bills.

Is the slider also forced to 0% culture? otherwise it would seem rather exploitive...

I think the slider is forced to 100% gold