this seems to be a cheap way to play, i dont know if it will work because the game isnt out yet, so
1) build up culture
2) capture a city using culture
3) trade the former owner of the city the city back, for money or technology
4) repeat all the steps with the same city

that previous city can then be recaptured (it can be captured easier since it produces less culture for the first owner, so you can use the culture points you already have)

im also pretty sure that if you capture a city using culture the owner loses culture points, giving you a sweeter deal every time you trade it back.

tell me if this wont work

I think that 'Taking' a city with culture will be far more difficult then it sounds, and probably not something you could do over and over again. In theory, it works, but if I was the AI (god forbid :D) I'd just a)go nuts building temples in that city when you gave it back or b)raze it.

yeah, for that type of assimilation to occur, there probably has to exist a substantial gap between the civs.

But it doesn't mean it wouldn't work, because culture takes time to develop - the longer your building stands, the higher the cultural rating. So if an empire is closing in its broader around your insignificant cultureless cities, I doubt time would be on your side to avoid assimilation into the Empire :).

On another thought: this plan, seems to me, a way to bully small newbie civs out of their pocket money. I mean, if you think about it, a rich, technological advanced civ, would undoubtedly have the brains to develop their culture; if they were cleaver enough to obtain the other two.

Expanding through culture will occur only once or so. You won´t be able to keep expanding this way since you do not benefit from the culture allready accumulated by the city you just swallowed.

so you have to start all over accumulating culture in that city, while the next enemy-city will have a much stronger culture by the time you´ll be able to swallow your first one...

it´s a shame, isn´t it...

Cultural expansion...I don't see how it will work except to stop the AI from colonizing that one spot your borders don't cover on your home island. You have to have a border with the other city that would normally overlap a square IIRC; its not like you could just plunk down a city on someone else's continent and expect to start sucking up theirs even if you were 10,000cp ahead of them in the grand scheme of things.

Culture expansion is good for taking outpost cities, expanding your borders, and defending your borders from nosy forward cities.

As a general war strategy it's MUCH more defensive than offensive.

about the whole trading cities back idea, I don't think its a good idea, it can be more beneficial to you to have quite a few cities on the enemies border but one thing I do do is, say your beating up the English pretty badly, and you have taken the majority of their cities but they have a few cities scatered throughout the map when you do a peace deal you demand all the cities they will give you, if you can't get them all beat them up till you can. Once you have them all go to a big Civ and ask what they would give you for that city, if you get like 5 cities out of the peace deal and trade them all in it can be very profitable

I've never been able to get a Civ to give me one single city, never mind several!

I've beaten them capturing city after city but they still refuse to give cities....how do you guys do it?!?!

is there a secret?

Well, well. Aren't we the little Necromancers ?
:skull:

Culture is not a very good way to expand, not only is it historically inacurrate, it is long and cumbersome.

For me culture is only useful when I either have:
-An annoying forward city near my borders
-When I take over a civ and other civs build cities in the gaps between cities.

After v1.21, you cannot trade cities with the AI during peacetime. The only way to trade cities is either: (1) as part of peace negotiations to end a war (not re-negotiating peace), or (2) as a gift to an AI civ (which they do not necessarily appreciate).

Eh,
you guys are continuing a thread from october last year. The game wasn´t even for sale then. We were partially just busy with educated-guessing...