Harun Al-Radhid - Manwhore.

He sold me virtually his entire empire. And I don't mean he traded it off as a result of war... I mean he had eight cities. I bought five. I could buy the last two other than his capital if I wanted...

He's now sitting on 70k..

UPDATE: Alright, I believe I saved a savegame here. You can buy baghdad immediately for 9k and if you play it out you can buy quite a few. By the time I netted a science victory in 2004 I had purchased 2 Korean cities, 1 spanish city, 3 brazilian cities, 2 Arabian cities, and 1 English city. I believe over half the cities on the map were mine and I'd purchased all of them but 3.

You mean he sold them to you while you were at peace? I've never seen this happen... How much did you give him per city? What difficulty and were there any mods enabled? If this is standard behavior (introduced by BNW?), then I'm not sure what Firaxis is smoking... How can this option ever be balanced with the amount of gold you can have in the late game?

Also, best thread title in a long time, made me chuckle.

Woah. I too wonder what situation is required that allows you to BUY an AI's city.
Do you have screenshots?

I'd love to see your save game file.

I assume this has to be a mod at work...I thought the AI was pretty much never programmed to sell any city except maybe the cheapest ones.

I wonder if there is a historical precedent for this (one that didn't include direct military considerations)... Must do wonders for the social cohesion of the nation! ... A free tip for the USA: Just sell Detroit to Haiti or Afghanistan -- all your money problems solved in a flash and the people become instantly happy as the richest citizens of their new homeland!

Greizer85 said:

I wonder if there is a historical precedent for this (one that didn't include direct military considerations)... Must do wonders for the social cohesion of the nation! ... A free tip for the USA: Just sell Detroit to Haiti or Afghanistan -- all your money problems solved in a flash and the people become instantly happy as the richest citizens of their new homeland!

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There are a ton of precedents for this. The most prominent precedents in American history involve the French selling the USA a huge swath of land (including all the settlements/cities already located there -- most of whom weren't under French rule anyways). And the purchase of Manhattan by the Dutch from the Natives Americans in that area (forget what tribe/nation).

NukeAJS said:

There are a ton of precedents for this. The most prominent precedents in American history involve the French selling the USA a huge swath of land (including all the settlements/cities already located there -- most of whom weren't under French rule anyways).

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Didn't Napoleon do that because he couldn't defend those lands though -- as well as to give England a maritime rival somewhere down the line? Both fall under 'direct military considerations'. I'm talking about selling territory purely for monetary reasons, either to stave off bankruptcy or just to get richer. The sale of Alaska to the US is a close case, but again the Russians couldn't defend it adequately.

NukeAJS said:

And the purchase of Manhattan by the Dutch from the Natives Americans in that area (forget what tribe/nation).

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Don't know anything about that, but do you know if there were military reasons for the trade?

Don't think so Greizer. Pretty sure the Dutch just wanted the land to set up a prosperous colony on.
It wasn't the expensive if my memory serves me correctly.

Dislike all day if you want to but by the end of the day, Harun Al-Rashid is the one rolling in bling now xD

I don't think I've ever seen an AI sell anything but crappy snow cities with 1 population. And even then I can't get the AI to give me those cities in peace deals.

I once tried to give Ahmad al-Mansur 40k in gold and 400gpt as well as all my luxuries and strategic resources for a city he conquered from somebody else. He was having none of it.

I only ever managed to buy cities in ItR scenario, crappy ones 3-7 pop and on margins, and even then price was steep 7-11k. Usually not worth it as for that kinda money you can get some bombers and take the cities yourself

It might be a change due to BNW, but I have seen the AI much willing to sell cities (though often for exorbitant amounts of gold).

I've bought many a conquered city that was being razed (AI #1 took the city from AI #2 and started razing it, but I then bought it).

I even bought small cities that were founded by the AI. One time I bought a 2 population city and was pleasantly surprised by the Great Work that was being housed there!

Course in many of these cases, the price of the city is pretty astronomical (for example 50+ GPT) so it's not something you can do unless you're doing pretty well.

Byzantine Bomb said:

Don't think so Greizer. Pretty sure the Dutch just wanted the land to set up a prosperous colony on.
It wasn't the expensive if my memory serves me correctly.

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The story I remember is that the Dutch traded beads for the territory because they were able to convince the natives that they were extremely valuable. Assuming 5th grade history did not lie to me (fun facts: 5th grade history lied to you) I would suspect that the natives got pretty pissed when they learned a little bit more about European culture.

Halcyan2 said:

...
Course in many of these cases, the price of the city is pretty astronomical (for example 50+ GPT) so it's not something you can do unless you're doing pretty well.

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... Buy for gpt/lux and DOW? Not that I would do anything so unsportsmanlike, of course. Ahem, ahem.

Who in their right mind would have 70,000 gold just to use it buying a civ's empire. That's the bigger headroll.

Austria. I didn't save anything before because when I first made the thread while I was playing nobody seemed especially interested. I'll try to duplicate it tonight. I'd managed to buy up all the city states early on and had machu pichu, though Austria was entirely landlocked. It was a small map, prince difficulty, epic time frame.
I ended up buying every city on the map except the capitals. I was playing against england, arabia, spain, korea, and Brazil.
Let me amend that Brazil and Spain did eventually trade in two cities after being nuked and contending with my 30+ stealth bombers. After those initial cities were traded in they became much more amenable to selling their cities.
I was making at one point around 1.5k gold per turn. Most of it from city generation, and about 2/5ths from trade routes between cities.
I also had nukes *way* before anyone else so the opposition spent a lot of their time afraid and shortly after I acquired nukes I made sure no one else could get them, and then rangled all of the uranium on the map... mostly through city acquisition with cash and great generals.
Korea sold me their only source of uranium, for example.
Like I said, I'll try to duplicate it... if you have anymore questions, let me know.
Oh.. and I only built Vienna... no other Austrian cities.
No Ancient Ruins, no barbs, quick movement, quick combat, legendary start.

Greizer85 said:

I wonder if there is a historical precedent for this (one that didn't include direct military considerations)

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Alaska, my friend, Alaska.

Small scale trades of land are very common, but they usually are made in form of barter. In the last decade, Poland and Pepićkova Republićka traded little strips of land several times just for the convenience's sake.

Alright, I have a save game file available where you may purchase bagdhad, a landlocked city primarily on grasslands with 11 pop for 9000 golds. How do I upload it?

To be honest they changed ALOT in BNW. When a civilization surrenders to me they very often offer a city now. Before it was 90% gold and resources and 10% cities now its 50/50