Trolling other civs by stealing their capitals' names

Ryoga

King
Joined
Oct 12, 2010
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993
I don't know if this is already known by most people, but it is possible to steal the name of the Capital of another Civ, so that they'll be forced to use another name instead.

How?

This is all due to how the routine to select the name of a city when founded works.
It basically follows these steps:

1) Pick the first city name in the city names list of current Civ.
2) Is a city with this name existing anywhere in the map?
3) If no use this name and found the city (routine ends); if yes, pick the next name in the list.
4) Do we actually have another name? if yes go back to point 2 and check this name; if no proceed to point 5
5) Pick a random city name from any city names lists (from civs that are in the game when possible) and check it on point 2.


This is actually how Attila can steal city names from other civs, it's not like he's got a special dedicated program, he simply only has one city name in his city names list.


So now that we know this, supposing we know at least one of the civs we're going to play against in a game that has just started, we can take advantage of the fact that we will be the very fist player to found a city.

So let's say your opponent is Rome? You found your city and as soon as you do that, you rename your city "Rome". Voilà. The very next turn Rome will found "Antium" the second name in their city names list, and that will be the name of their original capital.

But there's more. Suppose that now on turn 2 you revert your capital's name as it was initially or however you desire. If you do so the next city Rome will found will be... "Rome", except it won't be their glorious capital but just a regular city.


Wanna have even more fun? Try to do so against civs that only have one city name in their city names list. Let's try it with Venice.

Rename your capital "Venice" and the very next turn Dandolo will have no choice but to pick a completely random name. Something like "San Sebastian" or "Detroit" or "Llanfairpwllgwyngyll".


You can do this even with City states, it will just be harder because you can't really know in advance which of them will be in the game without cheating. But anyway you can name your capital "Valletta", the city state will be still named "Valletta" because that's its civ name, but the city itself will have a random name.


So now that you know this, have fun spreading chaos in the world!
 
Thank you for this tip. Does it work in multiplayer if I am fast? Say my friend plays Rome and I found my first city before him and rename it to Rome, will he be unable to use that name?
 
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