Selling workers for Diplomatic Victory

I just finished my 3rd full game winning in 1922 with India on Emperor, it was fairly easy I built up several 20+ pop cities utilizing maritime city state food bonus and focused on getting happiness wonders, forbidden palace. I kept the empire small with 4 cities (5th at the end to grab some oil) Stayed pretty close to the AI on research the whole game using Rationalism for the majority of my policies and Order for the later ones. Near the end used the 2 free tech and great sci to push through to globalization.

Anyways nothing odd up til that point, but as I started the UN in my capital I thought about how I'd afford to buy out the city states, (had about 1200 already) the best thing that came to mind was all my cities could build workers in 1 turn. Sell them off each turn for 20g a pop. 80g per turn.. 100g with the capital after the UN was built. After the 26 or so turns of building and waiting for the vote I sold off the entire rest of the standing army on the last turn before the vote, bought off every city state and won easily.

Feels kinda cheesy, and very likely (hopefully) to get nerfed, but an easy way to win for now heh

Really does put a whole new spin on diplomacy, doesn't it, this vote buying process. I like the city states but I really don't like 'buying' their votes. It really does seem to cheapen the diplomatic aspect (if that) of the game. I wish there was a better way around it!

Diplomatic victory = economic victory.

Gath said:

Diplomatic victory = economic victory.

Click to expand...

Thinking of the diplomacy i am afraid that is true...

Gath said:

Diplomatic victory = economic victory.

Click to expand...

That , or :

Diplomatic victory = military victory + liberation.

So, why do we have a diplomatic victory at all ?

Im turning it off in my next game as it on fun.

I was going for a cultural victory with Siam when I accidentally won a diplomatic value. Finding enough cash to buy off a few city states isnt very difficult.

It just seems like a really cheesy way to build money, the more I think about it the more overpowered it is for many victories. Essentially building coins is basically worthless in the later part of the game, its far far more financially beneficial to just build and sell workers. You can really apply this to any type of victory and run at a deficit as long as you've got a couple cities to spam workers, or do it in 'down time' between wars to build up a massive treasury and just purchase advanced buildings/units in all cities the second they're available. All of a sudden conquering the pyramids seems a lot more appealing, so you could start this process even earlier.

On one hand, its sort of like 'selling skilled labor' which some real countries do. The cheesy part is the money just comes from nowhere. You just disband them and POOF here's 20g. As best I can tell no other source of money in the game is free like that, it all has to come from SOMEWHERE (even if its just moving a unit into a ruin)

That's an exploit, and it should be fixed.

Producing workers then killing them for 20 gold represents 28% convertion of production. Wealth production only provides 10%.

You shouldn't get money for killing your units, that's absurd.

getting diplomatic is really easy if youre relatively large and just build trading posts everywhere. incidentally has anybody tried taking over city states, gifting the city to a rival and then "liberating" it? i have not, but it would be a fairly easy way to win diplo if you lacked the money unless they have made it impossible to gift former CS cities or something...

overall diplo is pretty disappointing

r_rolo1 said:

Diplomatic victory = military victory + liberation.

Click to expand...

I don't really agree, in this victory I never conquered or liberated a single city. I just finished quests for them, like 'Find a new natural wonder' or 'Build me this wonder' (which luckily happened to be one I was planning on) or 'We want a great scientist.' Up until the very end of the game I simply turtled on my island and spent just about as much time face to face with other leaders trading as I did looking at the rather uneventful map of my civ.

Granted, I'm sure its possible to win a diplo victory by liberating and using war spoils to buy votes too. But its not the only way.

CPCMaxwell said:

That's an exploit, and it should be fixed.

Click to expand...

Yeah that's what I'm saying. It cheapens the game and isn't very realistic. I mean it makes sense if you had an equipped and trained group, when they're disbanded there is some value for the equipment and expertise. Just the fact that the gold is coming out of thin air and there's no limit to the amount of units that can be disbanded per turn which is where the fix is needed imo.

selling workers is the only thing that gives a reasonable amount of gold from hammers though. even then it isnt like its all that much. i think i only got 20 gold per worker in my last game? but its hardly an exploit that's still a pittance for the number of hammers you put in. the real problem is that the actual wealth building function gives a stupidly small amount.