The City sell tactic

[DaDrunkenFish]

Anyone else use this? heres how

very very very useful late game but can yeild big rewards if done right early, its risky early though
1.Build a city
2. make sure it is in a suitably useless position, desert helps, however, ifyou can, include an outdated strategic resource(horses, iron) now connect the resource with a road to the city
3. build settlers, or gather up useless slaves, and set them to join city, doesnt matter if there gonna starve, if you can get more than six do so
4. find a rich civ put it on the table, ask what they want for it(remember, its a starving, useless city, in a desert, on the outskirts of your borders, its only plus point if you could get it is outdated resources, this only makes the ai bid more)
5. you cannot change what they bid(unless this has been changed in patch)
6. reap the rewards, my record is 3 techs, oil and rubber, for 400 gpt(bloody rich greeks) it was after all, a size 18 metropolis.

Checked it later, had only three cits left thanks to starvation.


other tactic(ten times more risky)

same as before, except put it in the middle of your high culture cities, make sure your culture dwarfs the other civs, repeat as above, you will get even more for this city, however, it should flip, but it might not, but it shpould if its surrounded by high culture cities. You will have to attack otherwise.

Once the city is in your possesion again, simply make all the workers and disband it.(or press disband, worker way is more useful though.)

comments?

[WildFire]

How can you sell a city? They never ever offer anything to me for my second best cities when i see. I thought the selling the city option was taken out for the very reason you started this thread!! It is too easy to get lots of money from the AI by selling a city. The AI is stupid that way (and many other ways too)

[DaDrunkenFish]

no, you cant put down want then offer a city! you put it down and then ask "care to exchange..."
You cant choose want you want, only what they offer

[WLTKD]

Uh... that doesn't work either. What patch are you on?

[DaDrunkenFish]

uh, unpatched, thought I think I got 1.07

[WLTKD]

I think that is why. I have the 1.29 patch for Civ3. You can't do that extortion in the newer patches.

[Yzman]

You have to patch your game otherwise your tactics really aren't up to date.

[satchel]

Drunken, you may want to search the fora for discussions of the city sell exploit. It was taken out of the game in one of the earlier patches precisely because the AI did not know how to use it properly, and tactics like yours were unbalancing.

I'm not saying you are morally wrong to use the tactic, or anything; I'm merely saying that it's been discussed here at length and ultimately eliminated from the version of the game that most CFC forum readers are playing.

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

DaDrunkenFish: you must be the only player stil using that old heap of ungulate manure

city selling was removed ritght at the start - to big an exploit 8as you nicely point out).

[DaDrunkenFish]

uhh...well...sorry

[Migraith]

well, can't agree or disagree so far since I only started playing after the 1.29 was out - due to heavy workload the package "rusted" on my shelf for a few weeks *sigh*.

nevertheless - I often tried to buy cities, but this didn't seem to work. neither with friendly majopr civs that have 20+ cities nor with allied mini-civs just a few turns before cultural assimilation.

anyone any ideas/suggestions?

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

it's OK, we all sometimes screw up but i really am sutrprised you haven't noticed the HUGE amount of BIG changes between your game and other people's games.....

[DaDrunkenFish]

Killer M.

City sell has been the first real incident of note,

[Zcylen]

when my game wasnt patched, I used that technic very often, I always got lots of money.
the only problem is that (sometimes) when you finally decide to keep that city and make it grow for you it has my nationality (greek) but also has russian citizen as well as chinese
they're unhappy very often

[sabo]

Yeah it seems like whenever anyone has a great idea someone else already came up with it

[PersianImmortal]

i've played most of my game on unpatched 1.07f .. recently got the 1.29f and I think I now get what others are talking about.. previously corruption was so rampant even in democracy that most of my outer cities were 1 shield hell holes.and I was always envioius os people talking about 10,000 gpt etc .... now the courthouse actually improves and WLTKD help and I'm not cash starved anymore.

DaDrunkenFish, take it from someone who's recently played both versions.. u owe it to yourself to upgrade.. I've moved up to Regent just cuz of it!!

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by PersianImmortal

I've moved up to Regent just cuz of it!!