Buy city/ declare war

[GimliLegolas]

Apologies if this has come up before. A strategy I have used a lot recently is to trade luxuries/strategic resources and gold for AI cities and then almost immediately declare war. It is important in the later part of the game as a way of looting works of art/music etc and it really messes up the opposition.
Prerequisites are that you have a strong economy with a good number of luxuries and gold per turn. I make sure also that I have a good cushion of happiness and that there are no trade routes to the Victim. I start by picking on the next to weakest Civ. I try to trade for either their third city or any number of their smaller cities. Once a deal is reached I declare war, strip out any great works, raze the city, sell the most expensive building and then - unless the city has a wonder or access to a resource I need I sell/give the city to the weakest Civ (who might raze it or give it back to the owner) so to not have too much unhappiness. After several turns the victim will sue for peace and might give another city. You will have to accept diplomatic penalties eventually.

 

[vadalaz]

Interesting. I've tried to do this before but never managed to make an offer the AI would accept... I just opened one of my old saves in IGE and gave myself 50k gold to check the city prices. William asked for a lump sum of 25000 gold and 235 gpt for a 6-pop Utrecht.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

That is a fantastic idea, how did I not come up with this myself? This can easily help save 10+ turns for a CV. It helps with theming, it helps with culture, it even gives you additional gold.

 

[Sclb]

This is not viable on any high difficulty when AI will ask insane price for even the worst of their cities. You will actually have to cripple their army by invasion and might as well ask for everything in their peacedeal anyway. Also AI is smart enough to keep their great works in their massive cities, so you aren't going to get great works this way.

 

[poxpower]

I've never ever seen the AI accept any deal for a city on Deity.

I thought it was just off the table in the coding.
Seems like vadalaz figured out how to do it though lol. So if you ever have 100k gold and 400gpt, maybe you can steal a city that has a museum in it! Who knows.

 

[consentient]

Cromagnus has spoken of having such high military dominance that civs will give in to demands including for their cities. He says that really early CVs are possible this way. If he's still lurking, perhaps he can explain exactly how it's done.

 

[GimliLegolas]

Not tried it on deity but it works on Emperor.