While playing with a friend online, I wondered if I could give him a city I bought with the merchant so that he could buy the tiles I wanted and then give me the city back. It worked, but when I had the city for the 2nd time it was just like a normal annexed/settled city. I could buy tiles, choose production, change the name, manage citizen placement, everything.
It didn't happen with a single city either, I tried it 5 times to make sure it was possible and I wasn't taking advantage of a glitch, and it worked in all of them.
I find it hard to believe that Firaxis couldn't see this happening, but I'm still not sure if it's a glitch, exploit or something deliberate. It makes Venice much stronger when playing with teams, since you can give money to your partner for him to buy a settler, found a city and then give it to you.
The wiki says:
"The Venetians cannot build settlers and are thus unable to found new cities. They cannot annex conquered cities (but they can turn conquered cities into puppets). They may, however, turn city-states into puppets without the need to conquer them militarily."
It says nothing about cities won by trade with other civs.
It didn't happen with a single city either, I tried it 5 times to make sure it was possible and I wasn't taking advantage of a glitch, and it worked in all of them.
I find it hard to believe that Firaxis couldn't see this happening, but I'm still not sure if it's a glitch, exploit or something deliberate. It makes Venice much stronger when playing with teams, since you can give money to your partner for him to buy a settler, found a city and then give it to you.
The wiki says:
"The Venetians cannot build settlers and are thus unable to found new cities. They cannot annex conquered cities (but they can turn conquered cities into puppets). They may, however, turn city-states into puppets without the need to conquer them militarily."
It says nothing about cities won by trade with other civs.
