Rhino - Peaceful Domination

[dr_s]

Sometimes you need to flip a city so that you can settle another city to apply more cultural pressure at your borders.

FAL, have you read the section on city revolts in the culture mechanics article in the War Academy? There are some non-obvious factors in flipping cities (like religion) that are very important. They can easily make the difference between a 5% chance per turn and a 0% chance per turn. Also, the number of units is not the critical factor; different units have different effects, and the era that you are in also matters.

 

[Celebithil]

I got the greeks down to one city-square and they still have 10 units somehow on a size 1 city.

Just revolt the city (using spies) continuously. They won't get any income and still have to pay maintenance for the units, so when the money runs out, they'll get into strike and the units will disband. (It helps to first demand/beg the gold they own of of them as much as possible.)

Note that in a capital you are guaranteed 9 commerce, which pays for a lot of troop-maintenance.

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

Just revolt the city (using spies) continuously. They won't get any income and still have to pay maintenance for the units, so when the money runs out, they'll get into strike and the units will disband. (It helps to first demand/beg the gold they own of of them as much as possible.)

Note that in a capital you are guaranteed 9 commerce, which pays for a lot of troop-maintenance.

This seems rather impractical in terms of your own commerce cost for the revolt missions. Here's what I'd recommend:

1. Close borders with them. If your culture surrounds the city, that kills their trade routes.
2. Run a gold stealing mission, so they don't have anything left in the bank. (It sounds like this is that AI's last city from the initial question).
3. Use civic swap missions to keep them out of Caste and Mercantilism, since you don't want them running merchants.

 

[CreeDakota]

I thought stealing gold missions ironically dont lower the enemies gold but just give you the gold bonus?

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

I thought stealing gold missions ironically dont lower the enemies gold but just give you the gold bonus?

I'd thought that too for a while, since I stole gold and the amount you could steal barely went down. But that was because I was stealing from a 10-city empire. I think what happened is, I stole 10% of the gold, then they got more gold the next turn and I didn't notice the difference.

I tested it in the Asoka deity game stealing from Musa. He had 2 cities, about the same size. I stole over 3k gold from the first one, and after that could only steal 1700G from the second. Which is roughly the amount you'd expect if the first theft made him lose half his gold.

I'm fairly confident that stealing gold actually does reduce the amount of gold in the other civ's coffers.