A simple trick to get free gold forever

[vibe96]

I found this little trick today, and decided to share it.

What you need:
A razed city with improvements
Workers
Military units

What to do:
When a city is razed, it's improvements will not be destroyed. So if you raze a city, the improvements will remain in neutral territory. Then you can pillage them with your units.

And as you may already know, a worker can repair an improvement even if it's in neutral territory. So you can pillage the improvements and get gold, and the you repair it and pillage again. This is even better if you have the pyramids and citizenship policy. Then you can repair improvements in just one turn. Of course, the units cost maintenance, but you can still make decent money with it.

So, what do you think? Cheating?

 

[Viregel]

Cheating? Definitely. Awesome? Yup.

 

[echolalia]

A nice money earner until the a.i. send a settler wandering over your way

 

[phillipwyllie]

Cheating: no cos its a bug as you're only meant to be able to build roads in neutral territory.
Exploit: yes, see answer above.

 

[Grogs]

A nice money earner until the a.i. send a settler wandering over your way

Well that's where the workers come from I guess.

You'd have to play with the technique. For maximum efficiency you'd want enough workers to improve 1 tile per turn (staggered) and a unit to pillage each tile as it's finished, or some multiple of that. The question then becomes how much are you netting after you subtract the maintenance costs of those units. Late game it probably wouldn't be very much since cost per unit goes up, but pillaging yield doesn't.

 

[Tabarnak]

Barely an exploit. The energy taken from units transformed into gold is largely lost by the non use of these same units for your own territory or defense.

If you burn a city you will have a higher diplo hit and you will lose culture over time(razing a city does still increase the culture bucket for next policies).

So to make it really effective you absolutely need to find a razed city by another AI and a close one from your territory. Passed the industrial era it doesn't matter anymore because the maintenance is high enough to annihilate this exploit.

In conclusion, you better work on your own empire and don't hang on this every game. You got lucky and found a razed city right at your door? Fine...if you have a little worker(s) and unit(s) surplus. But that's all about.

 

[rexman07]

Workers repairing improvements outside your territory is obviously an exploit. The gold is cute, but pillaging to heal 25 HP EVERY TURN is downright broken. Citizenship + Pyramids + Worker + Cannon + enemy's farm = Super-Uber-2.5x-March promotion?!

(I think that 25 HP is too much to heal from pillage, anyway. It's such a huge swing! I'd like to try it at 10 or 15 HP.)

 

[Vitruvius]

Workers repairing improvements outside your territory is obviously an exploit. The gold is cute, but pillaging to heal 25 HP EVERY TURN is downright broken. Citizenship + Pyramids + Worker + Cannon + enemy's farm = Super-Uber-2.5x-March promotion?!

(I think that 25 HP is too much to heal from pillage, anyway. It's such a huge swing! I'd like to try it at 10 or 15 HP.)

25hp is fine. But your workers shouldn't be allowed to repair anything outside of your own borders

 

[Browd]

Not even a pillaged road segment?

 

[cpm4001]

That's pretty gamey. But cool. I'll remember it (no, I don't have scruples.)

 

[Ortega]

this is why IMO improvments that arent inside any borders should disapear after a few turn.
natrue is claiming his areas back!

 

[Zaimejs]

Natrue is a He? I always thought of her as a woman. Natrue. We loves you.

 

[boghog]

Natrue is a He? I always thought of her as a woman. Natrue. We loves you.

I know it's considered bad form to make fun of other people's spelling/grammer, but:

 

[Browd]

Moderator Action: Yes, it is bad form. Please don't.

 

[Buridan]

I'm not quite sure, but isn't it possible to repair improvements in enemy territory too?

 

[vibe96]

yes it is. that's why I always bring workers to important battles

 

[beetle]

I'm not quite sure, but isn't it possible to repair improvements in enemy territory too?

Not just possible, but so important that it feels like an exploit when fighting the AI.

 

[Sid Simelia]

If you burn a city you will have a higher diplo hit and you will lose culture over time(razing a city does still increase the culture bucket for next policies).

This isn't true if you raze it immediately upon capturing it. Is it?