A tactic born of desperation

[eighty]

Once (okay more than once) I got myself into a position where a powerful enemy surprise attacked me. As can happen, I was facing the loss of one of my outpost cities because I had no adequate defense there. This was a situation where I knew I could retake the city, but it would be awhile. The thought occured to me that I could trade the city to another civ that I was still at peace with. I tried it and got a couple of techs, some gold and some luxuries. Plus, the civ was really happy for getting a city and my enemy did not get it. And it gets better. I used another city that was ready to fall on another border as an enticement to the most powerful civ to declare war on my enemy. How nice. While they may not have actively fought my enemy much, at least they were on my side and not actively fighting me. This particular case was interesting because all the other civs (except the most powerful) declared war at about the same time as my prime enemy, so it was looking rather desperate.
So here's the trick. A city I knew I was going to lose no matter what I trade to a powerful civ to get stuff. Then I use some other enticement (even another city) to get that civ to declare war on the civ that originally would have taken the city. Then they take the city and I can retake it later, so I still end up retaining my city.

 

[Civddict]

do they always want to take your city?

 

[mydisease]

I found myself in the same situation in this succession game:

http://www.geocities.com/callisto456/civ3/succession/game01/11_Jackson.html

Only with 8 cities instead of 2! In this game, the civ I gave the cities to was between me and the attacking civ without ROP so giving them cities slowed down my enemy's approach.

But unlike you, I wasn't able to trade the cities for anything, but had to give them away. I'm sure trading cities during peacetime was patched out in 1.17, so I take it you are playing unpatched?

 

[eighty]

My game version that I did this with is 1.21f

 

[eighty]

and sometimes they don't want your city. other times I have built a brand new city right on an enemy border and traded it immediately to another civ. there are lots of ways to use the trade city ability. i love it because it is a good way to manipulate the enemy, esp. if you can get the city back later.