Anyone tried this business strategy?

[wizardex]

I won't call this cheating. It's a GOOD strategy.

Look at your territory. Try to find/build a city which you think won't develop much. Build it on desert probably. Surrounded by high culture cities.

Offer the City to another tribe. Sell it to the highest bidder.

Once your cultural influence deposed the city, sell it off again.

I won a good round just by using this. I was lagging behind in technology but quickly catched up because I sold a city to different tribes a couple of times. Some offered me really good bargains. In real life, was Alaska sold to US by the russians?

 

[4Lorn]

It wasn't culture in this case but in a situation where I started in a poor position outlying my center cities a newly started city just on the other side of mountains was threatened by a stack of Chinese troops. China had been grumpy and declared war.

On the opposite side as me from the Chinese Egypt was trapped . Both China and Egypt were more powerful than I was. One turn before the obvious Chinese victory I sold Egypt the city for 2 advances and good money.

The Chinese hesitated one turn and then took Egypts new city. Egypt being the bigger threat China threw the bulk of its army at them. Several turns later I proposed an alliance against China with Egypt and they give me one along with a tidy sum of cash. I retake my old city and sign a peace treaty with China for an advance and a small sum.

Much later France steamrollers all three civs but I got farther ahead and lasted much longer than my initial starting position would have, in my humble estimation, seemed to have allowed.