Carpetbagging

[Magnus]

I was playing Babylon, and tried to go the peaceful cultural route. I was in a lousy starting position and was trapped between the Americans and the Persians. The two went to war and I allowed both sides to go across my territory, the Americans were winning - so I followed along with settlers and defenders, and kept building cities in their wake - each time they conquer a city, the city radius drops to the smallest size, so there is now room for a new city of mine nearby, also, when the American razed Perseplois, I was right there to plop down a new city. I was able to make 3 new cities, and got a fourth via cultural assimilation, (that was a conquered city that ended up being well within my cultural borders). The Americans did all the fighting, and only ended up with 2 crappy cities very far away from their lands.

 

[shirleyrocks]

The AI is fond of that little trick too. I was in a nasty battle with the Zulu (naturally) and we were pretty evenly matched. Therefore, not a lot of significant progress was made by either side in the war...just a huge no-mans land of razed cities along the border. While I, and I assume, the Zulu, were using a great majority of my cities simply to pump out new units, the French came in and snatched up all this 'newfound' real estate.