City Trading Rules

[thescaryworker]

I have heard many complaintss of 'why can't we trade cities anymore?' the answer is: they took it out because the hu*cough* player abused it. I thought up these rules for city trading:

To trade a city it must have ALL of these conditions satisfied:
- There can be none of your units inside that particular city's borders
- You must not be in anarchy
- There can be no resisters in the city
- The city cannot be revolting (a.k.a., unhappy higher than happy)

Cost modifiers:
If the city is a town:
| base cost is 100x
| If city is starving, divide cost by 2
| Each improvement adds 2 gold/sheild cost to final amount
- If the city is a city:
| base cost is 200x
| If city is starving, divide cost by 1.5
| Each improvement adds 4 gold/sheild cost to final amount
- If the city is metropolis:
| base cost is 400x
| If city is starving, divide cost by 1.25
| Each improvement adds 6 gold/sheild cost to final amount
- All cities:
: Each military unit one tile outside of city borders adds 500 gold, they are returned to capitol
: Two tile outside borders are moved one tile back (add 100 gold)
: Each culture point adds 2 gold per city (one for town and 3 for metropolis)
: Each citizen native to your pop reduces x by 1 (to buyer) -Aussie Lurker
: Each native culture point decreases cost by 1 (to buyer) -Aussie Lurker
: If buyer's culture points in city surpasses seller's culture in city, this increases to 2-3 depending on ratio (built off previous)
: Production increases by this factor [x*.05] -Aussie Lurker
: Wealth increases by [x*.02-x*.01] -Aussie Lurker
: If buyer is winning war vs. particular AI, cost is divided by 1.25-2
: If buyer is losing or neutral in a war vs. that AI, cost is multiplied by 1.5-3
: Recources increase by 'y' gold (dependant on whether buyer has recource, whether that is the seller's only stockpile of that recource, and how rare or useful it is)
: Corruption(or its substitute) decreases it by this:
___0%_________final/.1
___10%________final/.5
___20%________final/.8
___30%________final/1
___40%________final/1.3
___50%________final/1.7
___60%________final/2.2
When City Is Traded (Effect on Population)
: Extra Unhappiness (dependant on culture, size, and position) Aussie Lurker & Dida
: If a core city is traded, lots of unhappiness (dependant on size and culture) Aussie Lurker & Dida
: Each citizen traded had a 50/50 chance of revolting in the nearby area around the city (built off last)
: This does not apply if it is not connected in any way. (built off last)
: In the rest of your empire, there is a 5% chance that citizen will revolt (family, increased to 12.5% if flight discovered). (built of one before last)

Notes:
x = # citizens in city
minimum recource addition is based on buyer's tech, too (low on tech tree[500], middle-middle low[1000], middle-middle high[2000], high[5000+])
If recource cannot be seen by seller, the recource addition is invalid

I will update this post as suggestions are made

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Isn't it a matter of opinion if a city is 'Revolting'? Sorry, just couldn't help myself.
That said, I agree that if there were a set of parameters to determine whether an AI (or your own people, for that matter) accepted a city trade-and what value they attached to it-then the chance for abuse of this system would be reduced to almost nothing.
Of course, such a simple 'standards' system would also allow unit trading to be returned-again without fear of rampant abuse!
I really like the rules you have suggested, but would add the following:
% Corruption of the city will reduce its value.
The number of shields, food and beakers the city produces will effect its value.
The Wealth of the city (determinant of its per turn income) will effect its value.
The # of citizens NATIVE to the buyer will effect a city's value and,
The # of culture points NATIVE to the buyer will effect a city's value.


Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[thescaryworker]

Ok, I'll add those.

 

[Dida]

Cities should be not traded. How many times has this happened in real life? Maybe the Americans have bought land from Russia and France, but that's America. They are young countries, having no emotional and culture tie to the land they sold. Just putting up cities for sale is ridiculous. This is not the case in civ3. It will add unlooked for complication to the game.
The only time when city transfer is allowed is when signing peace treaty, or when an ally returning your city back to you, after having reclaiming it from the enemy.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK then, Dida, why don't we say that the amount of NATIVE culture-and the length of time it has been arround-makes the city much more expensive. i.e., if you or the AI have had a city for many turns, or if it has accumulated a vast store of culture, then the people won't let you sell it-except at a prohibitive cost. If you try and go over their heads and sell it anyway, then you could spark a civil war in your own nation AND the city will probably enter a revolt as soon as it changes hands!!! This will lessen the exploit factor of City trades even further still, whilst still allowing for recreation of such things as the 'Louisiana Purchase'. Oh and, if I failed to mention it before, I also think population of the city should play a HUGE roll in the cost/value of a city!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Dida]

Louisiana purchase and the purchase of Alaska involved for the most part transfer of raw land. Three was not much culture-producing cities in that area, and French population in Liusiana and Russian population in Alaska was almost non-existent. Plus, in game, we cannot own raw land, only lands within cultural border. These conditions are impossible to meet in game.
Plus, city purchase don't really happen in real life. Again, Louisiana and Alaksa purchase is more of transfer of raw land than cities.
Cities do change hand in real life, but usually military force is used to achieve that. Or in the peaceful case, treaties are sign after military forces have been used, or threatened to be used to transfer cities. Money is rarely involved in such transfer.
City trading in historially inaccurate. To include this in the game, means Firaxis have to do extra programming on the AI, otherwise this option would just end up like an exploit for the human player. But if they do that, they would have less time to spend on other things, such as 'better alliance system' which is far for important.

 

[thescaryworker]

New Orelans, Hong Kong, Tokyo. That list could go on for a while. City trading is still a recent thing.
BTW, who said Civ4 had to be accurate?
I like playing instead of following history.