Eleanor - any reason to keep cities you can't hold?

[walkerjks]

Title pretty self-explanatory.

You sometimes "acquire" a city you have an immediate -20 loyalty to. No governor is going to fix it. Do you keep it anyway, knowing you are going to lose it? Or leave it to be a free city?

Trying to understand the downside to getting it few a few turns and then losing it, if there is one.

 

[Bibor]

Last I checked, Elanor is not prohibited from building military units to "grease" your ability

 

[walkerjks]

Yeah, that's what I'm wondering... is there any downside to getting a few turns to produce something from the city before it goes t free city status anyway? Is there any advantage to refusing the city and making it a free city immediately?

 

[Bibor]

Is there any advantage to refusing the city and making it a free city immediately?

Less stress for you, for starters.

 

[Victoria]

Is there any advantage to refusing the city and making it a free city immediately?

Less time that the other civ owns it
Unfinished districts are destroyed so sadly that old trick has gone.
Take it and either ignore it or if you have a fairly useless governor, place it in there to slow down it’s flipping.
You can always declare war on a local CS and hope they can raise it fast.

 

[Zeuxis]

At the level that I play on, I can normally keep all the cities but it can be a struggle.

Firstly, if it has flipped to you (without rock bands or spies) then you should have some population pressure on it so it isn't a lost cause. You should be able to hold it.

1) Buy a monument (+1 loylty)
2) Slot in the couple of cards that add loyalty (with a governor or unit) (+4 loyalty, I believe)
3) Increase the population as much as possible (granary, water mill) and
4) MOVE as many trade routes as possible to this city - choose the destinations that add the most food.
5) You must have at least one city that put pressure on the new city and so do the increase population there as well (trade routes and so on).

As the cities that belong to you grow, the loyalty loss should get down so that the city would be lost in maybe 20 turns and you have bought yourself some time...….

This is when attack becomes the best form of defence.

With Eleanor you should be able to have a good shot at flipping other cities that are putting pressure on you. If your new city already has a theatre square you are laughing - buy the art museum amphitheatre and broadcast center and put works of art in them. -6 loyalty.

If no theatre square then put in the governor with the promotion that allows you to buy districts (Raynor) and do the same.

Put Amani in one of the near cities and she will also produce -2 loyalty in the nearby cities.

Then you can start to use spies and rock bands (with the right promotion - glam rock) and off you go.

So to sum it all up - get the loyalty down as much as possible immediately, then get the population up as much as possible in the city and all others close to it, then.....start being devious

Oh and one last thing - although I can probably find ways of keeping a city if it flipped to me, I sometimes wonder afterwards if it was the right thing to do as it can suck up all my money and faith to keep just one city and maybe that would have been spent better elsewhere.....

And it might re-flip to you later especially if you put Amani nearby....

 

[JesseS]

1) Buy a monument (+1 loylty)
2) Slot in the couple of cards that add loyalty (with a governor or unit) (+4 loyalty, I believe)
3) Increase the population as much as possible (granary, water mill) and
4) MOVE as many trade routes as possible to this city - choose the destinations that add the most food.
5) You must have at least one city that put pressure on the new city and so do the increase population there as well (trade routes and so on).

There's a pretty high opportunity cost to these actions (~800 gold, two policy slots, and trade routes) and you really need to weigh whether or not the city you gain is worth it. The granary and water mill are wasted if the city won't even be growing naturally in a few turns. I think buying a builder, moving in a Governor, and chopping out jungle or food tiles is a better option--even cities in the late stages of rebellion receive full growth from chops.

 

[Zeuxis]

The chops are a good idea as well.

As I mentioned, I think it is normally possible but the question is whether it is worth it, as you pointed out.

With Eleanor, I seldom have problems flipping another nearby city because you will already have significant population derived pressure that caused the first city to flip in the first place.

The one exception to all of this that I have found are choke points where the land is very narrow. It can be that only two cities (one on each side) exert significant population-based pressure and then things get very difficult, perhaps impossible.