So first off, this is obviously an exploit, not a strategy, and hopefully already set to be fixed in next patch. It's really just an extension of the well documented exploit of selling worthless cities to the stupid AI. Basically, it allows you to get the gold for a worthless city, but without the AI actually winding up with a city. Also note, there may be some other factor here that I've not yet figured out, as so far I've had about a 90% success rate and I'm not totally certain what the difference is. But basically do this:
1. Conquer a city.
2. Choose the Raze option for said conquered city.
3. Wait until the city is down to 1 pop and will burn to the ground next turn.
4. Before city burns, sell it to an AI for gold or resources. They won't give you all that much since it's 1 pop, but you can get something from a friendly.
5. End turn, and when it's the AI's turn, the city burns down, leaving them with nothing.
It seems like the population reduction for a razed city occurs at the start of the city owners turn, so by selling a city that's being razed, two turns worth of razing happen in a single turn of the game. So if you sell a city that will burn down next turn, it winds up burning down before the AI even has a chance to do anything about it. Like I said though, it hasn't worked for me 100% of the time, so it's possible there's a bit more to it. It's possible that when it didn't work, the AI had more maritime CS bonuses than me and that allowed the city to grow past 1 pop before it burned down (growth of a razed city definitely happens before reduction), or it's possible that the AI can always stop the razing but stupidly chooses not to most of the time. Either way, if you're the type of person who enjoys abusing exploits, this one can be fairly entertaining.
One other side note, if you conquer a city with 2 pop, which then immediately reduces to 1 pop on conquering, this will definitely not work. From my limited testing, it seems that if you sell a city being razed to an AI on the same turn that you conquered it, there will be no pop reduction on the AIs turn no matter what.
1. Conquer a city.
2. Choose the Raze option for said conquered city.
3. Wait until the city is down to 1 pop and will burn to the ground next turn.
4. Before city burns, sell it to an AI for gold or resources. They won't give you all that much since it's 1 pop, but you can get something from a friendly.
5. End turn, and when it's the AI's turn, the city burns down, leaving them with nothing.
It seems like the population reduction for a razed city occurs at the start of the city owners turn, so by selling a city that's being razed, two turns worth of razing happen in a single turn of the game. So if you sell a city that will burn down next turn, it winds up burning down before the AI even has a chance to do anything about it. Like I said though, it hasn't worked for me 100% of the time, so it's possible there's a bit more to it. It's possible that when it didn't work, the AI had more maritime CS bonuses than me and that allowed the city to grow past 1 pop before it burned down (growth of a razed city definitely happens before reduction), or it's possible that the AI can always stop the razing but stupidly chooses not to most of the time. Either way, if you're the type of person who enjoys abusing exploits, this one can be fairly entertaining.
One other side note, if you conquer a city with 2 pop, which then immediately reduces to 1 pop on conquering, this will definitely not work. From my limited testing, it seems that if you sell a city being razed to an AI on the same turn that you conquered it, there will be no pop reduction on the AIs turn no matter what.
