gifting your own cities...

[darski]

It is exactly the opposite. Gift the city away to someone who is also at war with your enemies. So that your they will lose the city and you can take it (again).

You are assuming (I think) that I want the city. it is because I don't want the city - just the win - that I give it away. ( I don't need the razing hassle generally either) I often will choose an ally in the war giftee to keep them gracious. Gifting to a non-combatant removes that city from the bother while waging a war.

Interestingly enough, on my Mayan game, I gave a French city to the Brits. They never did get a defender there and it stood alone until they declared war on me and I had an MPP with the Byzantines who just strode into that undefended town.

 

[bryanwallace]

someone was saying the amount you get in a trade deps on how much damage youve done to them..
so you should give quite a few crappy cities then take them back to get more tech??

also when do cities get destroyed when you take them ?
is this when the pop is 1?

 

[Lord Emsworth]

someone was saying the amount you get in a trade deps on how much damage youve done to them..
so you should give quite a few crappy cities then take them back to get more tech??

Yes, that is the idea. On levels where the AI is at least on par with you research- or otherwise this is a fairly easy way to keep up in techs. How much tech they are willing to give you depends however quite heavily the time and the map size, for example.

From the Middle Ages onwards I don't think should hold your breath for getting MA techs in peace deals, at all. The best you could probably do would be a discount.

And similarly on large or huge maps you probably need to do more than just take one or two measly towns in order to get a significant amount of AA techs.

also when do cities get destroyed when you take them ?
is this when the pop is 1?

Yes that is right.

But there is another requirement and that is culture. If the city has an amount of culture of 10 or higher (first cultural expansion) from any single civ it will also not autoraze.

ETA:
A city of size 1 that has no culture will also not autoraze if its population is from the same civ that takes the city. (Say, you retake a city that you previously lost.)


Note however, that if you gift away a city with a population from your civ, then that population will become that of the civ you gift the city to. Ugly sentence. Say, you are Chinese and you gift away a city with Chinese pop to the Americans then the pop of the gifted city will change to American. If you take the city back by military force, the pop will stay American. If now you gift it away to the Indians, then pop will still stay American.

 

[kulade]

I gave away some cities in a game I was playing earlier today. I was at war with Egypt and took some of their cities that they had taken from India earlier in the game, and when they pulled up piles of reinforcement Mech Infs, I withdrew from two old Indian cities and piled my defenses at another city. I gave the other cities to India, whom the Egyptian were at peace with.

 

[bryanwallace]

but isnt this kind of ridiculous?
it means you never have to face a counterattack when you take someones city.

just loan to a weak civ til the heat dies down then take it back..

this must be a cheat..

 

[Othniel]

could be fun on an archi map. works like this:

play on deity or sid. take over small island. although disappointed with size of island take heart that at least you are alone on your island.

give away 2 small cities to rival A. immediately declare war and take them with your horses on the same turn.

next turn give them away to rival B. conquer them with horses again.

do it each turn with another rival. after a few turns rivals will be willing to make peace. within 10 turns you should have all the aa technology and probably all the gold too.

i think that if these 2 cities have culture they will never autoraze even though you have been giving them away. (ok i'll admit i never actually tried this).

i guess you may need a lot of horses to keep conquering them like this. while you are building them you presumably don't need to be researching.

This was a tactic used extensively by the Smurkz team in recent SGOTM 13. I believe a number of other teams did this also. If you are curious, you can read about it on this page and following. Niklas (post three on that page) first mentions the idea and then it pops up in various posts for the next, uhhh, 30 pages or so.

Oh, and note that the tactic kinda...backfired. We got some techs/tech discounts, never took cities because we felt they would be too corrupt, and unwittingly generated a worldwide tide of genocidal hate toward our empire. This specially-modded map had 30 AI civs and by the time our gift/retake victims had signed MA's against us with other civs, we were at war with around 29 of the 30 civs.

 

[darski]

but isnt this kind of ridiculous?
it means you never have to face a counterattack when you take someones city.

just loan to a weak civ til the heat dies down then take it back..

this must be a cheat..

it's more along the lines of being a good boy scout..."A scout is wise in the use of his resources".

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

I usually just kick the rear end of the civ that's attacking me. Either I take his cities or if I can't, play a defensive war and leader fish.

I'm not giving away any of my hard earned cities.