Give your cities away

[Nick Garai]

When I am playing in Democratic government or republic and I am far behind in technologies I do this...

Build lots of settlers quickly and go near an enemy, then build lots of cities and make sure that they are all pop2.

Leave them undefended.

The computer will walk into a city and take it over. Take a diplomat, go and steal a technology and then take another one to buy the city. You get two technologies that way. Then go back with a settler, build the city up to a pop2 again and do this until you have all the technologies you need.

This really helps if you DON'T have the Great Library. A "legal" way to "steal" techs.

It also works well with human players (and is really funny) when you wander over to someone's city, plop a bunch of cities and build them up to pop2 then leave the undefended. If they don't take them over, you have 2-4 cities right in their city's development squares. If they do take them over, you'll get a bunch of more technologies for free.

Kind of a Catch 22 plan

You will lose the cities but it is a great way to play your enemies hands and get them to give you their technologies.

 

[starlifter]

When I am playing in Democratic government or republic and I am far behind in technologies I do this...

If you are in Democracy, you should not be far behind. Maybe (early) Republic you might be lagging. In either case, it seems unlikely if a player can't generate some science in these forms of government that expending resources to build and transport settlers/engineers, and make a city to be lost, is an effective tradeoff ("...then build lots of cities and make sure that they are all pop2....") vs. say caravans, or just sending your diplomat(s) to another AI city. Or the Ultimate, simply use Marco Polo's Embassy to choreograph research. With MPE, a human should be able to achive the

That said, your idea is creative .

 

[Millman]

Seems risky if they want to keep the city. In the middle game, however, I'm sure there is a lot of creative things we have yet to discover.

 

[civdood]

Civdood never give city away. You must fight me to take it, and you will die. I take your advance with my diplomat. I take it again and again with my spy.

 

[Magic_gorter]

Civdood never give city away. You must fight me to take it, and you will die. I take your advance with my diplomat. I take it again and again with my spy.

I normally give no cities away. Try to build Marco Polo ASAP to trade for techs with the other civ's. Later on you can give techs to the purple civ (assuming you are supreme) to keep you're tech costs ALAP.

This way you can launch you're spaceship earlier.