How to remove an unneeded barbarian city?

[egaonogenki]

Lately, on the outskirts of my empire, a Longbowman unit of mine took the Barbarian city of "Cuman" but I didn't want it. You see, I'd like to keep 4 spaces between cities in order for them to maximize their resource radius.

Cuman interrupts this pattern. I cannot "raze" cities because I deselected the option to "raze" at the beginning of the game; I didn't want any of my cities to be lost forever by the Barbarians.

I thought "disband" was different from "raze", but the game apparently treats them the same.

I can't depopulate cities by hurrying settlers & workers on Civ4 like I used to in its predecessor games. At least, that's what it looks like.

How do I depopulate and/or get rid of an unneeded city regardless?

 

[OTAKUjbski]

I can only think of two ways:

1. Surround the city with heavy culture and gift it to an AI ... some turns later when it tries to flip back to you, say "no" and it goes away.
2. Starve the city down to 1 pop and gift it to an AI you're about to invade. On the very same turn, declare war and roll over the city. As long as the game doesn't think you're "liberating" it, the 1 pop city should be destroyed.

I have no clue if this works, because I've never played with razing off and have also never needed to destroy a city I already owned.

 

[Welnic]

The AI probably won't take a city surrounded with heavy culture. And with no razing on you won't get that question when it flips.

You can't ever disband a city in Civ IV. You only get the choice to raze or keep when you first get it.

 

[br_casino]

You could leave the city undefended and hope a barb comes along to take it off your hands. If no barb comes along, you can declare war on the civ nearest to that city and they will be happy to capture it.

If all else fails, there is always the worldbuilder.

 

[egaonogenki]

br casino, if I use the worldbuilder, won't my game get flagged for cheating?

I remember that in Civ 2 (and 3, I think), if I turned on cheats or an embedded scenario edit that would've been construed by the game as cheating, thereafter it would say something like, "CHEAT MODE" or "CHEATED!"

 

[Corn]

I don't think that there's a flag for using the WorldBuilder. I'd honestly barely (or not) consider using it, in this instance, cheating, since you weren't aware of a few specifics. OTOH, keeping exactly four spaces between all of your cities isn't always the best strategy, even though it does reduce overlap.

 

[Charou]

You see, I'd like to keep 4 spaces between cities in order for them to maximize their resource radius.

Not always the best criteria to place cities.

 

[bode404]

Not always the best criteria to place cities.

Agreed, but he still can maximize the other cities' tiles Just click in the tiles you want to work in the main city screen. They will be "overtaken" from the city you wanted to disband.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Agreed, but he still can maximize the other cities' tiles Just click in the tiles you want to work in the main city screen. They will be "overtaken" from the city you wanted to disband.

I actually intentionally overlap some cities, if the positioning is good, to get cottages to town status faster. Since some cities need to have production to get large buildings finished, the cottages upgrade slower. If they coincidentally overlap another city that doesn't need the production, I can switch village growth to the second city while the first city finishes off the building quicker.

I admit it doesn't help other cottages of the second city, but I once saw a benefit this way (bonuses for villages/towns started a few turns quicker in one case).