Losing to win?

[RaidandTrade]

Sometimes I try out new tactics and they fail badly. Sometimes, there are unforeseen benefits. Today, I picked a fight with Prussia and he is hostile to everyone. Suffice to say, I lost a lotta guys… and three settlements but I learned three things:

1) Each city I lost gave me 600 influence.

I’m at turn 19 and done with my “war” and spamming friend requests to the IPs.

2) Cities you get back via peace deals give you military legacy points.

I took his capital and asked for my three plus another in the peace deal - 5 settlements -> 5 points.

3) If the settlement you lost had a specialism, the specialism is reset. You can respecialise if you want to.

There’s got to be a fun strategy here.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Why, that's so crazy, it just might work.

 

[protocol7]

Maybe with https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Sword_of_Brennus_(Civ7) you can keep giving the same cities back and forth and get a bunch of gold too.

 

[RaidandTrade]

Maybe with https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Sword_of_Brennus_(Civ7) you can keep giving the same cities back and forth and get a bunch of gold too.

I’ve not used this one. Does it give you gold for giving cities or getting them (or, ha ha, both!)?

Assumed it was giving cities?

So here’s the play:
1. Exploration Age: Settle some small expos close to neighbour.
2. Early war with said neighbour on turn 1. Let them take your expos -> influence.
3. Take some of their cities -> points.
4. Peace out and swap cities back -> gold.
5. Spend gold (memento) and influence.
6. Rinse and repeat.

Now help me out here: Which leader and civ for this play?

 

[protocol7]

The Sword of Brennus is for giving them back, so you have to set up a beautiful dance. Tubman probably to make the AIs more likely to peace out due to the higher war support, though maybe you'll have so much influence you can do it with anyone.

Using the gold to buy an army might make sense, so maybe Carthage for the Numidian Cavalry? As a bonus Carthage only being able to have towns might wipe parts of their cities before handing them back - not sure about that though.