Self-plundering?

[vormuir]

Can you make some extra cash by plundering yourself?

The strategy would be to find an unworked tile, build an improvement there, and then plunder it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

For this to work, you need (1) an unworked but improvable tile; (2) one or more idle workers; and (3) a unit to do the plundering. All of these seem plausible. Speaking only for myself, I seem to have a lot of idle workers hanging around in the midgame (right before Railroad, especially) and in the late game.

The best would be a hill tile that can be mined. Mines pay an average of 10 gold. If you have two workers, you could build a mine every two turns. That works out to 5 gpt, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Am I missing something?


Waldo

 

[cabert]

Can you make some extra cash by plundering yourself?

The strategy would be to find an unworked tile, build an improvement there, and then plunder it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

For this to work, you need (1) an unworked but improvable tile; (2) one or more idle workers; and (3) a unit to do the plundering. All of these seem plausible. Speaking only for myself, I seem to have a lot of idle workers hanging around in the midgame (right before Railroad, especially) and in the late game.

The best would be a hill tile that can be mined. Mines pay an average of 10 gold. If you have two workers, you could build a mine every two turns. That works out to 5 gpt, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Am I missing something?


Waldo

you cannot plunder yourself

 

[Giaur]

I give my arm (but I won't give my head) that you can.

 

[salnc]

I give my arm (but I won't give my head) that you can.

You can destroy your own improvements, but you won't get any money from it.

 

[oyzar]

worst thing is if you capture some nearthundra city and the borders grow before you can pillage away the impovements on tundra.

 

[ShredZ]

First of all you cant even work terrian outside of yer cultural borders, second, you cant get any money from pillaging yer own upgraded terrian.

The only way this could work is to build a city, upgrade the terrian, have someone (barbarians?) destroy it, pillage everything before anyones culture expands over it.

Prolly wouldnt be worth it, making only around 100gp - unless you had nothing better to do with yer workers...

 

[LucyDuke]

You don't get cash for destroying your own improvements.

It drives me nuts that the pillage, fortify, and promote to city raider buttons are all styled the same. I end up pillaging my improvements rather than fortifying or promoting my troops when I'm playing at late hours.

The only way to pull off something like you suggest would be to donate a few workers to a weak neighbor and then use him as a punching bag. Let him improve the tiles, declare war and destroy all the improvements, extort some more gold for peace, wait until he's repaired the damage, lather, rinse, repeat.

 

[Skallagrimson]

When I'm at war I weigh the tradeoff between the worker-turns saved by NOT pillaging a city that'll soon be mine, or the GOLD generated by pillaging as I approach.

It's not an exact science, but if I have a lot of workers just hanging around with no more improving to do, I'll lean more toward "pillage now, rebuild later". If my workers are maxxed out on other project, am unlikely to pick up new workers with a city conquest, then I lean more toward leaving tiles intact so that the captured city will be more productive sooner. When I DO pillage a Town, I'm careful not to wipe out the cottage, as it only gains a tiny bit of gold, and will just regrow on its own after you take the city and work the tile.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Won't work. As mentioned before you get nothing when you destroy an improvement inside your borders. It's really only a slash and burn tactic to keep someone else from benefitting. I can't imagine why you would, unless you KNEW that city was not going to be yours soon.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Won't work. As mentioned before you get nothing when you destroy an improvement inside your borders. It's really only a slash and burn tactic to keep someone else from benefitting. I can't imagine why you would, unless you KNEW that city was not going to be yours soon.

"Scorched Earth" retreat, LOL. Worked for the Russians from time to time.

 

[ZB2]

yeah but in Civ you use up your movement pillaging. so your scorching your earth but probably loosing that unit next turn. and if you get to the point where you have a mass retreat and have to just abandon cities, you would need all the units you can get.

 

[Skallagrimson]

yeah but in Civ you use up your movement pillaging. so your scorching your earth but probably loosing that unit next turn. and if you get to the point where you have a mass retreat and have to just abandon cities, you would need all the units you can get.

Where I've used scorched earth is in a limited scope, of just wiping out towns along a contended border where for whatever reason I'm unable to pike away any cav units the AI will flood in to pillage them. If I'm gonna lose the Town anyway, might as well do so in a way that won't add gold to the AI's treasury.

To prevent that I *TRY* not to put cottage cities on borders, or on coasts. Try. Maps don't always give me the luxury of being picky about it, in fact it's a cruel tendancy of "randomness" that all the best flat river grassland IS... right along the border. And all the rear-area cities? Plains hills of course!

 

[LucyDuke]

To prevent that I *TRY* not to put cottage cities on borders, or on coasts. Try.

I do the same thing. Where I have the option, on border cities I'll farm the tile closest to the border and cottage on the interior tiles. The other thing that sucks about border tiles in border cities is when they culture flip. If the AI's going to steal my tiles, it's going to be a farm, not a town.

It also helps to farm tiles outside fat crosses that are near borders. Sure, it might give the AI a bit of cash, but they'll usually stop to pillage instead of marching right to your city - if the AI gets fifty gold but I have time to bring in reinforcements, I'm happy.

 

[Lord Parkin]

It drives me nuts that the pillage, fortify, and promote to city raider buttons are all styled the same. I end up pillaging my improvements rather than fortifying or promoting my troops when I'm playing at late hours.

Hence why the hotkeys are so useful. 'F' for fortify, and so on... it's quite a lot more handy, and leads to fewer errors.

 

[LucyDuke]

Hence why the hotkeys are so useful. 'F' for fortify, and so on... it's quite a lot more handy, and leads to fewer errors.

Yep, I use the keyboard as much as possible, but like I said, this happens when it's late. Late at night, I simply can't handle the keyboard, other factors have me leaning on the mouse almost exclusively.

 

[DaviddesJ]

You don't get money for destroying your own improvements. If you did, it would be a huge exploit: you could generate massive cash just by building enormous stacks of workers and military units, and successively improving and pillaging the same tile, many times in a single turn.

 

[Dubai Vol]

"Scorched Earth" retreat, LOL. Worked for the Russians from time to time.

You made me laugh, because I was thinking the same thing. Be sure to salt the ground so nothing will ever grow there again! (see Homer Simpson re: Ned Flanders' flower beds)

 

[druidravi]

Civ 3 had a different version of this, you could just mass workers build forests and chop them. It worked for those cities producing only 1shield per turn due to corruption. You could use your army of workers to quickly get basic infrastructure up in new cities. This was considered overpowered and a patch came which stopped wonders from getting chopping shields. And that was when Civ3 you get only 10shields per forest, Imagine it in civ4 with 30shields per forest .

Maybe in multiplayer you can try this exploit. You declare war on your friend and both of you send 1 chariot into each others territories .Your workers do a basic improvement like cottage,mine and enemy chariot pillages it and viceversa getting both of you gold per turn.

 

[Charles 22]

First of all you cant even work terrian outside of yer cultural borders, second, you cant get any money from pillaging yer own upgraded terrian.

The only way this could work is to build a city, upgrade the terrian, have someone (barbarians?) destroy it, pillage everything before anyones culture expands over it.

Prolly wouldnt be worth it, making only around 100gp - unless you had nothing better to do with yer workers...

I was surprised in my most recent game to find that you can rail tiles outside your territory, as I was thinking you could only road them. Roading doesn't help any future economy, but railing sure can.

 

[Charles 22]

Where I've used scorched earth is in a limited scope, of just wiping out towns along a contended border where for whatever reason I'm unable to pike away any cav units the AI will flood in to pillage them. If I'm gonna lose the Town anyway, might as well do so in a way that won't add gold to the AI's treasury.

To prevent that I *TRY* not to put cottage cities on borders, or on coasts. Try. Maps don't always give me the luxury of being picky about it, in fact it's a cruel tendancy of "randomness" that all the best flat river grassland IS... right along the border. And all the rear-area cities? Plains hills of course!

Naturally for those border cities, you can do the sanest thing and tend to build cottages on the sides furtherest from the border, and with the more bordering tiles put more of your farming and other things. The enemy can still pillage the farms of course, but they aren't such a dramatic turn for the worst that having towns pillaged are. In my own case, I don't worry about towns on coasts at all. The only worry is that some marine or berserker will land on it and pillage right away, but in the case of the others I have a full turn to destroy them. I actually can't recollect ever having a town pillaged on a coast tile before.