Taking a capital then giving it back...

[Rosty K]

I just discovered, that the city will no longer be a capital after that. So, this way the opponent's capital is not at its original spot, and you are not a warmonger

My question is, is this enough of a blow for the opposing civ to justify this as a possible strategy for 'peaceful' games? The original capital seems to be somewhat less important in Civ VI than in V, even though it'll still probably be the best city spot around...

 

[enar]

But it only works if the other civ declares war on you, right? If you declare war in the mid-to-late game, you get warmonger points even if you give the capital back after capturing it. Or am I misunderstanding this?

 

[Rosty K]

Yeah you're right about being declared war, of course. I sort of don't like declaring them myself, so I was just assuming everyone understands I'm the target

 

[enar]

I'm generally averse to starting wars (even without the warmongering penalty), but after a civ has attacked me twice, I'm much more likely to decide to eliminate the pest...

 

[LFRANK]

I have one simple rule in my games, when a civ does a DOW on me, it better be prepared to lose at least one city. Depending on how quickly the first one goes down I may go for more. The only exception is those civs that never directly attack because they're so far away. This ensures I keep sufficient defenses at all times and grow on their errors.

 

[Victoria]

I like troll cities.

I build smack bang against someones border in defensible terrain with frigates/battleships/artillery lurking and an encampment and city walls 1-2 build turns away.
As long as my army is not too large they will soon declare war on me if I do enough annoying things.

I have stopped playing with them ATM because it is like taking candy from babies. Its still fun though.

 

[enar]

I've never actually tried your "troll city" stratagem in Civ VI. Perhaps I'll give it a whirl in my next game, if the opportunity arises.

 

[PonderThis]

I just did that exact thing last night and made the same discovery regarding capital cities. I did that in pursuit of another trick I found recently: If the other guy DOW's you and you then conquer one of his cities (the capital being the best choice because he'll really want that back), if you negotiate a peace and trade that conquered city for another city, you do NOT get the "you conquered a city shame on you!" warmonger penalty.

 

[LFRANK]

...if you negotiate a peace and trade that conquered city for another city, you do NOT get the "you conquered a city shame on you!" warmonger penalty.

Oh, what a great tip. Will give that a try on my next DOW rebuttal.

 

[Leyrann]

That's indeed something to try... You could even go as far as ignore the cities next to your border, conquer the ones behind that, and then trade them for the cities on your border, to have a "normal" expansion.

Also, even though it's not their capital anymore, it's still their original capital, so domination victory doesn't change in any way. And after the very early game (where palace yields play an important role), I don't really see how it matters which city is actually the functional capital.

 

[Rosty K]

That's indeed something to try... You could even go as far as ignore the cities next to your border, conquer the ones behind that, and then trade them for the cities on your border, to have a "normal" expansion.

Also, even though it's not their capital anymore, it's still their original capital, so domination victory doesn't change in any way. And after the very early game (where palace yields play an important role), I don't really see how it matters which city is actually the functional capital.

Well, I don't care much about the domination victory (way too much moving stuff required for my taste ), I was wondering about the role of the capital. Don't forget, that there are also CS bonuses which go to the capital first, also the original capital is where you'd expect the AI to have most districts (though that doesn't affect anything actually)... Overall, forcibly moving the AI capital is probably not too damaging for them indeed. Though they'll normally stop declaring war on me every 30 turns after I do that.

Trading cities you occupy for cities you don't (so effectively focusing your war effort on things you DON'T want) is indeed a nice sort of exploit. And it works too!