worthless cities. I think not

[alexiscody]

I have read quite a few posts about how too many of your cities are so corrupt that they only produce 1 shield and 1 commerce. A number of people even say they are worthless. I felt the same until I recently discovered their true value. I use to try to play the game somewhat as a pacifist, but i found out that a military approach rocks.

Now onto the worthless cities. make them produce wealth and keep them happy. i like to build most of the culture building improvements. it does cost money and they are a drain but the culture bonuses are well worth it. When you gain nationalism is when these cities rock. Goto war and just mass produce conscripts. If you have 10-15 cities over the size of 6 in democracy they will give you a conscript every turn. I know consripts are not that great, but they will gain experience and can become elite. The theory is you kill them with numbers and control the population of your worthless cities at the same time.

I firts used this on warlord level and slaughtered everyone. I then used this same concept on prince and won the game. I am now on diety.

Just my thoughts.

 

[Flynn]

I thought you could only conscript from a city once every 20 turns?

 

[Panda]

Originally posted by Flynn
I thought you could only conscript from a city once every 20 turns?

Depends on your form of government - IIRC, under Communism you can draft up to three (3) (!) eek: ) units a turn

 

[alexiscody]

I stayed in democracy and drafted every turn. It depebded on the size of the city. It had to be over 6. Communism is even more impressive it allows multiple draft per city. Once I obtained nationalism I never built another infantry unit. My worthless cities keep pumping them out.

 

[jc011]

Hmmm, very interesting strategy, I like it!! I think i'll use it when i come across an useless city!

 

[donsig]

I'm not much into the draft and have a few other ideas about 'worthless' cities:

I agree that buying cultural improvements for these cities is a good idea.

Another way of controlling the population is to use these cities to build settlers and workers.

Building a Forbidden Palace will make any nearby 'worthless' cities productive.

Be patient. As these 'worthless' cities grow their production does increase a little even though corruption/waste remains very high. (Using the 1.17 patch.) While wasting 10 shields is distressing producing 2 or 3 good shields is useful. Hey, it's 2 or 3 times faster than building something one shield at a time, right?
An improvement that takes 80 turns at 1 shield/turn drops to 40 and 27 turns respectively.

Finally, these 'worthless' cities contain citizens and their borders enclose territory - both of which add to your score!

 

[IronicWarrior19]

Screw the score, it's a silly way of measuring the civ's success anyway Another good way of using these cities (which not a lot of people seem to use for some reason) is to make them taxman or scientist cities, then you can get a nice little income from the large super corrupt cities. Adding the draft tactic to it and you can make them super productive.

 

[levasseur227]

Seems evil, but I like it. It almost seems like the Pop rush tactic except that you can only rush infantry (or whatever defensive unit you can build).

I may have to try this. Can you draft from a city with resisters in it? (It wouldn't seem like you could.)