XP farming

[doctorfork]

In a game I played recently, I had a pretty decent start, wiped out most of Polynesia and then started hunkering down for an eventual assault on the other Civs on my continent.

At some point, Elizabeth asked me to help her attack Polynesia, and given that it only had one city left, which from what I could see was already weak, I figured it'd be a good way to gain brownie points with someone who was sporting longbowmen near my borders.

I sent a token force to his remaining city and found that it was covered two+ tiles deep with longbowmen, who took turns bombing it. Nobody could get a melee unit in there to put the city out of it's misery. This went on for nearly 50 turns. Elizabeth wouldn't even divert those units when her other borders were attacked.

Eventually I declared war on her and wiped out that force with a series of cavalry(and mercifully razed the city).

But does anyone ever do this-that is, keep at war with a city/civ for the express purpose of acting as a training grounds? Is it effective? I'd probably go crazy doing this turn after turn, but if I can get my siege weapons Logistics...

 

[Montov]

Especially City states are ideal for this. You can have your unit fortified and have it bombed at, so it doesn't require an action every turn.

 

[aimlessgun]

I've done it in the past, but generally don't go out of my way. It is certainly very tiresome.

 

[The Ed Carden]

Yeah, as nice as high level units are (especially ranged attackers) I find it to be pretty boring. I try to only do it when I have units that are close to getting a big promotion (like march or logistics or something like that).

 

[buchengshi]

I would never be the kind of person who has a trireme bombard a coastal unit for a long time just to get easy xp before upgrading it.