demanding cities

sabrewolf · December 27, 2003, 09:24

i've started an emperor, 31civ, 200x200 map, playing as the mayans (raging barbs means lots of free workers). i've got a great starting location with enough cattle to have a 4-turn settler pump and bring out an additional warrior every 2nd turn after producing the settler.
so i've REXed a lot and am no. 1 by area and population.

i had forgotton that i had settler-bopped china several turns ago and was still at war. after about 10 turns mao contacted me and wanted peace... and was ready to give me 3 of his 6 cities!!! they all were just size 1 or 2, but still it gave a big dent in china's growth.

as next i declared war against all civs with less than 2/3rds of my power and demanded cities from them after some turns of fighting-less war.

now i've got 15 highly unproductive, far away cities which never will be useful, except maybe in communism. they won't grow beyond size 2 (starvation and unhappiness stopping them) and are affecting my corruption, because of the OCN.

what should i do? keep them? disband them? give them to civs from the other side of the world so that they suffer corruption? or should i hang on to them and wait for communism? or even wait for flight, build airports and have and effective way of transporting my troups out there (at 200x200 distances are very far)?

anyway, this strategy may be considered as exploit, but it's highly effective on the power graph. the more cities i get by demanding, the more other countries i can demand from. all it costs is losing the possibility of a diplomatic victory.

vmxa1 · December 27, 2003, 15:09

I preferred it when it was nearly impossible to get a city from the AI. Now you can often get one or more. I got one from two wars yesterday and I just abandoned them. My whole point was to reduce the number I would have to take from them to eliminate them, not gain any cities from them.
One was on a small island and could not be reached yet.

DrSpike · December 27, 2003, 21:40

Yeah you can get a few if you catch them at the right point where they have lots of small cities.

Cerbykins · December 29, 2003, 01:17

Hang onto the cities if you can protect them with sufficient ease. If nothing else, you'll get support points and area coverage score out of them

Vince278 · January 2, 2004, 02:10

The AI hasn't been giving me any cities. How do I increase the chance?

Cerbykins · January 2, 2004, 02:45

The A is more likely to givre you size 1's, ones with foriegners in and ones on their borders (not necessarily with you. See if you can get those...
Oh yeah, smack them a bit in war first. Not necessarily viciously, just do enough to prove to the AI you can kick it into next week

Then, demand the cities in the peace deal. This - AFAIK - is the ONLY time you can ever get cities off the AI (without using troops directly

)

vmxa1 · January 2, 2004, 03:30

Quote:

Originally posted by Vince278
The AI hasn't been giving me any cities. How do I increase the chance?

You need to beat on them for a long time and take a number of cities before they are receptive. It seems if you refuse to talk to them on their request for peace then hit them again they are willing to give a city or two. I got two from Hammy at size 5 each after I busted his capitol each time he moved it (3 in all).

Vince278 · January 2, 2004, 03:33

Cruel. Thanks.

AJ Corp. The FAIR · January 3, 2004, 11:58

Quote:

Originally posted by vmxa1

You need to beat on them for a long time and take a number of cities before they are receptive. It seems if you refuse to talk to them on their request for peace then hit them again they are willing to give a city or two. I got two from Hammy at size 5 each after I busted his capitol each time he moved it (3 in all).

Nevertheless, AI civs give away far too few cities when faced with the possibility of total extinction.

Rather die than surrender???

A complete population?

AJ

sabrewolf · January 3, 2004, 12:03

dp

sabrewolf · January 3, 2004, 12:04

well, actually that's quite real-life. leaders tend to not surrented for that would be worse than defeat. i can't think of many dictators giving up before their country was overrolled...

vmxa1 · January 3, 2004, 14:54

I understand your perspective on giving up a city or two, but it should be put back to the level of spear beats tank. So rare that most of us will never see it. As it is now, you just get them too easy. The AI will never get any cities from you.

:) Smiley · January 4, 2004, 14:35

Does the presence of resources affect the AI decision making?

DrSpike · January 4, 2004, 15:01

Yeah they wont give you even a size 1 city with a luxury. Earlier on you could even 'guess' the cities that would later have resources appearing by seeing which ones the AI would refuse to give you for no visible reason. I'm not sure if that is still the case in C3C though.

East Street Trader · January 5, 2004, 08:22

Unless there is a long term strategic benefit - as a jumping off point eventually to grab a source of otherwise unavailable luxury or to deny a nearby civ some critical resource, say - I abandon such cities.

If you don't there is a sort of compulsion to rush various improvements and it is too much hassle repeatedly to resist the temptation.

Mountain Sage · January 5, 2004, 08:22

Well,

Keep those cities, rush a temple (and a harbor) and hope for a PP game.
Maybe in a distant future there will be some resources under them...

DrSpike · January 5, 2004, 12:32

Yeah, no point throwing them away. 1 grassland square yields a worker every 10 turns even for the most corrupt city. And more cities usually reduces the support costs. As a last resort if you have too many cities you can give it away.

Bonaparte · January 5, 2004, 12:49

The AI has never given me a city even when I was kicking the snot out of them, but if they did I would keep the cities...eventually (as is usually the case) I'll end up with a good income and I'll just start buying improvements for any distant cities and in time they become half decent. Also, keeping distant cities is good in times of war (especially if they have airports) as they serve as good jump points to launch invasions on otherwise distant civs. I could never have enough cities and as for the corruption, well, I'm used to it although it is, at times, annoying.

vmxa1 · January 5, 2004, 13:44

Bonaparte there have been many changes to the demand cities. So it depends on the version and patch level if it can be done with much sucess or not.

Theseus · January 6, 2004, 21:59

* I believe that one can still gauge the value of AI cities (i.e., whether they have resources) by selectively checking which cities can be extorted.

* Another faaaavorite trick of mine: Take whatever nearby cr*p cities you can, gift them to far-off AI civs, and then smack the hell out of them by capturing those cities. Rinse and repeat.

vmxa1 · January 7, 2004, 00:46

Hum do I smell exploit here? Very mean.

DrSpike · January 7, 2004, 10:10

I shamefacedly admit to doing this before also. It was a great way to proceed in older versions where on Deity you could be so many techs behind when you crippled the AI that whatever you got in the peace deal was peanuts. You couldn't get enough from them straight away, so a second Civ to kick was nice.

East Street Trader · January 7, 2004, 10:45

Typically the cities which the AI will part with are small and remote ones with little development and no resource (current or future - they are precient on this) within the city radius.

They come empty of any unit (although I rather think the citizens also convert to your civ so you don't get a culture flip).

It is true that you get a tiny bit of production out of such a city but what nearly always happens with me is that if I just let the city stagnate along, building what little it can but not bothering to spend time and effort in sending it defenders and not spending cash on rushing, then at some point an enemy turns up on the doorstep (the AI is also precient about undefended - or lightly defended - cities).

Now I suppose I could then just abandon it or gift it away with nothing lost (but precious little gained either). But meanwhile what actually happens is that I come under a temptation to do something with the city. And I tend to succumb. So I do rush a building or two or I do mount a small expedition to take the city some defenders.

And once I make any sort of investment it becomes psychologically difficult subsequently to write that investment off by abandoning the city or giving it away.

So I relieve myself of the temptation. When, as is common, the only thing the AI can give for a peace is a city or two I take them and immediately disband them. That denies them to the AI plus it makes it easier to destroy that civ when the time comes to do so. But I don't suffer the distraction of what are, in my hands, highly dubious assets.

DrSpike · January 7, 2004, 11:04

I think a free worker every 10 turns for as long as you want them is a far from dubious asset.

Arrian · January 7, 2004, 11:19

15 workers every 10 turns aint bad. Or you could turn a citizen in each city into a scientist... 15 * 3 = 45 beakers/turn. That's nothing to sneeze at either. In that case, I'd order the cities to build catapults (once I had at least 1 defender in them - probably a partially rushed spearman).

-Arrian

Arrian · January 7, 2004, 11:21

Oh, and are you saying having those cities is making your corruption in your core cities worse? Is that really how the corruption system works? I didn't think that was the case. I thought the OCN just meant that cities ranked over the OCN would have maximum (95%) corruption.

-Arrian

vmxa1 · January 7, 2004, 12:54

Soon to be maxed at 90%.

Arrian · January 7, 2004, 13:27

Yeah, I saw that.

Did you see Alexman's immediate test of the FP's affect on OCN, though? Oops.

-Arrian

East Street Trader · January 7, 2004, 13:57

The value of a worker depends on where the worker is.

If he or she is on a remote island they are worth not much at all. And even if they are on the same landmass, but a looong way off, the chance of them safely trecking all the way to where they can be made use of is low.

Science does not require transporting to be useful. But your post illustrates my point, Arrian. For the (strictly limited) benefit of the science you will get drawn into providing the city with defence. And it is my experience that this is a losing game. Each bit of outlay draws you inextricably on into the next. And it is always disproportionate to that bit of science.

Arrian · January 7, 2004, 14:22

Yeah, but the expense of defending those cities (token defense - 1 unit, just because the AI is awfully tempted by open cities) is justified in my mind by a combination of the following:

1) whatever benifit I would reap (workers, science)
2) whatever benifit I am denying the AI.

Cities that are clearly totally undefendable and/or a major flip risk I would probably give away to weak and/or overseas civs. The rest I'd keep.

-Arrian