Two Ideas

[Xin Yu]

First, jump moving capitals. Looks like if you disband your capital, the capital will re-appear in your most populated city. So if you build or capture a city near another civ and use workers to add to the population then disband your capital (build a settler at size 2 while make food shortage by hiring all citizens as specialists), you move your capital for free -- save the need of a great leader (well, not exactly free since you lose a well established city but it should be a lot cheaper than spending 400 shields for the new capital). But remember don't build wonders in your first capital or you may lose them.

Second, ring city defense matrix. Build several cities to form a ring and put a city in the middle if it. Do not build defense units, only build attack and fast moving ones and place them in outside cities. LEAVE THE MIDDLE CITY UNPROTECTED. When an enemy or the barbarians try to attack you, they go for the middle city since it is not protected. When they by pass your outside ring, use your attacking units inside the outisde cities to attack them. Fast-moving attacking units have an advantage of retreating after losing a battle so they will likely to survive and stay in cities.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Devious as ever, Xin Yu.

I bet Firaxis thought they had hobbled capital bouncing with the patch, and you found an even better way to do it (with the wonder caveat that you gave). Obviously especially useful if your capital site is poor (given the apparent need to found the capital right where you start, or very close by). So now that city can be a settler farm until you have a site you really want (or to put cultural pressure on a frontier), and then instant capital.

Two more things about it:

1. You lose some of the accrued-time culture benefit of your Palace (and any early facilities like a temple).

2. You can re-use the original site (of course).

[Arrian]

Brilliant. It's limited to certain situations, but in those certain situations, it could be a godsend. Yet another example of something that never, ever, would have occurred to me.

I've had situations where my 2nd or 3rd city is better for wonder building (often is, actually) and more central to my empire... when this is the case I usually keep pumping settlers out of my capitol longer than I usually would anyway, so disbanding it would be no big deal. Then *pow* my wonder building city just got zero corruption, and improved the empire as a whole.

-Arrian

[Thrawn05]

{falls out of chair}




I bet you just made a poor ol' firaxis programmer go back to the drawing boards!

[Xin Yu]

Think again about the ring city idea, found out that the outside ring does not need to be cities. Just put troops there and the enemy may fall to the trap. But I haven't tried.

[Aeson]

I have noticed that Barbarians will go for any undefended cities, workers, or settlers within 2 turns (warriors 1-2 spaces, horsemen 3- 4). They also seem to take useable roads into account as well. If they don't see any of these undefended targets within range, they will attack the nearest target.

The AI will go after undefended cities (and sometimes workers/settlers) on the other side of the world often times. A couple of posts have listed this "tactic" previously. Take a useless city somewhere far away, and move all the defenders out. The AI will often move all of its offensive forces to take that city, even if it will take 20-30 turns to just get there. Once they get close, switch another city to "bait", and put your defenders back in the first city. The Ai will turn right around and go for the newly undefended city. A game of AI ping pong. Also workers and artillery make great "tank bait". Pre-patch they could almost always be captured right back, but now the AI destroys them in some cases. Make sure the worker or artillery is left alone on a tile without roads/railroads. The AI being able to see these sorts of things is a "cheat" that backfires in the favor of the player once it is understood.

[DrSpike]

Kudos on the new palace bouncing idea. A proposed addition: if it looks like your capital is going to be in a sub-optimal location don't build any infrastructure, just rush units (after one initial settler), since it's going to be disbanded anyway.

[solo]

Xin Yu,

Just what frame of mind are you in when you get these ideas! Can this be taught to others? There is always something uniquely brilliant and devious about many of the things I've seen you come up with. My favorite has got to be your idea in CivII of renaming all your cities with blank names to confuse opponents in MP! Aeson's "ping pong" thing really makes me smile, too. Gotta love it!

[La Fayette]

I bet there is only one Xin Yu...probably unable to explain where he gets those ideas from.
But he gets them...no doubt!
(I enjoyed Aeson's pingpong too)

(La Fayette, ready to move capitals just for the fun of it)

[Aeson]

Regarding "AI Ping Pong":

A couple of posts have listed this "tactic" previously

I was just passing on information from older posts that I remembered (not mine). I would have looked them up and linked to them, but I think they were hidden away in one of Vel's earlier threads. As those are so huge, finding anything specific in them can take some time... I'm too lazy

Jump Moving the Capitol seems like a very powerful thing, good thinking Xin Yu. Starting out in a high food area along the coast will no longer be so frustrating.

[Hermann the Lombard]

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[Willem]

Originally posted by Aeson

The AI will go after undefended cities (and sometimes workers/settlers) on the other side of the world often times. A couple of posts have listed this "tactic" previously. Take a useless city somewhere far away, and move all the defenders out. The AI will often move all of its offensive forces to take that city, even if it will take 20-30 turns to just get there. Once they get close, switch another city to "bait", and put your defenders back in the first city. The Ai will turn right around and go for the newly undefended city. A game of AI ping pong.

I love that one, I'll have to try it sometime. It would be such a blast having all those troops running around the map like fish chasing a hook.

[DrSpike]

Xin

Looks like we might have to investigate the ingenious palace bouncing plan a little further. You see - it doesn't always work. I spent centuries setting such a bounce up in my last game, and the capital refused to bounce to the city with the highest pop. I know the strat works, because I did a test when I started the FP and it worked like a charm then. Eventually after experimenting I managed to get the palace to bounce to my chosen city, but only after reducing two other cities from 5 to 3 (the target city was 6). Anyone know why this is? I don't think it's related to happiness, but maybe it is in some obscure way.

[Xin Yu]

(Well, I'll have to borrow the Civ III CD again and try it.) Last time it worked when all my cities were of size 1-2 while only one was size 4. So it matched your description. I carefully checked culture status and concluded that the new capital site did not depend on culture, and also the size 4 city was not the second city I built (thus only size mattered). Now seems there is a filter for size 4, so the guess would be that the capital will move to the oldest or closest or most culture improvement or most accrued culture city with size >=4. Have to test it to figure out.

[Duncan Idaho]

Originally posted by Xin Yu
... (well, not exactly free since you lose a well established city but it should be a lot cheaper than spending 400 shields for the new capital). But remember don't build wonders in your first capital or you may lose them.

If you could somehow get another player (AI) to take over your old capital, the wonders in it and cultured accumulated by it wouldn't be lost.

Yikes. This sounds like a scary strategy for team multiplayer.

[Duncan Idaho]

Originally posted by Xin Yu
Now seems there is a filter for size 4, so the guess would be that the capital will move to the oldest or closest or most culture improvement or most accrued culture city with size >=4. Have to test it to figure out.

I am guessing , only after two experiments on rather large end-game situations, that the following applies. Cities are sorted on the following, in order, and the top one is chosen:
1. City sphere of influence
2. City population
3. ?
...
n. Date founded
Frozen palace city is excluded.

The sphere of influence thing might explain the odd results DrSpike got with the size 3/5/6 cities, since at that phase of the game the cities are expanding those by large strides.

Then again, take heed that this was sheer speculation on an impoverished sample of limited size

Maybe we could start by compiling a list of candidate factors for the selection of palace relocation.

[DrSpike]

well I'll chip in another couple of observations.

1) I'm not sure the sphere of influence thing explains what happened to me; both cities had similar culture ratings, and culture currently produced per turn. Also, why would reducing the pop through rushing settlers change the sphere of influence?

2) I had another size 5 city that was completely ignored (but not if I rushed the target city down to 5 so they were equal). So two size 5 cities had to be reduced to 3 to prevent the capital going to them, despite the fact that the target city had a pop of 6. The other size 5 city was fine, and was still 5 when I successfully bounced the palace.

Food for thought.

[Duncan Idaho]

Originally posted by DrSpike
1) I'm not sure the sphere of influence thing explains what happened to me; both cities had similar culture ratings, and culture currently produced per turn. Also, why would reducing the pop through rushing settlers change the sphere of influence?

It doesn't. Sphere of influence is 1, then grows to 2 when town has culture>=10, then grows to 3 when culture>=100, and so on. Maybe the target city had 97 culture and a few turns later it had 101, which increased its cultural radius (=sphere of influence). Just a shot in the dark.

Originally posted by DrSpike
2) I had another size 5 city that was completely ignored (but not if I rushed the target city down to 5 so they were equal). So two size 5 cities had to be reduced to 3 to prevent the capital going to them, despite the fact that the target city had a pop of 6. The other size 5 city was fine, and was still 5 when I successfully bounced the palace.

The stuff I wrote about sorting was meant to indicate that sphere of influence would supersede the city size; if sphere of influence is bigger, size doesn't matter.

[DrSpike]

I see. An interesting theory, but the ignored size 5 city had the most culture and highest sphere of influence of all the cities outside of the original capital. Plus there was no change in the sphere of influence of the target city during the tests.

[Xin Yu]

Maybe the AI is smart enough to pick a large city in the center of your civ? Was the size 5 city at the edge of your civ?

[DrSpike]

I had two groups of cities separated by inhospitable terrain. And yes, the two cities it was trying to bounce to were in the middlish. The 5 that was ignored was slightly less central (but was a more developed city), and the one I was trying to bounce to was in the other group. It's clearly not just pop; maybe pop and placement explains what happened, but I'm not sure how the AI would decide what a central city is.

[Aeson]

Maybe it has something to do with production/commerce? The highest population city wouldn't always be the most productive. I've been able to move my palace every time, but always to a size 3 city while all the others were size 2 or smaller.

[DrSpike]

There are some good suggestions here, and when I get time I'll pore over the savegames and see if any of the theories fit the data.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Originally posted by Xin Yu
Maybe the AI is smart enough to pick a large city in the center of your civ? Was the size 5 city at the edge of your civ?

I've noticed, watching the AI wage war, that it tends to march on the capitol city as the primary goal. If other cities are in the way, it sacks them, but the target is the capitol. This could be used with your strategy.

[Blaupanzer]

Build Forbidden Palace, near to the original capitol but more central. Then, make sure the target city for the Palace is at least two more in population than any other city. Then disband your capitol (which you have been using as a settler/worker farm. If in the ancient period, this works like a charm. I've done it recently (post 1.17f) in three games where the capitol was at one end of a continent or on a coast.

In the Middle Ages, the jump cannot be guaranteed solely by population. Then, using a leader makes more sense, if no wonders are available. (The Middle Ages start with several Wonder-building opportunities, then they peter out.)

For yucks, I tried to disband a city with two Wonders in it that my opponent was about to retake. I got the "too dangerous response with no option to proceed. This makes me suspect that cities with Wonders cannot be disbanded, although an example of one is obviously anecdotal.

[DrSpike]

I too have used this strat a lot. I agree the effect of disbanding the capital becomes harder to predict the later in the game it is - there are clearly other factors involved that aren't important for the early game.

[Xin Yu]

Could be trade. Some cities have road connecting to other civ's capitals, thus are favourable.