Massive exploit! Give away core cities.

[m4rt14n]

Easiest way is just to give the city away to an enemy. AI HAS to accept gift, it's hardcoded in the program, not like the Civilization III AI. So u give the city, and immediately attack the same turn. Enslave/Exterminate. Problem solved. This way you shouldnt worry bout losing the settlement's income for a turn and waste money and troops retaking the cities.

The crazy way is to do it mulitple times at the same turn. THe hapless AI couldnt refuse it, and ull end up from a 30,000 pop city down to a 1,000something.

The beauty of it is that if you enslave the settlement multiple times and "redirect" it to ur backwater settlement, you can end up with Huge or Large cities in a short time.

I did it with my Scipii campaign. I would fill up a city to enable it to build the next governor building, multi-enslave it afterwards and give the pop to another settlement. Also the influx of slaves would give ur population bonus for ur entire faction. Just make sure u exterminate them once ur done upgrading cities. No need for entertainment building lol.

You'd get alot of slave rebels, but hey thats wat the youngones' r for rite?

[AssasinsShadow]

That could really help my Scipii campaign... Walking across Asia Minor is annoying, esp. with heavy onagers in your armies.

[Swordsman]

I tried to give away a city to the Numidians (enemy) once, and they wouldn't accept it. Think the message was something like "it's not in our best interests to accept at this time". So I don't think AI always HAS to accept it-- but from posts here it looks like it usually does.

[sapi]

I apologize to those of you who undoubtably already know this exploit.

lol

Also, be careful. The city does not always revolt back into your hands. Example: I was just playing as the greek cities, and one turn i noticed i now had a new city. It's up to the north of me and just north-east of the julii. It was owned by the macedonians (who i'm at war with).

It turns out that last turn, the brutii captured it, but it rebelled. The macedonians must have treated the people badly, so it rebelled into the best of the hellnistic factions (me), the greek cities. So be careful - wouldn't you hate it if rome (that you just captured as the julii) revolted into the brutii's hands. Ouch