Eventually, I had about six of them. Suddenly I was told that this city could not support rifleman units and so a unit was to be disbanded. Same message hit three times in one turn, and suddenly there were three barbarian riflemen in the neighbourhood.

Now, do I underswtand that when the city could no longer support them, the riflemen reverted to barbarianhood? (Or whatever the right word is.)

It would seem that I would have been better off to bribe a few, and use them to pick off the rest.

Or have I missed something again?

Despotism = each unit in excess of the level of the city's pop costs a shield;

Monarchy = each unit in excess of 3 costs a shield;

Republic = each unit costs a shield;

Democracy = ditto;

Communism = Monarchy;

Fundamentalism = each unit in excess of 10 costs a shield.

Sounds like you ran out of shield support, Jim. Always pays to check the shield situation when you're buying barb units.

Depending on the overall situation, sometimes it's worthwhile letting the barbs take a city, then buy the barb units around the city, which become NONE units providing they're closer to the barb city than any of your own cities. Then, when you've mopped up, buy back the city. If you feel the urge, disband the units within the city - costing shields - and replace them with the NONE units you've acquired.

quote: Originally posted by finbar on 07-31-2000 09:14 PM Depending on the overall situation, sometimes it's worthwhile letting the barbs take a city, then buy the barb units around the city, which become NONE units providing they're closer to the barb city than any of your own cities. Then, when you've mopped up, buy back the city. If you feel the urge, disband the units within the city - costing shields - and replace them with the NONE units you've acquired.

Well, quite frankly, I was fooling around. While this _was_ an outlying city, It had walls, guarded by several riflemen and a cannon. I didn't _need_ to go out and muck around with getting to close quarters with the Barbs, I just did it. Of course, I wanted to keep them from tromping across my nicely irrigated fields with their big boots, and so on.

And of course, this being a rather sparsely populated area, they kept popping up every turn.

Still, I suppose I'd have been better off to bribe a few, put them into some nicely placed fortifications, and have them take on the others as they came up.

The Romans were good at that sort of thing; they'd hire and outfit a few units from the barbarians, and set them to guarding the frontiers. Called them _Limitanei_ which you could translate as 'Borderers.'

.................

As the game worked out, the other Civs were too far away to give me much military trouble, and of course also too far away to set up easy trading routes with.

I had this gold shipment on the way when my ship actually landed on AC, so just out of curiousity I played a little longer to see what the result would be. 1028 Gold!

Now that's what you call a demonstration of the value of trading. Too bad it happened after the game was over.