Nature Abhors a Vacuum

[NotLikeTea]

I'm not sure if this is generally useful, or a once in a lifetime event, but I found it impressive.

A massive war was taking place between the French and the Iroquois, with my territory acting as a bit of a buffer between the two sides. I was firendly with everyone, but never entered into any formal pacts or alliances.

France gets the upper hand, and starts taking over Iroquois cities. The first two cities it captures it razes to the ground. Siezing the opportunity, I build new cities where they old ones stood.

Within 10 turns the Iroquois were wiped out. All their 2 or 3 radius territories were reduced to radius 1 borders under the French. This left massize gaps in their territory. I move even more settlers north to fill in the blanks.

After the dust has settled, I have roughly doubles my territory and city count. This new territory is interspersed with former Iroquois and currently French cities, but they're angry and far closer to my capital than to Paris. Once I get my new cities building temples, I'm hoping for mass conversions.

This is by far my most succesful war, and I never fired a single shot. Settlers can be an offensive unit of amazing power.

Now I'm looking west. The English have done a pretty good job routing the Americans. I think I see a vacuum that needs filling

[Bblue]

Yep, I've done very similiar things.

Even getting in the habit of keeping a transport/galley loaded with a settler just waiting a forgein overseas war so that when the city radii start dropping from warfare I can jump in and snag any resources in which I don't have local access.

[ranald]

That reminds me of something that happened to me once.
The AI hates a vacuum.

The Greeks were pounding on Russia (my ally) so I sent some
troops over to help- mind you this was *way* far away from my
homeland. I found I didn't have enough troops to hold a city,
so I'd either take it and trade it to the Russians, or just raze it...

After a while the balance of power in the area was more to my
liking, but there was just one more city I needed to raze. So I
razed the city, pillaged a bunch of improvements (so there were
no roads between Greek and Russian territory) and extorted
some stuff from the Greeks for a peace treaty.

At which point the Greeks sent a settler and every single worker
they had, to rebuild the city and the improvements- escorted
by one single unit. Seeing as I had 6 cavalry still in the area,
I couldn't resist. At the end of it I had 14 captured workers.

[Thrawn05]

Although I must admit that there is nothing like a good land, sea and air war that drags on forever (I'm talking 20+ turns here), but I'm starting to like you're ideas (I've done some similar things myself, but I never made it a policy to do so).

My current game is playing the Romans on a small pangea map, with about 4 or so other civs. The Japanese consist of one city, totally within my borders (I have 3 culturally high city, each with a wonder or 2, surrounding him). Too bad its the capital, I would have captured it by culture many many turns ago. The funny thing is that he keeps threatening me to give him 1000 gold or else. I just laugh and say good bye. I don't feel like capturing him until I get some industrial units like the tank and make him my ultimate whipping boy.

War games are so much fun