Can team-mates trade cities?

[Hans_Lemurson]

Is it possible to allow people who are on the same team to trade cities? It could be convenient if there is a misunderstanding in settling land, or if one player is better able to manage a conquered city than another.

I understand that city-transfers between players is frowned upon because it can result in one nation giving away all their cities to a 3rd party out of spite. But if players are on the same team, who win together and lose together, I can't see why there would be a problem.

Currently (in LT44, the only game I've played) transferring cities is not even a diplomatic option.
Is this because:
A) It is traditional to ban all city transfers because most LT games are free-for-all.
B) It is not possible to allow transfers between team-mates without allowing transfers between everyone.
C) There is some other multiplayer game-balance issue I am not considering.

[kevin551]

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The settings from LT32
set diplomacy=TEAM
set trading_city=enabled

City-transfers between team mates was useful, and not abused in LT32. Although in that game all team members had the same tech, am not sure if that is the same here.
The best example on my team, was the transferring of Pipo from an isolated, sacrificial outpost in the middle of enemy territory to a safespot at the rear.
It kept him in the game until the end, even though all his original cities were captured early on.
The tactic was highly beneficial to us, because it wrecked the chances of our strongest neighbour, before the game had even started.

[kevin551]

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In LT45 set team_pooled_research=disabled. I don't know why.
With this setting it would be a really bad idea to allow city trading.

[wieder]

Yeah. The city trading is disable for LT45 because while it's useful and really nice, it's also kind of too powerful without real pooled research. The players could swap cities when they want to protect the new techs. This is of course only one example.

The pooled research is disabled but tech trading inside the team is enabled. This allows the players to plan who will get the new fancy techs if there is a risk for stealing.

[Corbeau]

Why is swapping cities in order to protečt techs bad?

[wieder]

It's not only that the players advantage when protecting the techs. The players can also give cities to a player without the risk of inciting cities. And only for 22 hours. The rest of the players can take the cities back if they get better production or if they can avoid unhappiness. The same applies to military units causing unhappiness. Move them to someone who has no trouble with cities revolting. Or maybe there is one really good player who takes the cities and the units while attacking the others. No need to work with others except for giving and taking the cities.

It's a very powerful tool and while that alone is not a problem the problem is that with it one can pretty much kill many other disadvantages but only if you are lucky enough to have super active players playing in your team. So it kind of gives a real punishment to those who can play only once or twice a day.

[Corbeau]

So, basically, a patch that delays city takeover for, say, 24 hours or 1 or 2 turns, would pretty much solve the problem?

[wieder]

Good thinking. That would solve lots of issues. Maybe it would work if the transfer would take 2 turn changes and there could be only one city in the transfer at one time.

However coding that might not be that easy since there might be need for some UI elements.

[kevin551]

Why is swapping cities in order to protečt techs bad?

Because we have already experienced it back in the days when a small group of elite warclient players traded all their cities multiple times each turn.
It gave an enormous advantage to those few who knew about all the 'tricks' possible.
The longturn majority rejected such gameplay and adjusted the settings in future games to avoid it.