My main question is that if you gift units, do you get any bonus with that civ. I see none in the area where it tells you the pluses and minuses, but is there another.

I know you can gift units to help a civ fight off another in a war you do not what to get involved in, but this does not seam to help very often. Can anyone explain the idea to me? Thanks

You get no diplo modifiers. You can gift missionaries although some consider this abusing a game mechanic. You can also gift obsolete units to AI vassals for them to upgrade - it's cheaper for them than you.

Like any other aspect of civ, it depends on the circumstances. But the chances of actually getting something good out of gifting units is pretty marginal.

Gifting to a colony or vassal can be useful, especially if you plan on warring on your vassals front and your target has no love lost for your vassal.

priceless

if you want to stop a war without paying in techs, make sure you promote them and gift them exactly where you'd want them yourself. If you gift them near a city freshly lost and promote them to cr, the ai will usually use them to take the city back, if you gift them in a city right before it's being assaulted the ai will let them there and hopefully the other guy's sod will be trashed. Also, it doesn't have any diplo hit with the other guy.

But you have to:

- plan it some time in advance - that should be easy, when someone's wheehorn it's pretty obvious who's the target;
- take into acct. they'll lose the 25% fortify bonus when you gift them.

if you gift them in a city right before it's being assaulted the ai will let them there and hopefully the other guy's sod will be trashed.

I must emphasize the bolded part, since I've seen the AI send gifted Infantry to garrison far-off cities, leaving Longbows to defend the front line. :crazyeye:

yeah, it should be same turn, otherwise it'll do it's best to move them anywhere but where they're needed

It is extreemly useful in mp, especially if combined with AP abuse...

I've done it in a team game before, and actually did in it a recent culture win, as the other civ on my continent was friendly and had a defensive pact, but much weaker than me. Just to make sure no one tried any tricks with him, since he bordered one of my culture cities, I gifted him a bunch of units to up his strength.

The enemy of my enemy is my gifting friend.

I once gifted the backwards Aztecs a tank so they take back from the Romans a coastal city I wanted to later take away from them (The Romans were popular and powerful whereas it was late game and the Aztecs had Monty).

Of course they put it straight on garrison duty in the middle of their empire safe from the Roman expeditionary force.

I once gifted 6 artillery units to Ghandi so he could finish off Catherine after I had beat her down badly and she had just become the Vassal of Boudica. I didn't want to tangle with big red (on my continent) but Ghandi was fairly safe from her on the other land mass where Catherine had been giving him heckles the entire game.

It was kinda poetic really. :lol:

Didn't gain me squat, but it was fun to watch.

You get no diplo modifiers. You can gift missionaries although some consider this abusing a game mechanic.

Why would that be considered an abuse?

If I gift a unit it is an older unit. The Ai upgrade cost is much lower.

I gave Hatshepsut 40 Infantry and she cleared the continent.

Why would that be considered an abuse?

Because you do this when the AI either a) don't have open borders with you(in a caravel) or b) is in theocracy, and the result is that you still are able to spread whatever religion you want to them...

Because you do this when the AI either a) don't have open borders with you(in a caravel) or b) is in theocracy, and the result is that you still are able to spread whatever religion you want to them...

I can understand (a), but (b) seems wrong to me - in theocracy, you cannot spread a non-state religion in your own cities AFAIK.

I can understand (a), but (b) seems wrong to me - in theocracy, you cannot spread a non-state religion in your own cities AFAIK.

yeah you can. the ai can't, but you can

Does that mean that you can spread a non-state religion in your own cities even if you are in theocracy? I seriously doubt it. Unfortunately, I rarely use theocracy so I don't have much experience of this :(

You could also argue that the hard limit of three missionaries is circumvented by gifting them away as soon as they reach the border.

Related question: If you gift a religion-nutty AI (eg isabella) three missionaries of a useless religion in a very remote location, will this stifle her own missionary zeal or is she smart enough to disband them?

I never seen the AI not using a gifted missionary

@Bippukt

Theocracy supresses unwanted non-state religion spread. The phrasing in civilopedia and in civic screen is highly misleading

@rrolo "I never seen the AI not using a gifted missionary"

a shucks I thought I'd gift them on some weird location, but it has to be within his borders...

You could try gifting 3 missionaries in some out-of-the way little city that the AI is so fond of settling sometimes, and see whether the AI will try to send over a boat to pick them up or just stop producing missionaries...

They definitely move them to better locations if the can since 3.13 , but they use them .

@Bippukt

Theocracy supresses unwanted non-state religion spread. The phrasing in civilopedia and in civic screen is highly misleading

Well, I tested it and it seems that this is one more thing which I didn't know even after having the game for 3+ years :mad:

Tell me about misleading :mad:

Confirming screenshots attached. Now I agree that it is an abuse.

Related question: If you gift a religion-nutty AI (eg isabella) three missionaries of a useless religion in a very remote location, will this stifle her own missionary zeal or is she smart enough to disband them?
Why would she have to disband them? You can have 3 of each type of missionary, not 3 total. So she can still build her missionaries for her religion.

Re: theocracy. Running it to take advantage of the "no spread of non-state religion" isn't really the point. IMO it's quite disadvantageous. I personally prefer OR, and only run theocracy late game after my main infrastructure is in place, or if I have multiple neighbors that will give me a positive diplo for running it. The only drawback of multiple religions throughout your empire is that you'll have to spend some hammers on missionaries (and possibly monasteries) in order to get your state religion spread to the cities that you want to take advantage of OR/theo/pacifism in. Non state religion also serve as possible happy citizens and border culture help. As far as I know, the number of your cities that have the state religion doesn't factor into an AI's relation so long as you run their choice of religion.

You can spread religions yourself under theocracy.

Frankly, unless you're role playing or something the only reason to run Theo is the extra unit XP in your unit cities.

Or to get Zara, Isabella, Justinian, or Saladin to friendly. Although most of these guys will love you already from having their religion.

Right, the civic notes say "no non-state [praying hands religion symbol] spread" which is easy to misunderstand as meaning that only the state religion will spread, but actually means that religions will only spread if done by your national units, i.e. missionaries. So by gifting missionaries to a civ in theocracy you free up additional missionaries you can build (limited to 3 [or 4?] per religion otherwise)

As for gifting military units, one of the hints says "units cost money in maintenance, don't build fifty when fifteen will do." If you're right under the domination threshold and have a bunch of vassals, giving them units will help them to raze everything in sight, (in my experience) but use your own units if you want to keep a city. By that point you can probably generate a lot more units than you can make effective use of, particularly if you're abusing Nationhood well.

Right, the civic notes say "no non-state [praying hands religion symbol] spread" which is easy to misunderstand as meaning that only the state religion will spread, but actually means that religions will only spread if done by your national units, i.e. missionaries. So by gifting missionaries to a civ in theocracy you free up additional missionaries you can build (limited to 3 [or 4?] per religion otherwise)

As for gifting military units, one of the hints says "units cost money in maintenance, don't build fifty when fifteen will do." If you're right under the domination threshold and have a bunch of vassals, giving them units will help them to raze everything in sight, (in my experience) but use your own units if you want to keep a city. By that point you can probably generate a lot more units than you can make effective use of, particularly if you're abusing Nationhood well.

I think the razing part depends on who your vassal is. Genghis Khan loves to raze cities, but some leaders rarely do.

Gifting units isn't something I've done much, but gifting units to the civ they're at war with is a way of damaging an enemy when you're not willing to be at war with them yourself.

Gifting missionaries does make quite a bit of sense by reducing unit maint., unless you have a particular target city in mind for espionage purposes.

there have been times when I've gifted another civ units to prevent them from capitulating. If you can broker a peace treaty, it allows you to swoop in for the kill.

there have been times when I've gifted another civ units to prevent them from capitulating. If you can broker a peace treaty, it allows you to swoop in for the kill.
Exactly, or you can gift technologically advanced units to a buffer state instead of giving them the tech itself.

Unit gifting is fairly useless for single player since the AI needs to get a huge number of units before it starts using them intelligently. In multi though unit gifting has been a pain in the ass for me more than once. Usually what will happen is I'll kill one person, and come very close to killing one or two more but by then I'm so far ahead that people have started gifting units to whoever I'm at war with and it will slow me down a ton.

Unit gifting is fairly useless for single player since the AI needs to get a huge number of units before it starts using them intelligently. In multi though unit gifting has been a pain in the ass for me more than once. Usually what will happen is I'll kill one person, and come very close to killing one or two more but by then I'm so far ahead that people have started gifting units to whoever I'm at war with and it will slow me down a ton.

I can see where that could get ugly. You're like: WTH, there's redcoats and cossacks in this Native American city. :lol:

Does the Ai ever gift units??? It is not something I have ever seen.

I do agree gifting missionaries could be a slight issue if the Ai is not programed to realise a problem.

Its a flaw in the Ai if you are after a religious victory.