Gifting Units to CS A Total Waste of Time

Cicerosaurus

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Along with the inability to maintain a meaningful ability to stop spies, the gifting of units to CS is a waste of time.

1. The gratitude you receive is pitiful

2. In a high percentage of cases they do not appear. Eight consecutive units I gifted to Wittenburg simply vanished into the ether.

3. If they do arrive, the CS is even more useless on defence than the AI is on attack. It is frustrating to see a rifle unit run across the muzzles of two cannons when it could just about taken one out completely.

Bah.
 
When you gift units, it takes a few turns for it to show up. There is some sort of built-in limit on how many you can send though that is not documented. So let's say I sent 2 units at once. If I wait a few turns, they should appear. If I decided to send 8 units instead of 2 at once, none will appear. Similarly, if I send 2 units, wait a turn and send 5 more before the first 2 show up, none of them will appear. The numbers I used here are guesses as the actual values aren't known. The whole thing is stupid and pointless and I have no idea why it happens but I hate it with a passion and it sucks some fun out of the CS system.
 
Thanks Hobbysyoyo. It generally takes three turns for them to turn up and if you send more than one at a time it is always a gamble, so I sent one every turn for ten turns. The first and second turned up and after the tenth failed to materialise I realized the SC was going to be taken anyway.
 
No problem. You can imagine my horror the first time I sent units to a CS ally that was under seige only to have them never show up. It wad enraging when I found out that this happens almost like the devs planned it, to say the least. The worst part is probably that the devs have no issue programming tye spying mechanic so that there can be endless cascades of coup murder spam but oh lordy sending more than one unit to a CS is a power they think players should never have.

I like the concept of CS (and they have much improved since CiV vanilla) but their gameplay execution is wonky, can be unfun and needs an overhaul.
 
I agree. A few iterations ago- it may have been Civ 3, you could airlift units in but if the enemy had fighters around there was a percentage chance of the airlift disappearing.

I think something like that could be employed (with suitable mechanics) because as it stands, if it worked, being able to ship a large military unit to anywhere on the globe in three days is a bit of a giggle.
 
Yeah, hopefully with the BNW airports and airlifts things will get fixed. I can see why the devs made this system, but the lack of documentation and justification for it is unforgiveable.
 
Units take three turns to arrive (hard-coded in the C++, not set via the XML files) and you can have a maximum of 20 units in transit (again hard-coded)

BUT

The unit must have a valid plot to "land" on - ie revealed to the CS, not enemy land, of the correct domain (land/water) and not exceeding the stacking limit - otherwise the unit is killed off. The main restriction in that list is "revealed" as CS units rarely stray over the border, the CS knows about very little of the map.

Send the CS an Aircraft carrier with a fighter onboard (if you're flushed with cash!) - the CS will get both units and the fighter will reveal a large chunk of map!
 
Thanks whoward69, but I was Allied with the CS so I could see the battle unfold. There was sufficient space for units to turn up without going outside their territory. They just failed to appear.

Which was a bit different to the next time when I sent aid to La Venta and they seemed to turn up every time. Not that they did any good.
 
Units take three turns to arrive (hard-coded in the C++, not set via the XML files) and you can have a maximum of 20 units in transit (again hard-coded)

BUT

The unit must have a valid plot to "land" on - ie revealed to the CS, not enemy land, of the correct domain (land/water) and not exceeding the stacking limit - otherwise the unit is killed off. The main restriction in that list is "revealed" as CS units rarely stray over the border, the CS knows about very little of the map.

Send the CS an Aircraft carrier with a fighter onboard (if you're flushed with cash!) - the CS will get both units and the fighter will reveal a large chunk of map!

It's a well-known bug whoward. Send to many units and none arrive. It's somewhere around 3 or four during an 8 turn period or something like that.
 
Along with the inability to maintain a meaningful ability to stop spies, the gifting of units to CS is a waste of time.

1. The gratitude you receive is pitiful

2. In a high percentage of cases they do not appear. Eight consecutive units I gifted to Wittenburg simply vanished into the ether.

3. If they do arrive, the CS is even more useless on defence than the AI is on attack. It is frustrating to see a rifle unit run across the muzzles of two cannons when it could just about taken one out completely.

Bah.

I still haven't played Gods and Kings.

Is the influence/unit granted to a CS still 1 like it is in Vanilla?

That paltry amount alone is more than reason enough to refuse gifting units to a CS.

I mean, that isn't enough influence to last more than two turns of CS influence decay even under the most optimal conditions...and most units take much much longer than two turns to build.
 
Along with the inability to maintain a meaningful ability to stop spies, the gifting of units to CS is a waste of time.

1. The gratitude you receive is pitiful

2. In a high percentage of cases they do not appear. Eight consecutive units I gifted to Wittenburg simply vanished into the ether.

3. If they do arrive, the CS is even more useless on defence than the AI is on attack. It is frustrating to see a rifle unit run across the muzzles of two cannons when it could just about taken one out completely.

Bah.

:lol: So true . Somebody else noticed that your gifted units dont appear . I never gift anymore myself . And yes the gratitude is too low .
 
Seems gratitude, or gaining influence, was never intended to be the point of gifting units IMO. I don't really use this feature much, mainly just to aid CSs that are being attacked by other civs.

They say that one of the new tenets of the Freedom ideology will greatly increase the influence given by gifting units, thus making gifting worthwhile for that purpose.
 
Few things are so useless as to be always so. Besides helping the city state defend themslelves, it also can be a stopgap for keeping an alliance until you can afford a proper payment.
 
Perhaps you need to view this from another perspective if I may say so?

What I mean I will try to explain with an example. Consider this:

A single continent, Korea on the northest (me), Russia Southest (AI), Arabia and Spain in midle West-Northwest respectively and Greece (another user middle south). Between me and Russia lie two city states that block the passes to me. So naturally I had them allied (helped that they were marine and culture :D) and Russia DOWs on me.
So she had to pass through them first. What do I do? I gift them tanks OFC!
Long story short its the first time I have seen city states puppet player cities.
I didn't even lift a finger and got a lucrative war compensation package. The tanks I gifted were more or less obsolete since by the time I build new ones I had all the military buildings up and running and steam rolled here in her weakened state.

Win win :goodjob:

It wont work every-time but it can be a good strategy for providing some distraction to the enemy while you get rid off useless units.
 
What do I do? I gift them tanks OFC!
Long story short its the first time I have seen city states puppet player cities.

Gifting resource-dependent units usually means they will be half-strength when the CS uses them.

It's gotten better than Vanilla at least in that late-era peaceful AI seems less likely to decide to conquer CS's out of the blue. But either way gifting a unit is exactly as pointless as mentioned in OP. The only way to defend a CS is to park your units around their city.
 
I'm not sure if this is worthwhile mentioning or not at all.

If you gift city states your scouts, they will immediately start exploring with the scouts and not use them for defense.
 
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