Merchant of Venice as a CS gift? Wow!

In my long protracted game, I made friends with several City states to the point that one of them started giving me Great people, etc as gifts.

Well, I got a Merchant of Venice. The instructions said I can `puppet` a CS with him. I thought this was pretty interesting. So I sent him over to a CS over which I`d been fueding with the Zulus for (it was actually under attack at the time with several burning, pillaged areas) and set the Venice Merchant to buy it.

This worked well, but I also noticed that the CS wasn`t just puppeted, I could ANNEX it too. The CS had built up quite nicely on checking and was in a good position. I had plenty of happiness, so I did take it- BANG! One extra useful city gained by me without pulling a sweat.

Isn`t this Agent just a tad too powerful as a City state gift? Seems so to me.

Also, when negotiating with me, Siam was unhappy because I had destroyed a City state it was protecting, so I got a negative modifier. That`s wrong, I simply paid it to join my Nation, it`s not destroyed. Perhaps the negative modifier should be less and instead replaced with `Siam is not happy because you BRIBED a City state away which it was protecting`?

When you use a Merchant of Venice the city ceases to be a City State, so you did effectively destroy it. Even if someone else could capture it, they would not be able to liberate it back into a City State.

Hmmm. That`s being somewhat technical about it. In real-world speak when a person says `Destroyed` they`d mean a city being attacked and sacked\occupied. Convincing a city state to join your nation willingly through bribery isn`t destroying it.

Whatever. I can`t be bothered to argue the point.

I`ve just noticed there`s another thread on it buried below, so people know about this? I`m really surprised there isn`t more of a hooha. I reckon it`s way too much to allow a whole city to be bribed away so easily with a free Cs agent. It`s nice an all, but when something comes too easy it just feels like cheating. I`m tempted to call it a bug\cheat.

Maybe allow it (to non Venice Players) to just make the CS bribed to be an Ally for a really long time, like most of the game instead.

Socratatus said:

Hmmm. That`s being somewhat technical about it. In real-world speak when a person says `Destroyed` they`d mean a city being attacked and sacked\occupied. Convincing a city state to join your nation willingly through bribery isn`t destroying it.

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Agreed. "Destroyed" is not the right term for this. A diplo penalty of some sort is not unreasonable, but it should definitely be described differently.

Socratatus said:

I`ve just noticed there`s another thread on it buried below, so people know about this? I`m really surprised there isn`t more of a hooha. I reckon it`s way too much to allow a whole city to be bribed away so easily with a free Cs agent. It`s nice an all, but when something comes too easy it just feels like cheating. I`m tempted to call it a bug\cheat.

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There are numerous other threads, yeah. I'm surprised no one has chimed in yet complaining about "yet another MoV thread". There is a fair amount of hooha, on both sides of the issue; just, they've been hashed out fairly frequently, including in two or more threads from the previous week alone. I'm with you; it seems obvious to me that allowing MoVs to be gifted to (non-Venice) players is entirely inappropriate. Though I wouldn't go so far as to call it "gamebreaking", as some do.

This topic comes up so frequently...

You are gifted unique Civ units from militaristic city states.

So with the complete Patronage tree, is it such a huge surprise that you can be gifted a MoV? You can even be gifted a Khan as well. Yet, never seen a topic about amazement of being gifted a Khan...

Oh well, it`s the first time I ever completed the whole CS thing (I tend to wander off on something else). It`s a pretty huge reward. I`ve not received a `Khan` or anything like that.

I also play England almost exclusively and have very little interest in anything else, no matter how `good` or `cool` so don`t know much about the other unique Civ agents.

I did however know of the special abilities of the Merchant of Venice, I just thought only Venice Players could fully use it. Also, it says you can `puppet` but then I find you can annex it too, as I said earlier. So it`s basically a very easy free city.

p.s. Come to think of it now. How does a City state come across CIV special agents in the first place? And shouldn`t they use them for themselves? It don`t really make sense.

It would`ve made sense if Venice gave me the merchant of Venice as some kind of reward.

Maybe the Civ gave it them as a gift?

You can get merchants of venice from CSs? I never knew that was possible!

Can you actually post the exact wording of what the diplo modifier says? I would be surprised if it said you destroyed a CS they were protecting.

Theruss said:

You can even be gifted a Khan as well. Yet, never seen a topic about amazement of being gifted a Khan...

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Yes, and there's a reason for that. Being gifted a Khan isn't remotely in the same ballpark as being gifted a MoV. As has been pointed out in several of the previous threads on this topic.

crawf0rd said:

You can get merchants of venice from CSs? I never knew that was possible!

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Are those all links to different threads in which someone has posted in shock after receiving a Merchant of Venice from a city state? If so, that's... kind of hilarious. It almost qualifies as a form of mosaic-esque art.

Theruss said:

You can even be gifted a Khan as well. Yet, never seen a topic about amazement of being gifted a Khan...

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There are, but you have to go back to the first six to nine months after release of Vanilla.

If only we got a Great Merchant Point everytime posts about this, we'd have a brand new Sid Meier. ^_^

CountAccountant said:

Are those all links to different threads in which someone has posted in shock after receiving a Merchant of Venice from a city state? If so, that's... kind of hilarious. It almost qualifies as a form of mosaic-esque art.

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Yes they are -_-

crawf0rd said:

You can get merchants of venice from CSs? I never knew that was possible!

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I believe you bro, I don't know why, but I believe you.