City state domination

Has anybody tried to make a city state ally and then repeatedly gift it units while dragging it into war? I'd imagine it's like herding cats but it seems a fun bit of cherry tapping to gift something like logistics artillery you can easily spam out in the capital (hammer out and rush buy with xp concentration) to them. Does the game associate you as the warmonger, or does the world turn heaping helpings of hate onto that one poor city state?

This is the "domination by proxy" strategy. I've seen it mentioned a couple times here but I'm yet to see someone executing it perfectly

stormtrooper412 said:

This is the "domination by proxy" strategy. I've seen it mentioned a couple times here but I'm yet to see someone executing it perfectly

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I'm not sure how one could "execute" a herding cats strategy "perfectly". How is that accomplished, by not forgetting the gift unit button too often ?

I just wanted to know if anybody has gotten it to work on the higher levels in any capacity. I'd imagine AI bonuses on high levels would let city states afford quite the army so if you could crank out a few super allies and keep them you could eventually roll stuff up like a blanket, even if it took 50 extra turns due to how much of a dunce the AI is with unit control.

I consider it to be a form of cherry tapping, but an amusing form, if it can work.

Pretty sure all promotions are wiped away when units are gifted. Also, the CS is as likely to delete gifted units as it is to use them to conquer a neighbor.

A couple of questions because I'm interested in trying out this strategy:

Why would a CS delete gifted units? Due to the unit cap?

Also would a Swedish Carolean, for example, lose it's automatic march promotion if gifted?

Browd said:

Pretty sure all promotions are wiped away when units are gifted. Also, the CS is as likely to delete gifted units as it is to use them to conquer a neighbor.

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Is XP wiped out too? What if you just insta-gift them?

Do city states delete units if already at war? Sucks that you can't give them logistics arty, but giving them 10-20 arty that you're not maintaining would still be useful if they didn't just delete them.

I tried this on DCL #29 with great success. I gave some caravels and Foreign Legions to a CS near Japan's borders who was allied with me, and he took 3 Japanese cities.

The CS do seem to do best with advanced melee units in my experience, so foreign legions make sense. Infantry are also interesting if you get Plastics quickly. I don't think it is much of a reliable strategy

What you want to do is give 6 rocket artillery to the warmonger sitting next to the culture leader on the next continent.

I have gifted units to an ally CS that I had a needed resource with. Thought I would help protect my investment since I could get there. The CS then put the melee unit in the water and got it killed. I am not sure you can depend on a CS to be reliable in any way.

Well deal with that by gifting them ships and only gift land units to landlocked CSs

I am certain that gifted units revert to 0 xp. I have had some success with the tactic, so I think it works best when you walk units to the CS. If you give three melee units on one turn, the CS cannot throw them all in the water! (At least not the first turn.) The CS will need a few turns to figure out how it wants to use the units. Gifts of arty and rocket launcher donations should be paired with a mobile unit, else the CS gets them too close to the enemy city. In my experience, the CS getting (and keeping) line-of-sight to the enemy AI city is a significant obstacle. The CS has no memory, so a city in view last turn becomes non-existent the next turn.

stormtrooper412 said:

Well deal with that by gifting them ships and only gift land units to landlocked CSs

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If an in-land CS has a hex of water, what is wrong with gifting them a boat? Also, I have heard you gift air-units if your city does not have a garrison. Anyone try that recently? I know from painful experience that air units on carriers disappear when gifted.

I was playing a MP game on Immortal a couple of weeks ago and became allies with a CS that was next to the guy playing Poland. I declared war and watched the CS proceed to sack his 2nd biggest city. That was amusing.

I must say though that CS are more likely to randomly mosey the units around and pillage things than actually attack in a useful way. Sounds like a very funny although unreliable strategy.