When to sell/gift units?

T

Trackmaster

Warlord
Joined
Jul 14, 2014
Messages
258
When I first started playing this game recently, I tried to sell (and later discovered gifting to CS) units periodically if I wasn't planning on going to war for a while, were in strategically poor locations, and/or were behind on their upgrades to save on the gold maintenance costs. But after reading more, I've learned about how upgraded units keep their promotions and special abilities, and have found from experience that not keeping an adequate standing army usually leads to serious invasions (I'm playing consistently on King now).

Does anybody have any thoughts or philosophies as to when they'll get rid of a unit to keep maintenance costs reasonable? Or would some people say that you should never under any circumstances because the promotions are way to valuable to lose?
 
At some point (usually after railroads) you'll run out of stuff for workers to do and can disband some of them. Even later (after all strategic resources discovered), a single worker would be enough for repairing any pillaging done.

If you have no access to horses, spearmen won't be able to be upgraded and so can be gifted when they become too weak for any combat.
 
Only gift when your army is very strong.

If you have a lot of units, and there is a CS quest for gifting, then that's a perfect opportunity to gift away your less modern, un-promoted units.

Units with multiple promotions can be kept / upgraded.
Units from past eras and fewer or no promos can be gifted as CS quests.

Have arsenal of democracy social policy? Gift, Gift Gift....:)

Giving to the AI should be done when you are waging a proxy war and you want the right side to win or break even. Its a bit of a gamble.

I have often gifted AA guns to AI who are fighting a runaway war monger with an air force. Submarines to weaker AI battling a naval power. Balance the odds to try and prevent run away AI.

Gifting powerful units is always a risk because 10 turns later they could be back on your border making threats. So be careful with those rocket artillery units :)
 
Yeah, sometimes I like to help my friendly CS's "fight the good fight" without having to take the diplo hit and wage war myself. I hate when my allied CS's get wiped out. I don't worry so much about them turning on me, but I worry that if they're being invaded they won't last much longer and my gift is wasted.

It's good to read that I wasn't alone in trying to consolidate my army and make it more efficient and economic. Especially in times of peace. Sometimes when I'm 2-3 behind in upgrades I wonder if the upgrades are even more expensive than producing an entire new unit would be. As I was saying before, strategic location is important too. If I was using a unit mostly to scout and he's 20 turns away or so from where I would need him to be in case a war broke out, and he wasn't especially promoted, I might get rid of him too (of course this also assumes that I'm too distracted to manually have him scout out new developments behind the fog of war).
 
I never gift units. There is always a better use for them or a better way to throw them away, even with maintenance. Now, if you could gift scouts or get more than 10 influence for them, I would reconsider.
 
Think about the conversion though, assuming no special requests (and correct me if I'm wrong on some of my hypothetic numbers):

You get let's say 30 gold for selling a unit, and 5 influence for gifting it, that's 6 gold per influence.

You give 500 gold for 40 influence. That's 12.5 gold per influence.

Again, my hypotheticals might be well off, but I think that you'll find that you get a better deal by gifting the unit rather than selling and gifting at a different time. And another cost to gifting could be the foregone promotions (although you can gift useless outdated units, or even nearly killed units, for the same 5 influence).
 
If you finished Tradition anyway, you can garrison your trash units. That right there is better than gifting them: it's not hurting you in maintenance, increased city bombard, and best of all you keep the unit for later just in case.
 
Yeah, I definitely make sure to max my garrisons if I do Tradition or Military (even if I don't, I still garrison out of habit and to make them easier to find), but I rarely do Tradition anyway.
 
joncnunn said:
At some point (usually after railroads) you'll run out of stuff for workers to do and can disband some of them. Even later (after all strategic resources discovered), a single worker would be enough for repairing any pillaging done.

If you have no access to horses, spearmen won't be able to be upgraded and so can be gifted when they become too weak for any combat.
Click to expand...

Never! Once my workers run out of usefulness, I find a pleasant spot (Plantation, Chateau, pasture) and set them to sleep. They earned their retirement and I want them to enjoy it. At this point in the game the tiny amount of GPT they cost is negligible.

As for soldiers, the only reason I would ever sell one is if I built tall and need the aluminum for space ship parts. Otherwise they become picquets to extend my civilization's sight range.
 
My uses for surplus workers, in order of commonality:

#1 AI bait in war. Nothing like luring out that garrisoning Xbow with a captured worker.
#2 embark them and station them to protect my trade routes
#3. Build meaningful roads in other people's territory
#4. Build forts, just in case
#5. Send them in as obstacles to interfere in other wars, which I am not a direct party to
#6. Plop them on neutral archaeological sites until I have my own archaeologist
#7. Road spam other players, just to increase their maintenance
#8. Repair my allies' pillaged resources

In short, I never run out of uses for workers.
 
When you aim for Diplomatic victory sometimes even 5 inf could be critical.
Once I played as Portugal on large islands map (emperor) and my strategy was to spam Naus. I had decent land army and a couple of naval units to defend my cities.
So after using Nau's UA I just gifted it to a CS cause I didn't need them anymore. That was an easy DipV
 
i actually have done the road spam myself. is a real option. same with railroad spam as they cost 2 gold per turn.
the only time i gift unis is when playing as germany and i get too many barbarian tribes joining my cause or when supporting someone in a proxy war.
 
Germany's early game is a good time to gift brutes. If you're still 1 or 2 cities big, it's easy to outgrow your supply, which just kills you. But what you really need is to capture some cities with them, & get that supply up. Even after they go obsolete you can garrison them.
 
JeSuisNapoleon said:
Giving to the AI should be done when you are waging a proxy war and you want the right side to win or break even. Its a bit of a gamble. I have often gifted AA guns to AI who are fighting a runaway war monger with an air force. Submarines to weaker AI battling a naval power. Balance the odds to try and prevent run away AI. Gifting powerful units is always a risk because 10 turns later they could be back on your border making threats. So be careful with those rocket artillery units.
Click to expand...

I have never had to fight units I gifted, but that is prolly because my AI gifting always seems to go to waste! I would love to see some tips about this. I gift 2x as many units as I would need to save a city, and especially defensive units (AAs w/ covers, subs with +1 sight). It never seems to do any good, and the city I was trying to save falls. Lately I have instead been trying to surround the city under attack, but that is tricky too.
 
beetle said:
I have never had to fight units I gifted, but that is prolly because my AI gifting always seems to go to waste! I would love to see some tips about this. I gift 2x as many units as I would need to save a city, and especially defensive units (AAs w/ covers, subs with +1 sight). It never seems to do any good, and the city I was trying to save falls. Lately I have instead been trying to surround the city under attack, but that is tricky too.
Click to expand...

the XP on gift is reset to 0 (it is technically a new unit of the same type they recevive - same as with the capture mechanic - captured unit is destroyed with all experince and a fresh one is spawned as the captured unit)
 
peddroelm said:
the XP on gift is reset to 0
Click to expand...

That explains much of the problem! I was wondering why the AI behaved like they didn't have LoS when I specifically gifted them units with +1 vision. That is a terrible game mechanic.

0xp on capture I learned the hard way. Loaded carriers loose their planes, so that sucks too. I never suspected gifted units were nerfed.

I have tried, on the same turn, gifting a melee unit on hill and a couple well placed siege units. (I was too stingy to gift well promoted ranged units. The siege units were newly minted.) On his turn, the AI first pulls back the melee (thus losing targeting for the siege units), and then move the siege units forward. Predictably, the siege units die before even getting off a shot. Very frustrating! Units which should be sufficient to save the city, only buy the AI one turn.
 
Dont even try to do the math on what might be 'sufficient to save the city'.
The CS Ai is just as bad (worse?) than the regular AI.

However, I have seen a CS do remarkably well with just one AA gun and one artillery. I have also seen them squander 6+ units and loose thier city to seemingly inferior armies.

Whats really nice about AA guns / SAM is that in some cases the AI will send every air unit they have to the waiting jaws of death. Then they will build more. It can be very situational, but also very efficient way to ruin the AI war machine.
 
How technically do you gift?
Everytime I have tried I have clicked the unit and nothing happens, it never gets delivered.
 
Are you gifting to a CS or to another civ?

Easiest are CS gifts. If your unit is nowhere near the CS, just bring up that CS's diplo screen. Navigate to gift unit and your cursor turns into a little gift box. Click on the unit you want to gift, and it should arrive in 3 turns.

If your unit is already inside the CS's (or another civ's) border, just pull up the auxiliary menu (where fortify and delete unit usually reside) and the gift option should be there.

Note that you can't gift scouts or, IIRC, civilian units (and only Sweden can gift Great Persons).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Phosphoraptor
  • Locked
[DLL] (7-NS) Embarked units lose movement points when starting next to enemy naval units
2
Replies
31
Views
776
Stalker0
S
F
Limited Passive XP Gain For Units
Replies
3
Views
267
Tekamthi
Tekamthi
L
Rise of the Mongols scenario. 50 turn Deity walk through.
Replies
0
Views
2K
lerrocco
L
Y
  • Locked
[Complex] (7-NS) Recon Units Line Rework
Replies
11
Views
538
N.Core
N.Core
Lonecat Nekophrodite
Millennia Review: Military Units.
Replies
0
Views
464
Lonecat Nekophrodite
Lonecat Nekophrodite
Top Bottom