A city state gave me Merchant of Venice ?

fotonut

Warlord
Joined
Apr 29, 2006
Messages
122
I was playing as Poland, and grabbed the social policy that allowed city states to give me great people. A few turns later one gives me a Merchant of Venice. I didn't think that was possible.
 
It's no different than being gifted a Khan from a city state. It happens occasionally, and the MOV is no exception.
 
I used to receive Khans all the time, pre-BNW. I've only had one post-BNW game where I was receiving GPs from city-states, and sure enough the second one was a Khan. I assume the MoV frequency is similar, though I hope not. The devs need to remove this "feature" stat.
 
I don't find it a problem unless Venice and/or Mongolia are in that current game, because otherwise it undermines their unique-ness.
 
I wish these threads would stop.

And I also wanna know what the chances are - from how often these threads appear it must be pretty high.

I would assume its an equal chance for each GP type, meaning its not really that rare to get one.
 
Count the amount of GP in civlopedia, if there is 10 GP's.. 10% chance to get a khan/MoV.. Though i rarely get great engineers.. Seems CS's like giving me writers and artists lately.
 
I don't find it a problem unless Venice and/or Mongolia are in that current game, because otherwise it undermines their unique-ness.
Just gonna copy my response to the most recent "Gifted a MoV" thread before this one:

The Khan, while powerful, is just a beefed-up version of the regular GG. The MoV, on the other hand, provides an absolutely unique ability that forms the entire crux of a civ's strategy. No other civ can do what Venice does (except Austria, kinda), and the MoV is what allows Venice to do it. Allowing another civ to be Venice for a day...not okay, from both an "appropriateness" perspective and a balance perspective. ("A random roll to steal a City-State. That's too much" [written by VainoValkea] is right-on.)
 
I wish these threads would stop.
I'm afraid these threads are not going to stop until this feature is removed from the game. It can be completely gamebreaking. Whenever I get one, and in one of my games I got 3 of them, it feels like abusing a bug. More people feel the same way, hence the number of threads.
 
I'm afraid these threads are not going to stop until this feature is removed from the game. It can be completely gamebreaking. Whenever I get one, and in one of my games I got 3 of them, it feels like abusing a bug. More people feel the same way, hence the number of threads.

Oh puh-lease.. really? game-breaking? Do you know what you have to GET to actually even be ELIGIBLE to get a MoV? Seriously... these thread need to stop because they are constantly popping up. :rolleyes:
 
I'm hoping for a patch that includes a full-screen pop-up anytime you're gifted a MoV that says "YES THIS CAN HAPPEN." Give it a voice-over, too.
 
Is it really worth filling the whole patronage tree because of some random great persons?

P.S. And I kinda don't see the point of complaining about such threads, zou can simply ignore em after all ...
 
Is it really worth filling the whole patronage tree because of some random great persons?

P.S. And I kinda don't see the point of complaining about such threads, zou can simply ignore em after all ...

True. And I like the point, MoV only happen if you spent 6 policies on nothing but Patronage. and even then you have as much of a chance of getting regular and other great people as a MoV and Khan.
 
The things that break people's games these days... I guess you didn't play SMAC and build the Cloning Vats... Or build Copernicus, Galileo and SETI Program in the same city in Civ II! :lol:

It's flavor... That comes at a severe cost as mentioned already. Seriously, getting a random culture and/or faith ruin has way more impact as by the time you finish Patronage, you should have your cities well up and running. Granted that on Deity or Immortal the CS might have a nice slew of buildings. But you also have to consider the opportunity cost: to fill up Patronage means, typically, foregoing or stalling Rationalism (unless you're Poland I guess...). I'd say you deserve a fair bit of compensation for that, given Rationalism's obscene power.
 
But you also have to consider the opportunity cost: to fill up Patronage means, typically, foregoing or stalling Rationalism (unless you're Poland I guess...). I'd say you deserve a fair bit of compensation for that, given Rationalism's obscene power.

Since patronage opens in the classical era -- not that big of an opportunity cost.

That and I'm pretty sure the game was designed so that most players would fill out two trees, or almost two trees before renaissance. It really depends on how soon you get that writer's guild and amphitheaters up to house great works up though. The religious buildings make a huge difference with early game too. And despite people hating on cathedrals, being able to house great works of art WAY before anybody else makes a significant dent in SP acquisition at a time when culture REALLY slows down. Although I'm pretty sure burning GAs for golden ages gets you more culture but sacrifices tourism and theming bonuses.

I think the real opportunity cost is rationalism vs. ideology. But even then, there's only three policies in rationalism that you REALLY want (four including the opener) unless you're signing a ridiculous amount of RAs. Getting four policies in renaissance is difficult, but not impossible.
 
I don't see why so many ppl are against this feature. I think its cool that you can get MoVs and Khans, as well as unique military units, from City States. Civ is supposed to be about alternate histories, so why couldn't Poland or Persia be blessed with exceptional merchants or powerful military generals? It really isn't gamebreaking if you get one every once in a while, and it adds an interesting touch to the game.
 
I wish these threads would stop.

And I also wanna know what the chances are - from how often these threads appear it must be pretty high.

It's not going to stop. Too many casual players fail to properly inform themselves on the details of the game. Then something like this happens to them and they think it's the first time it has ever happened to anyone, so they want to announce to the world. And we become increasingly annoyed at them.

I mean, there are still threads like "ZOMG, I'm Russia and a city-state just game me a Janissary!" despite the fact that this has been possible for over a year. You still even see threads about Khans every once in while.

It's not going to stop until people make a serious effort to check if the topic in question has already been addressed.
 
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