Giving Units as Gifts

If memory serves me correctly I was able to offer military units to other players as gifts in civ2 which would spur scientific advancement in other civilizations. This was often times helpful if an ally was about to be destroyed. I could wisk them a mechanical infantry and modern tank and my ally would be saved and could exact a heavy toll on our enemy while I prepare my nation for a quick blitzkrieg attack against our foe.

In Civ 3, one of the first things I noticed was that I could no longer offer military units to my allies. Or perhaps in my games I merely overlooked the ability somehow??

no, you can't give units to the AI in civ3, but you can give them workers. that would be nice to have it back for civ4 though. of course my ally won't get my units for free. CHA-CHING.

yes giving other civs your units was a good feature in Civ2 because you could support your allies in wars against your rivals without having to go to war yourself.
It should be brought back in Civ4, and you should be able to sell units to other civs, perhaps developing an arms trade.

i wonder why they removed it in the first place? cause i liked giving away old units.

If memory serves me correctly, it had something to do with player exploits of the AI. Something with selling obsolete units for good techs/etc. It is roughly the same reason they made it nearly impossible to deal in cities after v1.21 Vanilla patch.

Personally I would prefer that all products a civilization produces should be tradeable.

it would make sense considering the arms trade is one of the most lucrative trade in the world today.

Just picture selling off SSNs/SSKs, battleships, destroyers, planes, etc etc etc.

the only real problem is that units from Civ A are the exact same as units form Civ B. Unless you do not have the techs, most of the time its cheaper to produce your own. Currently 1st tier weapon producers make money because their tanks are better than other tanks. Of course it sounds from the Civ 4 prerelease stuff that militaries will be different.

Personally I would prefer that all products a civilization produces should be tradeable.

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I would personally prefer exploits be dealt with and options removed if the players are using it in the wrong way.

city trading was removed because players can surround cities with units, sell it off to the AI for a pretty penny and techs, declare war, and retake it.

unit trading was also a big exploit in Civ2.

Unless the AI is fixed, I don't want nor do I expect Firaxis to reintroduce them.

My problem with that, though, is that surely the problems can be solved with a few 'valuation' algorithms. i.e. An AI civ will look at the unit you are offering him in terms of the # of resources and shield cost, its tech level, its A/D/M values and assign its OWN value to the trade-perhaps modified by the nations' current relationship and the sellers reputation. Of course, this algorithm wouldn't be an absolute, but could be flexible to allow for negotiations, but it would probably fix an absolute upper and even lower value, at which point the buying AI would become increasingly upset with you-this would easily close the obsolete 'fire-sale' tactic from Civ2 (I confess that I NEVER used this tactic, as I only ever gave units which I TRULY wanted my allies to have!)
A similar valuation system could be, in fact, applied to ALL trades across the board, to make diplomacy and trade that much more REAL. Now, I am no computer programmer, but I am assuming that such an algorithm would not be beyond the realms of possibility!!

Also, Sir_Schwick, though I admit that XP-based diversification of military units would make unit trading MUCH more worthwhile (after all, if YOUR tanks are naturally much better against other tanks, then that gives you a certain EDGE in 'weapons trades') there are other situations where unit trades could be worthwhile.
For instance, imagine a small nation which has LOTS of oil, but very little iron or rubber (some, but not enough to supply their civilian and military needs) You can sell them the tanks you build, and could even make the trade in return for a certin # of oil units per turn. Additionally, your civ might be a bit more advanced than your ally, you could then sell your high-tech equipment to your slightly lower tech ally.
Another situation is where you 'trade'-not the weapons-but the manpower to act as mercenaries. You hand over temporary control of some of your units to an ally, and they can use them to bolster defenses as needed. This would mean that you would continue to pay both the manpower and maintainance costs, but the units would retain the current status (like Elite, for instance). Plus, you get the money, tech or resources, whilst knowing that you have a better than average chance of getting the unit(s) back!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I agree, I think if you're going to have trading of any kind, you have to have a solid valuation system behind the AI. I'd put forward that Civ3's AI has a very good valuation system, but the problem is not how it values, but the fact that the AI can't see the 'big picture' hence the city trading, which probably works perfectly in isolation becomes an exploit when you consider how humans exploit it by the strategy I mentioned above.

With regards to unit trading, before you even get to valuation, the AI would need to have some sort of 'needs based assesment' algorithm, which may be the feedback mechanism for its city builds as well. What this system basically does is send instructions to the city AI on what the Civ needs, etc. Once the AI knows what it needs, then it can perhaps approach other Civs (human players included) for arms, if they think they can't produce enough units in time. Conversely, if human players started to dump weapons on the AI, the AI may refuse because it knows it doesn't need Type X unit. Also, the AI would have to know roughly how many of each type they need and their economy can support.

This goes back to the forecasting tools I was suggesting a while ago about using simple forecasting algorithms for the AI to take past growth trends and project future income. The data for these forecasts would be difficult by human players to manipulate and exploit as they encompass multi-turns, and could be based on historical 50 turn data. If the AI can figure out that its economy will generate X amount of gold per turn in the 10 turns given past growth, then if the human player got smart and tried to dump 100 units of a type the AI needs (ie: 100 mech infantry in the modern era) the AI could still reasonably refuse because it may just bankrupt it. Naturally, there can also be exceptions. If the AI is at war for example, its projections can take into account possible city captures which could increase gold income and upkeep bonuses, thus it may be a bit more willing to take on extra units. This would allow human players to support losing sides in a war by giving it a bit more unit than the Civ might want under peacetime conditions.

Other than that, a valuation system instituted in a vacuum, no matter how good, is going to be exploited because the AI in that context simply cannot anticipate the big picture, mainly how these extra units may actually be things that are costing it upkeep and not doing very much for it. A good example would be the dumping obsolete unit exploit. If a valuation system is altered to capture that and the AI will now no longer want to trade obsolete units, human players will just go and find a more modern unit which (on the margin) the AI will still want and dump them en masse to cripple to the AI economy, thus, the fix is immediately countered when the AI doesn't really knwo what it needs.

It's a good idea; I never got a chance to play Civ II (I didn't have a computer at the time), but I have played SMAC, and I used that pretty often to keep an ally in the running (think trade...even two energy per turn is nice).

I think that it should be limited if it is re-introduced in Civ4. It might depend on which government you are allowed to do it with (Say democracy doesn't allow it, while communism does.) and if you do trade off units a part of your population in the city where the unit was traded should get sad like when you draft. Also the type of government should depend upon how many times you are allowed to do this per turn.

Why the hell should democracies be prevented from selling units? After all, the US is one of the largest arms traders in the world-both legally AND illegally-and certainly much more than the Soviet Union ever did!
I do agree, though, that if you publicly sell units to another nation-especially mercenaries-then it should have a chance of reducing the happiness of your people (particularly if you sell it to a nation your people don't much like!!) Selling units secretly, however, is a different thing entirely!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Aussie_Lurker said:

I do agree, though, that if you publicly sell units to another nation-especially mercenaries-then it should have a chance of reducing the happiness of your people (particularly if you sell it to a nation your people don't much like!!) Selling units secretly, however, is a different thing entirely!

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And it should swing both ways. Selling arms to people's your people like may make them happy. Doing the opposite would cause the opposite.

Not only would I like to give units to another AI civ, but I would also like to be able to enter their cities if we share a MA or MPP, and share tiles.

more SMAC features that were discarded. why Brian, why did you leave?

Aussie_Lurker said:

I do agree, though, that if you publicly sell units to another nation-especially mercenaries-then it should have a chance of reducing the happiness of your people (particularly if you sell it to a nation your people don't much like!!) Selling units secretly, however, is a different thing entirely!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

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However, if you are CAUGHT, it would have more negative affects then if you had sold them publically.

However, if the game has such public opinion system, I want it to be easy to find out what would make the people and upset and happy.

Aussie_Lurker said:

Why the hell should democracies be prevented from selling units? After all, the US is one of the largest arms traders in the world-both legally AND illegally-and certainly much more than the Soviet Union ever did!
I do agree, though, that if you publicly sell units to another nation-especially mercenaries-then it should have a chance of reducing the happiness of your people (particularly if you sell it to a nation your people don't much like!!) Selling units secretly, however, is a different thing entirely!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

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Because Civ isn't a historical simulator. It's an abstraction of reality. So many aspects of the game take the abstract route it's no longer a question of if CIV even bothers, it doesn't. What Civ does try is capture the essence of history. What I see a lot of people do is confuse that with the 'fact's of history and every few weeks, there's a new suggestion about turning Civ into everything from Sim City: History Edition to Sid Meier's Jane Combat Simulator.

That said, I'm not opposed to unit trading, but it has to be reworked significantly. For those of us to understood how crappy it worked in Civ2 and how it was basically a big exploit for a human player to destroy an AI economy, advocates of unit trading don't win points by reminding us of how great it was in Civ2. It wasn't great, and it may have only been great to a few people in nostalgia and if they were to play it today, they'd see why it was removed.

On the reputation issue, overt or covert unit trading should in addition to negatively affecting Civ happiness (the anti-imperialist faction in your empire complaining) it also should have a big chance of making whoever is at war with the Civ your trading with, get very angry and not only potentially declare war, but do the same against you in the future by trading units with a Civ you're at war with. You could also make this more interesting by making the AI distinguish between outright military aid (gifting units) to simply arms trade (selling units for cash). Thus, when an AI discovers you've been gifting units to prevent them from killing off a Civ, they would use exactly that strategy in the future against you in response.

Long story short. Unit Trading is ok. Civ2 Unit Trading Not ok. Civ4 Unit Trading ok only if its not as crappy as it was in Civ2. It's been 10 years, if they can't make the AI smarter on this issue, they shouldn't try to include the feature.

Sir_Schwick said:

more SMAC features that were discarded. why Brian, why did you leave?

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Because the AI didn't know how to use it in SMAC? Hello? That was a pretty big complaint back then. And judging from RoN, a great RTS game, I'm glad he left. Civ moving in that direction would make even you go insane. That game is all tactics and has none of the depth of Civ3.

dexters said:

Because the AI didn't know how to use it in SMAC? Hello? That was a pretty big complaint back then. And judging from RoN, a great RTS game, I'm glad he left. Civ moving in that direction would make even you go insane. That game is all tactics and has none of the depth of Civ3.

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Some of the features were not AI dependant and quite simple. Turn summary reports is a good example. Allied units could share the same spaces/bases, making alliances useful and allowing for shared protection of the militarily advanced partner. The Planetary Council was more UN than the Civ 3 equivalent. I agree it was a bit advanced on the AI.

As for the RoN example, that should be the reason you want him on any project of this kind. He made an RTS that made combat about strategy and tactics, not clicks-per-minute. While it cannot have the depth of a TBG, many of the simple features added relative depth for an RTS.

My point is that Brian Reynolds looked at the problems of a genre and came up with elegant and often suprising solutions. Considering the work that now goes into games, he also knows how to find the right people to do the job. Him and Sid Meier made Civ2, one of the best games of all time which defines the genre now. This is the kind of thinker/organizer that you want on a series that has always expanded the genre.

Brain Reynolds left because of creative disagreements with Sid. I think he truly wantred to make Civ 3 into an RTS.

What he ended up having was to make an RTS game that was inspired by Civ, his only problem was, Age of Empires beat him to it and RoN simply has the honor of being the RTS game that most closely resembles a TBS game, but by no means is it anywhere near a TBS game.

As for combat, I'm not going to defend the Civ combat system, which has its charms if you approach it logically. But I've been converted to the idea of the countering system where certain units could counter others. ie: pikes counter cavalry to make battles more tactical and less of a 'throw everything you have against a city' exercise.

My point is that Brian Reynolds looked at the problems of a genre and came up with elegant and often suprising solutions.

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RoN is a good RTS game, but it is neither elegant nor surprising. It's been done. And if his solution to Civ3's combat system was an RTS model, I'll take a pass.

Civ is also more than just combat, and the Civ3 designers correctly expanded on diplomacy and made the AI more astute diplomatically by making the AI truly independent without the human vs. the world scenarios present in Civ and Civ2. Diplomacy still is one of the biggest wish list items for Civ4 and ironically, this thread IS about diplomacy. Not warfare. Warfare has its place, but should not be central to the Civ4 experience.

Reynold's RoN hasn't done a thing to fix whatever problems that existed in Civ2 (mainly a weak diplomacy system and a weaker AI) he simply created a Civ like game in a new genre with a focus on warfare, hardly solving anything.