Do you often give away forces to pester your competition?

[joasoze]

Hi

Lately I have started to give some forces to the weaker part in a war. This will force my competitors to use more forces to win and prolong their war. I usually have som outdated forces to give away. I cannot afford to upgrade everything.

A coulple of times I have even given away forces that are superior to what both the warring parts have. A couple of riflemen could help a lot

I havent really checked how much this actually influenced the war, but I just like the feeling of ruining the plans of the big aggressor slightly.

Pros and cons to such a tactic?

[Diamondeye]

Pros: The agressor is delayed or stopped in beating the one you helped.
Con: You waste production you could have utilized better yourself (example with the riflemen; you could have taken down the agressor (or defender) yourself with those instead)

[weimingshi]

You better make sure, the units you gave are used in the frontline and the civ you are trying to help won't capitulate to your enemy anytime soon. I once did that, gave couple tanks to justinian so he could fight off huyan so I thought. Not happening, he capitulated 10 turns later, still have pretty much all the tanks I gave him. I'm next on huyan's war path, when time comes, justinian used the tanks I gave him on me. Talk about shoot yourself in your own foot.

[xanadux]

I haven't done it myself, but I can see it being a reasonable play in certain situations. One thing I do often is gift a spare strategic resource to the underdog when they don't have it or have lost it.

I can think of times when this would make a lot of sense, especially when trying to prevent an AI from being Vassalized, which can turn a long time friend into an instant enemy if the master AI goes to war with you.

Some like to gift machine guns. That way if you ever end up at war, at least they can't attack you directly with them.