Should You Be Able To Trade Units?

To follow on the post by Dmanakho, can we have a poll on whether or not people think you should be able to trade units in Civ4.

The basic premise is that in real life nations trade arms and armaments quite frequently, so in Civ you reall ought to be able to trade units much as you can trade workers already. I guess it would work on similar lines, basically you can offer for trade any unit in your capital city, though equally other ideas, like a World Trade Market or secret arms deals damaging reputation could be incorporated.

But anyway, please vote your views.

This is fairly Unanimous so far. Albeit, there are only three votes.

There would be some details that would need to be sorted out. You shouldn't be able to trade a unit to a civ that doesn't have the required technology. ie. you can't bail someone out by sending them 10 infantry when they do not have replaceable parts.

Also, I am not sure how much this might get used by the AI.

It happens today, Americans sell plenty of weapons to certain nations, especially F-16's. For some money (gold) A nation should be able to obtain another nation's weaponry. Or a barter system like the native Americans and the Europeans so Na gets guns, europeans get furs. That might help.

A leasing system maybe?! Pay per turn for some units someoneelse aren't in need of..

why not, it would be a cool addition and I see nothing wrong with it. I htink that you should even be able to trade units that you don't have tech for - just becuase you can't produce a unit, doesn't mean you can't use them. After all your buying the units with arms, weapons, troops and everything. The little detail abou maintaince or getting feul for lets say a tank unit which you don't have the tech for is very trival - you could buy that from another civ. EG, not everyone knew how to make Silk, but it didn't stop them from traiding wtih it and using it.

Yeah! During the cold war USA and USSR armed their puppet banana states with lots of weapon systems they would never been able to produce/develop themselves. This is one of the most important changes I want to see in CIV 4! Especially in multiplayer it will be nice to support the enemies of my enemies with advanced weapons without giving them the tech. for it, so they can fight harder, and not give the thech away when they discuss peace terms!

I think the key would be making it possible to lend powerful units to otherwise "primitive" or "backwards" Civs, without totally warping the balance of the game. The prior is realistic, but the second is a major strategic concern. The realism and strategy both need to be there.

Giving weapons systems to other countries is a definite must. A twist might be if I give weapons to country X and country Y is at war with X, then Y's relations with me might go bad after so much ______ amount. Sort of like the USSR with the US with Cuba, Afghanistan, etc.

i agree with this trading units, it would be a fun twist to the game, and yes you should be able to trade units to countries that don't have the technology to make them... or why would they want to trade for something they could make, when they could have just made it instead of all of those warriors they were making.

Trading units sounds fun, but I would limit it only to selling units for gold, giving units away for free and getting units as part of a peace treaty. Kind of the same way cities are traded now, except for the gold part (which I would add for cities).

The Romans trading a legion for a Greek hoplite seems kinda silly, but buying one from the Greeks makes more sens to me.

absolutely YES.

artificially inflating another nation's military is an invaluable tool, but there needs to be slight regulation.

for example, if a nation does not have the tech to build the part, they will not be able to maintain it, so a maintenence contract must be set automatically. This could be manifested like if a unit ordinarily costs 3g per round to maintain, the maintenence contract would mean the unit costs 4g & that extra g goes to the coffers of the arms supplier.

that g could be variable & could be set at the time of deal like something from 0-5 ?

keeping the technology away from the ricipient of the military aid is also very important.

it is really important that something like this is implemented, especially if coupled with deeper diplomatic ramifications like the nation C being attacked by nation B using nation A's weapons would throw turmoil into diplomatic relations like what happens with israel now (this needs to be an option &probably best not to make it set in stone).

this would be another way to manipulate the world & help address something Civ has so far failed to do, which is provide the tools to wage interested & long cold wars.

I say weapons are just as useful a commodity as any other trade good or pact. There should not be limits on how weapons deals could be used. I do agree with increased maintenance and the idea of 'weapons consultation'. For 10 turns after they aquire the systems, they have to pay your 'weapons consultation' fee(exorbitant most likely), but after that time they have figured out the weapons systems for themselves(use, not production).

Also, since you may not have all the units, or do not want to divert troops away from other areas, you could have contracts. You pledge to have x units shipped to them within y turns. Breaking contracts might incur ill will among everybody, small because you are screwing them, and big because you are exploiting a backwards and poor country.

This is a bit of common sense, of course you should be able to trade units, UNLESS they have some sort of thing representing Arms

OK, I voted absolutely-but I want to add the following 'caveat'! I want unit trades in the game but WITHOUT the exploits which were present in civ2. It should be quite easy to give an AI civ a 'formula' for determining the value of a unit-based on its strength, resource requirements, maintainance cost, movement etc. If you try and demand too much for a unit-based on this formula, then the AI civ will refuse (though there would be some negotiable flexibility in this) and probably feel insulted. By the same token, an AI civ would not accept a clearly obsolete unit-even as a gift-and would be equally insulted by the offer. So no palming off your excess spearmen to your neighbours just to avoid the upgrade costs !
As for multiplayer, a player who accepts units which are totally obsolete or units at a cost far above their actual value will incur the wrath of his population (if he does it too often, that is) especially his military!! So again, no room for exploitation by 'allied' players.
Lastly, their should be some difference between 'unit trades' defined as arms sales, and those defined as 'mercenaries', mostly in terms of who fronts up the population and gpt costs of the unit, the units' level of experience and who cops flak if they attack another nation!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Colonel said:

This is a bit of common sense, of course you should be able to trade units, UNLESS they have some sort of thing representing Arms

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I would have thought this was common sense too, but obviously the developement team did not think so.

Pulling apart units and arms is an interesting idea. It differentiates the training from the weapons themselves. I wonder if this could be done feasibly?

Otherwise, yeah, trading the actual units makes sense. Or maybe a system where the host Civ still has to build 50% of the unit (the training component) based on what they receive from the donating Civ?

civilleader said:

It happens today, Americans sell plenty of weapons to certain nations, especially F-16's.

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Yes, but they sell only the strip down version of the F-16. It's a lot like selling the Klinon Bird of Pray without including the cloaking device.

Not only should we be able to outright sell troops (including tribe specific troops), it would be cool if there was a system so you could sell them as merc like units. If you give me x gold per turn or y lump sum to use this troop for z turns. This would have a greater political impact. Such that, if I sold you merc units and ended up getting most back to resupply myself or make more money off again, I might be more interested in relations with you in other areas.

One thing I question, if I buy troops from you, do they isntantly appear in one of my cities or do I have to march them there?

I imagine they'd appear in your capitol, the same way you trade workers.

Unless someone has a problem with the realism of that, or thinks that's making gameplay too easy (or too hard) somehow.