Gifted a Merchant of Venice

[ExpiredReign]

Hey I am currently playing as Indonesia and late in the game one of my many CS allies gifted me a Great Person, a Merchant.
So without taking too much notice I sent him off to a CS that had lapsed into 'Friendly' not 'Allied'.
Anyway, on arrival I noticed he was actually a Merchant of Venice and I could, and did, buy off the CS and make it a puppet.

Question. Anyone else have this happen? It looks like it should be a bug. They really should only be available to Venice.

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Unrelated. Apologies if this has been covered before. I also had this happen to me again. From memory it has happened to me all the way back to the original game, before G&K or BNW.
I had only 4 horses and produced Knights leaving me with none.
Upon the first opportunity to upgrade to Cavalry I did but I am now told constantly I have exceeded my horse limit and those units are weaker.
Even after disbanding or gifting away those Cavalry and restoring my Horse supply to its original I still get this message.

Is this a documented bug? Or am I doing something wrong?
The current game is vanilla, no mods at all are loaded.

 

[Nyanko]

Unrelated. Apologies if this has been covered before. I also had this happen to me again. From memory it has happened to me all the way back to the original game, before G&K or BNW.
I had only 4 horses and produced Knights leaving me with none.
Upon the first opportunity to upgrade to Cavalry I did but I am now told constantly I have exceeded my horse limit and those units are weaker.
Even after disbanding or gifting away those Cavalry and restoring my Horse supply to its original I still get this message.

Is this a documented bug? Or am I doing something wrong?
The current game is vanilla, no mods at all are loaded.

Not just vanilla. Its happened in my game too. Its proberly a bug

 

[VainoValkea]

City-States do gift merchants of Venice. It's an annoying feature if you ask me, but probably not a bug since it's been that way since vanilla (Khans).

The knight issue is familiar to me, only in BNW though. The game occasionally gets stuck with a notification and keep repeating it. In my last game the game kept repeating that I have discovered a barbarian encampment (which I destroyed in the classical era) until the very end. However! It's only a notification, if the horse amount you have is zero (not negative) in the top of the screen you get no combat penalties. Just a buggy notification.

 

[Luckystrike77]

I don't see too much harm in this indirect boost of the patronage social policies.

 

[VainoValkea]

I don't see too much harm in this indirect boost of the patronage social policies.

A random roll to steal a City-State. That's too much.

 

[Lochlann]

City-States do gift merchants of Venice. It's an annoying feature if you ask me, but probably not a bug since it's been that way since vanilla (Khans).

The mechanism of gifting UU great people is a feature, but I think it's fair to say that this particular application of it is a bug. Or, rather, an application of the feature that wasn't thought through and needs to be eliminated.

The Khan, while powerful, is just a beefed-up version of the regular GG, but the MoV 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, both from a balance perspective--"A random roll to steal a City-State. That's too much." is right-on--and an "appropriateness" perspective.

 

[VainoValkea]

I actually plan to fix CS gifts in my upcoming mod, mostly working to buff Militaristic CS's but I doubt removing MoV from the spawn list is too hard either.

 

[Lochlann]

Good move. I didn't even know MoVs were potential gifts from city-states until I read about it on a thread several days ago. It's just silly, I have difficulty believing it was actually intended.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

The same happened to me in my Morocco gameplay. Got one. While I was going for the fastest (Diplomatic) Victory, I still decided to take a CS just because.

Also in my last game as Spain, Austria got a MoV. Two ways to steal CS's for Maria Theresa!

 

[Rhaegar7]

Getting (say) 1600 gold and 60 influence ain't too bad either.

Seeing as he's worth at least about 2 normal merchants, I'd say it's op. I also got one in my first BWN play.

 

[knappis]

I got one too but opted for gold and influence to keep pressure up in WC. SCs seems to be more useful as allies most of the time.

 

[rondiggity]

I was gifted two MoV in my recent diplo game. Used one to flip a CS in a remote continent to help with trade routes, and used the other for the big cash and influence payout. While they me be your puppet, you will not be able to control their output like Venice can.

 

[steveg700]

We get this topic every week.

 

[Pythakoreas]

^^^^

I thought you were playing as Sweden and gifted a Merchant of Venice to a city-state you got from finishing Patronage.

Because well... We get this topic every week.

 

[Lochlann]

We get this topic every week.

As well we should! Though it'd be nice if it were confined to a single thread, yeah.