(17) Proposal: Spawned units from friendly/allied militaristic city states spawn next to your capital

[Little Billy]

Currently when a city state donates units to you they go to the nearest city to that city state, even if that city is a puppet. If I'm a warmongering conqueror and want whatever nice unit the city state gives, it's pretty likely that this city is either a puppet or hasn't had time to build the XP giving buildings in it yet. I then get a semi-crappy unit that's destined to be a garrison for its whole life, especially if it's not a UU. There are usually only about 3 or 4 chances to get those unique units in the whole game. I find it frustrating when one shows up with zero promotions and is way less useful than it should be.

As a side effect of this, if I conquer a garbage but strategically valuable city next to the city state, my choices are now to keep it a puppet and get bad unit donations or burn it down and lose the resources/healing territory/land/population. I wouldn't consider the city worth annexing at all in this case.

I propose that any units sent to you by a city state go to your capital, or the oldest coast city you have if it's a boat.

 

[Tekamthi]

not a bad solution, though i might be more inclined to have the gift-giving CS confer the XP and promos rather than the recipient city.

 

[SpecifiedUsername]

the problem is player can just stack all xp giving stuff in the capital, which AI might not, and it is too gamey to get free production unit and all the xp you can get. it is a foreign unit from outside of your country. maybe we can go with capital + full xp but at the cost of much restricted unit spawning like one every 30 turns, as you correctly mentioned a one good unique unit is much better than 2,3,4 just outdated, outexped, garrison-duty.

 

[Stalker0]

This proposal seems reasonable to me

 

[ma_kuh]

I like XP and promos from CS a little more than this, for both realism and functionality. It would split the difference between a (semi) well-upgraded unit and a unit that spawns at the (possible) frontlines. Also, I don't know if CS prioritize buildings differently based on type, but I would imagine military CS should generally have as advanced military buildings as possible.

 

[Little Billy]

the problem is player can just stack all xp giving stuff in the capital, which AI might not

Presumably the AI already knows how to do this to an extent, no? We have Heroic Epic and Karlstein, both of which encourage you to funnel units through one city. And why would the AI not be building their XP buildings in the capital anyway?

i might be more inclined to have the gift-giving CS confer the XP and promos rather than the recipient city

I like this thematically because it would be the donating nation that trains the unit irl, but don't city states get the same AI starting XP bonuses that major civs do? You could end up with a unit that has more promotions out of the gate than the ones you train yourself. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not

 

[pineappledan]

I like this thematically because it would be the donating nation that trains the unit irl, but don't city states get the same AI starting XP bonuses that major civs do? You could end up with a unit that has more promotions out of the gate than the ones you train yourself. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not

Not sure if this is a problem either, but just in case you could make it this:
The gifted unit receives the XP either from yours or the gifting CS' capital, whichever is smaller.

 

[Rekk]

Note that VP has a custom mod option:

GLOBAL_CS_GIFTS_LOCAL_XP

that, when set to FALSE, uses the CS' capital XP buildings.

 

[Hinin]

Note that VP has a custom mod option:


that, when set to FALSE, uses the CS' capital XP buildings.

Tbh, I think a more realistic and foolproof option would be to make Units given by militaristic CState have a set amount of experience, scaling with Era. That would make the idea of allying CStates much more interesting for pacifist civs, and would avoid situations where you get a unit with very little experience just because you decided to settle a city somewhere near that CState.

Of course, there is the possibility that some civs have access to a higher amount of starting experience than what militartistic CS can give (Assyria comes to mind), but to me that is an edge case, knowing that warmongers already tend to have the maximum amount of units available to them, which often means that only unique units from militaristic CS interest them.

 

[balparmak]

Presumably the AI already knows how to do this to an extent, no? We have Heroic Epic and Karlstein, both of which encourage you to funnel units through one city. And why would the AI not be building their XP buildings in the capital anyway?

Yes, AI has specific military production city/cities, they may not be max'ed as much as a human one but they exist. There are many reasons not to build in capital though, I tend to make my second/third city the military one so that I can focus more on wonders or even processes instead of units.

Hinin's suggestion is the best, otherwise there will always be frustrating cases of XP loss. It also opens up fun new trait or policy modifiers like +15 XP on gifted units, and can be made to give max XP available to the player without considering what's built in a city. If you have the armory tech or built armory in any of your cities, fine, get +30 XP. Do you have the order belief, here you go, +15 for you, always assume the player have a city with max possible XP.

 

[KlHannibal2]

Currently when a city state donates units to you they go to the nearest city to that city state, even if that city is a puppet. If I'm a warmongering conqueror and want whatever nice unit the city state gives, it's pretty likely that this city is either a puppet or hasn't had time to build the XP giving buildings in it yet. I then get a semi-crappy unit that's destined to be a garrison for its whole life, especially if it's not a UU. There are usually only about 3 or 4 chances to get those unique units in the whole game. I find it frustrating when one shows up with zero promotions and is way less useful than it should be.

As a side effect of this, if I conquer a garbage but strategically valuable city next to the city state, my choices are now to keep it a puppet and get bad unit donations or burn it down and lose the resources/healing territory/land/population. I wouldn't consider the city worth annexing at all in this case.

I propose that any units sent to you by a city state go to your capital, or the oldest coast city you have if it's a boat.

Sounds good.

 

[Recursive]

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