Gifting Units? Smart or pointless

[vanatteveldt]

@rrolo "I never seen the AI not using a gifted missionary"

a shucks I thought I'd gift them on some weird location, but it has to be within his borders...

You could try gifting 3 missionaries in some out-of-the way little city that the AI is so fond of settling sometimes, and see whether the AI will try to send over a boat to pick them up or just stop producing missionaries...

 

[r_rolo1]

They definitely move them to better locations if the can since 3.13 , but they use them .

 

[bippukt]

@Bippukt

Theocracy supresses unwanted non-state religion spread. The phrasing in civilopedia and in civic screen is highly misleading

Well, I tested it and it seems that this is one more thing which I didn't know even after having the game for 3+ years

Tell me about misleading

Confirming screenshots attached. Now I agree that it is an abuse.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

Related question: If you gift a religion-nutty AI (eg isabella) three missionaries of a useless religion in a very remote location, will this stifle her own missionary zeal or is she smart enough to disband them?

Why would she have to disband them? You can have 3 of each type of missionary, not 3 total. So she can still build her missionaries for her religion.

 

[Gwynnja]

Re: theocracy. Running it to take advantage of the "no spread of non-state religion" isn't really the point. IMO it's quite disadvantageous. I personally prefer OR, and only run theocracy late game after my main infrastructure is in place, or if I have multiple neighbors that will give me a positive diplo for running it. The only drawback of multiple religions throughout your empire is that you'll have to spend some hammers on missionaries (and possibly monasteries) in order to get your state religion spread to the cities that you want to take advantage of OR/theo/pacifism in. Non state religion also serve as possible happy citizens and border culture help. As far as I know, the number of your cities that have the state religion doesn't factor into an AI's relation so long as you run their choice of religion.

 

[Point13]

You can spread religions yourself under theocracy.

Frankly, unless you're role playing or something the only reason to run Theo is the extra unit XP in your unit cities.

 

[Gwynnja]

Or to get Zara, Isabella, Justinian, or Saladin to friendly. Although most of these guys will love you already from having their religion.

 

[btgwynn]

Right, the civic notes say "no non-state [praying hands religion symbol] spread" which is easy to misunderstand as meaning that only the state religion will spread, but actually means that religions will only spread if done by your national units, i.e. missionaries. So by gifting missionaries to a civ in theocracy you free up additional missionaries you can build (limited to 3 [or 4?] per religion otherwise)

As for gifting military units, one of the hints says "units cost money in maintenance, don't build fifty when fifteen will do." If you're right under the domination threshold and have a bunch of vassals, giving them units will help them to raze everything in sight, (in my experience) but use your own units if you want to keep a city. By that point you can probably generate a lot more units than you can make effective use of, particularly if you're abusing Nationhood well.

 

[Tephros]

Right, the civic notes say "no non-state [praying hands religion symbol] spread" which is easy to misunderstand as meaning that only the state religion will spread, but actually means that religions will only spread if done by your national units, i.e. missionaries. So by gifting missionaries to a civ in theocracy you free up additional missionaries you can build (limited to 3 [or 4?] per religion otherwise)

As for gifting military units, one of the hints says "units cost money in maintenance, don't build fifty when fifteen will do." If you're right under the domination threshold and have a bunch of vassals, giving them units will help them to raze everything in sight, (in my experience) but use your own units if you want to keep a city. By that point you can probably generate a lot more units than you can make effective use of, particularly if you're abusing Nationhood well.

I think the razing part depends on who your vassal is. Genghis Khan loves to raze cities, but some leaders rarely do.

Gifting units isn't something I've done much, but gifting units to the civ they're at war with is a way of damaging an enemy when you're not willing to be at war with them yourself.

Gifting missionaries does make quite a bit of sense by reducing unit maint., unless you have a particular target city in mind for espionage purposes.

 

[Gwynnja]

there have been times when I've gifted another civ units to prevent them from capitulating. If you can broker a peace treaty, it allows you to swoop in for the kill.

 

[Justin Somnios]

there have been times when I've gifted another civ units to prevent them from capitulating. If you can broker a peace treaty, it allows you to swoop in for the kill.

Exactly, or you can gift technologically advanced units to a buffer state instead of giving them the tech itself.

 

[Cashew]

Unit gifting is fairly useless for single player since the AI needs to get a huge number of units before it starts using them intelligently. In multi though unit gifting has been a pain in the ass for me more than once. Usually what will happen is I'll kill one person, and come very close to killing one or two more but by then I'm so far ahead that people have started gifting units to whoever I'm at war with and it will slow me down a ton.

 

[Tephros]

Unit gifting is fairly useless for single player since the AI needs to get a huge number of units before it starts using them intelligently. In multi though unit gifting has been a pain in the ass for me more than once. Usually what will happen is I'll kill one person, and come very close to killing one or two more but by then I'm so far ahead that people have started gifting units to whoever I'm at war with and it will slow me down a ton.

I can see where that could get ugly. You're like: WTH, there's redcoats and cossacks in this Native American city.

 

[Gumbolt]

Does the Ai ever gift units??? It is not something I have ever seen.

I do agree gifting missionaries could be a slight issue if the Ai is not programed to realise a problem.

Its a flaw in the Ai if you are after a religious victory.