How to gift cities or give them back to their previous owners?

[DeepQuasar]

In a current game I'm playing, I need, according to my strategy or intentions, gifting back some cities I conquered from an enemy I almost reduced to powder (but still conserves its capital), since they are set into a conflictive frontair and it's being really hard and expensive to me to keep them and support them (breaking the progress of my civ by devoting these resources and investment to other points and purposes).
Besides, that could be a good way to restore my lost reputation, and to enforce a player that could be used to balance the game, as counterpart to other big enemy powers whose weight shouldn't fall just on myself.

I've checked and checked but I haven't found that option into diplomacy menu, but I reciently read it is possible to do some similar thing, in some forums and tutorials.

Is there some way, in Civilization II, to gift, sell or give back cities to other AI players (other than declaring war and abandoning them at their own look) or you can only do such thing with gold and units? If there isn't in standard Civ 2, does there exist some kind of patch, add-on, improovement or modifying to introduce such so necessary possibility into the game? I know these patches exist for Multiplayer human diplomacy (through PBEM), but isn't there something for AI?

Thanks for your attention and pacience.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

There is no way to do that in Civ2 short of what you mentioned already (leaving the city unprotected and waiting for it to be taken over).

 

[ElephantU]

You can gift the AI tech, gold, and supported military units (although I often find them refusing the units), but there is no built-in option to gift a whole city. In Cheat mode you can do some extra things, but I have not tried changing the ownership of a city to another civ.

 

[DeepQuasar]

Thanks to confirm my suspects and vanish my doubts.

Cheat Mode doesn't look a bad idea, except that I'd be cheating, the game would detect it and would reduce my score, and other human player wouldn't probably like that (if Multiplayer mode allow that option).

What about hex editing? Theorically, I would just need to change some few numbers, and the game wouldn't know it.

Other option, that I'm seriously thinking about would be cracking the own Civilization 2 engine on myself to add such function... Though I'm no experienced at it at it. I wonder if somebody posesses some knowledge or experience about this and could help me.

Thanks for your help, .

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

I thought you can gift cities to other human players in multiplayer games. I thought there was some way to do it in PBEMs and hotseat games at least using one of the diplomacy tools (Lazyciv?) or something like that. I'm pretty sure you can't do it at all in singleplayer games.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

You can gift the AI tech, gold, and supported military units (although I often find them refusing the units), ...

It is not often that I try to gift the AI a military unit, but everytime I tried they refused. This makes no sense, as I only tried this when the AI was under attack and could really use the help I was offering. I have been wondering if that is a bug.

 

[molesworth]

I have known them accept offer of a military unit (in Playstation version). This was usually when their technology was much less advanced than mine. When I did this on easier difficulty levels I sometimes got a message saying: "your gift has caused X civilisation a technology advance!" Or words to that effect. I assume this means they got the tech advance necessary to produce that unit. E.G: if I gave them an alpine troop when they still had musketeers and had not researched Tactics.

On higher difficulty levels I don't remember this happening so much - either them accepting in the first place or the message about them getting a tech advance as well.

 

[Peaster]

I thought you can gift cities to other human players in multiplayer games. I thought there was some way to do it in PBEMs and hotseat games at least using one of the diplomacy tools (Lazyciv?) or something like that. I'm pretty sure you can't do it at all in singleplayer games.

Yes, civ2dip allows city-giving in MP games. But I haven't actually tried that feature (against house rules at Poly). I doubt this program would even be able to open single-player game, but maybe it's worth a try. Also, I doubt that giving back cities would help DQ restore his reputation - the AI is usually not that smart.