Now I miss unit gifting.

[Minor Annoyance]

I was going to gift some transport ships to a vassal that didn't have a coastal city but now I've remembered I can't. Now I'm trying to get my culture from a city of theirs to cover to coast instead of my other vassal so I can build a city there. Hopefully they'll still take back the city and want the new one too so they can help with wars overseas, although the AI doesn't do that very well so it might all be for nothing.
Does anyone know how the game determines when an AI will accept a city as a gift? Sometimes they'll take any city you offer and sometimes just cities near them. Vassals seem to only be able to take cities that are liberated.

 

[MacGyverInSpace]

Yeah, I miss it too. How do I reenable it, where's the exposed gifting code? I figure I can trust myself not to cheat. Though for MP, maybe I'll make some python to stop exploitative gifting and only allow things like giving a low-hammer vassal a defender.

 

[Willgar]

In a recent game, a peacefull neighbour (elohim) got trashed by the Devillo. In the old version, i would have gifted a maybe two dozen tier 2 melee troops to the neighbour to help them protect themselves. In that last game i had to go war to help them which really hit my economy, broke a defencive agreement i had with another ally and ultimately captured a load of fairly useless cities that i ended up gifting back to the elohim.

I understand that gifting was being exploited but it has made my FfH experiance a bit less enjoyable as it has reduced my strategic options. Now the stark choice is either fight or turtle. Subtle strategies such as proxy wars or arming my vassals to help defend my borders or wage wars has been taken away. Having to delete stacks of out dated troops that i would have normally gifted to a ally/vassal also stings a bit.

Oh well, hopefully a unexplotible gifting method will appear one day

 

[DrStalker]

Yeah, I miss it too. How do I reenable it, where's the exposed gifting code? Maybe I'll make some python to stop exploitative gifting and only allow things like giving a low-hammer vassal a defender.

If you're playing single player just don't do anything exploitative. Easier than trying to write code to determine if a gift is an exploit.

 

[Pyr0mancer]

As far as gifting goes, is it possible to only allow certain units or unit types to be gifted?

Say, only allow non-national units in the Melee, Archery, Recon, Mounted, and Naval lines to be gifted? I believe most if not all of the exploits linked to gifting involved Animals/Beasts and Arcane units, so that would solve the problem rather nicely.

 

[Fenboy]

As far as gifting goes, is it possible to only allow certain units or unit types to be gifted?

Say, only allow non-national units in the Melee, Archery, Recon, Mounted, and Naval lines to be gifted? I believe most if not all of the exploits linked to gifting involved Animals/Beasts and Arcane units, so that would solve the problem rather nicely.

Agreed, I always liked gifting spare Crusaders to my vassals as Bannor, seemed thematic

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I really think that I should be able to gift units at least to my vassals. What would it take to make unit gifting a game option?

 

[Ksi]

i think that's a good idea. Gifting only certain types of units (not adepts/nationals/etc.) And having more options with vassals.

 

[TheJopa]

Funny how everyone loves proxy wars now, and wants them back. Well, the issue here is that Civ4 designers never really thought about them. AI never gives you proxy units. AI never gives other AIs proxy units. So, no matter how cool or important it seems, Civ was never built for proxy wars.

 

[Fafnir13]

Is it possible to allow gifting for only certain kinds of units? Maybe have the requirements of the gifted unit can't be a national unit or of hidden nationality (those are the only exploits I remember hearing about). Knowing nothing of code, I don't know if you can call on those as prerequisites for the gifting ability.
It would be nice to have it back in some form or fashion.

 

[TheJopa]

Sheaim planar gate units should be off as well, because as soon as you gift one you gate another. Every unit with free promotion also regains free promotion.

 

[Willgar]

Funny how everyone loves proxy wars now, and wants them back. Well, the issue here is that Civ4 designers never really thought about them. AI never gives you proxy units. AI never gives other AIs proxy units. So, no matter how cool or important it seems, Civ was never built for proxy wars.

It has been so long since i played straight Civ - are you saying that the gift unit feature was not in Civ? I thought it wqas unless my mind is playing tricks on me.....

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Sheaim planar gate units should be off as well, because as soon as you gift one you gate another. Every unit with free promotion also regains free promotion.

I did that a lot as the Sheaim. I built the free mage guild wonder so I got way ti many witches so I gave them away, and since I was taking all my vassals mana it was the only way they'd get spells.
I assume it's more difficult that it sounds to only allow gifting of some units or they would have done it.

 

[MacGyverInSpace]

Is there no "onGift" python call?

 

[Milosrdenstvi]

Funny how everyone loves proxy wars now, and wants them back. Well, the issue here is that Civ4 designers never really thought about them. AI never gives you proxy units. AI never gives other AIs proxy units. So, no matter how cool or important it seems, Civ was never built for proxy wars.

SMAC. 'nuff said.

 

[Verily]

SMAC. 'nuff said.

Yes! The SMAC AIs gifted units to each other for proxy wars like there was no tomorrow.

There's so much that SMAC/X does better than BtS that you wonder whether technology has regressed in the meantime.

 

[Milosrdenstvi]

Not just to each other. There was absolutely nothing like the Hive giving you a dozen needlejets one tech level behind yours just at the point you crucially needed just a little bit of extra firepower.

 

[DuckAndCower]

For some reason this has made me want to play Alpha Centauri very badly.

Now to find where I put that disc ten years ago...

 

[Charybdis]

My disc got trapped in a dead computer that got sent in for repairs.. never got it back

 

[TheJopa]

Not just to each other. There was absolutely nothing like the Hive giving you a dozen needlejets one tech level behind yours just at the point you crucially needed just a little bit of extra firepower.

Why don't we have this as well?

@Verily: Heh, maybe technology indeed regressed