What's in the box? - gifting cities

[bryanwallace]

yes,so basically i cant understand the point of building a city harbour and gifting it to someone

 

[Lord Emsworth]

In answer to Q1, about having trade interrupted; this hasn't happened to me yet, though I can't speak from long experience. Apparently if the trade gets interrupted through "someone else's fault", you don't lose reputation. I can't remember where I saw this info; it was in one of those threads/articles (maybe in the War Academy) where people research things meticulously.

Depends.

Say you are trading a luxury to some civ. Then, perhaps with a little motivational action from you , your trading partner gets fed up and attacks you. In this case your rep is fine.

Same thing, you are trading a luxury to some civ. Only this time, a barb ship sits on the trade route at a bottleneck where the route is only one tile wide. Or a third-party civ attacks your trading partner and pillages the road connection to your lands. Or a volcano blows up in neutral territory and your nearby road gets Pompeii-ed. Tough luck mate, you just busted your trade rep.

The question as to whose fault it was that a trade route is broken doesn't actually matter all that much. The only time where it matters is if a trade goes bust due to a DoW.

In cases however where a trade route is broken by pillaging, barb galleys, etc it does not matter at all by whose fault the trade route is cut.

What does count is, who was the supplier. If you are the one who sells some resource or lux, then you will also take the rep hit. Regardless of who broke the trade route. If the AI sells some resource or lux to you, then it will be the AI who takes the rep-hit. Regardless of who broke the trade route.

The implications are ... uh - give it a name Susanne. It means that you when you sell or even gift away a resource to a civ, you will take a rep-hit if that civ gets killed. But it also means that if you buy a resource, bundle the deal up with [anything], and then yourself go and pillage a bunch of roads (and make the whole deal go bust) you will walk scot-free for it(!).

 

[bryanwallace]

so as long as you dontattack the supplier directly ,you can bust a deal by attacking a civ in the middle?

if you also pillage your own roads do you also escape a rep hit?

 

[Lord Emsworth]

so as long as you dontattack the supplier directly ,you can bust a deal by attacking a civ in the middle?

It is not sufficient if the civ in the middle is only at war with one of you. Strangely, they will allow the civ they are at peace with to to trade with a civ they are at war with. What needs to happen is that the civ in the middle is at war with both of you.

In principle it should then bring down a trade. (In practice I have seen strange things though where there were deals which would 'stand' despite the fact that the resource/lux was not supplied whereas the money did change hands. This is Vanilla; whether this would also occur in Conquests you need to check out for yourself.)

if you also pillage your own roads do you also escape a rep hit?

Yes, exactly. Selling harbours works as well if it is a water route. (And I think GotM rules actually forbid these ... ahem ... tactics.)

 

[bryanwallace]

thanks but im not sure that if you are at war with a civ you can still trade thru him works on conquests
in fact im pretty sure it doesnt..

 

[Optional]

As a small clarification to what Othniel already said:
Your trade reputation is only at stake if you're exporting a luxury or strategic resource. For exporting gold per turn you don't need a trade route; contact is enough.
Example: You're buying Ivory for gold per turn from the French. If this trade gets broken, other than by you declaring war on the French, it's the French that get their reputation broken as they were exporting the hard goods. Was the trade a lux for a lux, and some third party broke the trade route, than both your reps are lost.
If you're running a trade where you are giving gold per turn for a lux or strategic resource, you can often still willfully break this trade without fear for your reputation by pilliging the trade route, as long as that is in your own or neutral territory.
Late in the game it is often impossible to break a trade route. You could sell all your harbors, only to see the trade route diverting through a neutral civ's harbor, for instance. Late game deals are often quite safe. Early game deals that run through a single road or single coast square, or a single civ's territory, are not.
Often it's not even easy to figure out how a trade route is exactly running.

Edit: Oops! Massive X-post! I hadn't seen the thread was already on a second page!

 

[Optional]

In principle it should then bring down a trade. (In practice I have seen strange things though where there were deals which would 'stand' despite the fact that the resource/lux was not supplied whereas the money did change hands. This is Vanilla; whether this would also occur in Conquests you need to check out for yourself.)

Here I had to think of a case Tasslehoff once posted: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=253062

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Here I had to think of a case Tasslehoff once posted: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=253062

That is exactly it.

thanks but im not sure that if you are at war with a civ you can still trade thru him works on conquests
in fact im pretty sure it doesnt..

Look at the link that Optional posted. There, you see Tasslehoff's Iroquois doing trade with the Ottomans trough Japanese territory. And this is possible despite the fact that he is already at war with the Japanese. It is only when the Ottomans enter state of war with the Japanese as well that the strangeness occurs. (And this appears to be C3C).

OK, maybe the fact that the Ottomans and the Japanese were not only at peace but also had a RoP has something to with the potentiality of trading. But I am not so certain it does.

I had cases in Vanilla where I have been the civ in the middle and my enemies on one side of my territory received resources over trade-routes that ran through my territory from civs I merely was at peace with on the other side of my territory.