Beam Us Up, Scotty!

IronSpam · November 28, 2001, 01:45

Has anyone really taken advantage of this trick?

I gave a city to the Chinese in order to make trouble for the lead civilization, the Russians. I conquered a small Zulu-held city (population 1) on their continent in an area between China and Russia. In their war with each other, they made the combat zone a wasteland with aerial bombardments and pillaging.

I parked about a dozen tanks and mechanized infantry inside the city, then called up Mao and gave it to him as a gift. He accepted with glee, and I thought I was helping to destabilize things by giving Russia's mortal enemy a lot of military hardware. That area of the map went dark for me, since I had no more units there.

In some other thread, someone noted that when a city defects because of cultural pressures, that the units inside regrettably also go to the other civilization. I thought, why not turn this around? Plus, I was trying to cut military costs anyway and my people were sick of war.

A turn or two later I noticed that there were extra tanks and mechanized infantry in Washington, my capital. I also noticed that my military maintenance hadn't changed all that much since the fire sale to China. I thought maybe that I had built more units and my maintenance had filled the gap made by the giveaway.

I had an opportunity to again destabilize things. I repeated my steps and gave Mao another city in the same region plus units. This time I left a destroyer in the city along with everything else. After the giveaway, lo and behold, my gift of land units plus the lone destroyer appears in the capital!

Well, in either case, the Chinese clearly didn't get my gift of arms, since the Russians shortly took both of those cities with what appeared to be little resistance. I so loved giving arms to third parties in Civ II. It seems fitting behavior for a world superpower. Is there any way to do this in Civ III? It's a shame if not.

On a side note, I suppose that this giveaway quirk could be used as a fast mass transporting technique for far-flung military hardware. These units were turns and turns away from the nearest airport. It probably would have taken the rest of the game to for all of these guys to get home given how far away they were. But they got back to the mainland in the blink of an eye, even a naval vessel. Think about that potential!

This trick obviously has the best payoff for large groups of units rather than one or two stragglers abroad. I do have a feeling that maybe a unit or two may have stayed behind and gone to the Chinese, but I can't be sure. I'd have to do it again and do a proper accounting.

Aeson · November 28, 2001, 02:28

This is something that I noticed in one of my first games, and have on occasion used it as a teleport service. It feels like cheating though, and when you factor in how much the AIs will give you for a worthless city, it really is a dirty trick. As far as I can tell it transports all of the units to the capitol. When you give the AI a city on higher levels they seem to get a free defender for it, though I'm not sure. I've tried not to use this, though there are times that it's too tempting

MaSsConFUsi0n · November 28, 2001, 02:42

yeah i wish that you could give units to the other players like in civ2. that way, you can pull a USA and give the other players the weapons and let them fight it out. either way, when you sell a city to someone else, all the units in the city return to your capital. however, if one of your cities reverts to another civ, those units inside are gone, no one get em. they must just run free in the country or something.

MaSsConFUsi0n

War4ever · November 28, 2001, 02:50

never tried gifting units to the ai....too bad it doesn't work

IronSpam · November 28, 2001, 02:52

Well after seeing the transport phenomenon, I thought of it as similar to the real-life pulling out of occupied territories. In history, there have been quite a few instances of a peaceful evacuation of troops. Of course it behooves the "receiving end" power to fill the void as quickly as possible, as the Chinese no doubt learned in my game.

But for the ceding power, why move your troops to the capital instead of the nearest city or colony? I agree, it's an opening that doesn't seem realistic or fair. Maybe this is an issue that the developers should address.