Giving buildings and/or units to an ally

[fatherbushido]

Tributing buildings or units to an ally in game can be a nice feature. It will enhance teamplay in mp games (for pros or beginners). When our ally recapture some buildings, he can give us them back. Given buildings behave like captured one.

[Lionkanzen]

This ticked must be par a whole proposition to improved the diplomacy to advanced diplomacy, similar to EE2. And rise of nations.

[fatherbushido]

I join a patch when selecting units or buildings, we go in diplomacy menu and can give units to ally or ennemy. Perhaps we can restrict giving to allies. I used population icon but capture icon or another can be good too. I really think that it can be a good feature.

[mimo]

I'm not sure this patch is something we would want. Giving units would give you the ability to build structures which are not allowed for your civ, or even to have access to soldiers that your civ should not have. That would remove the main interest of having different civs which specific features each. Then we can think about giving sructures only: these given structures would be as captured ones, i.e. able to produce only a subset of units (those already available in your civ) and no tech research. Its interest would be really limited, and I've no strong feeling about it. As we can already garrison inside allied structures, I see only two use case:

• to gather in allied territory: There i would rather have the possibility to share dropsites with allies (see #3791)
• to train soldiers in allied territory: I'm not convinced it is something we want. The fact that your army need some time to go and help your ally is for me an important aspect of the strategy: you have to decide if you will let some soldiers in the allied territory at the risk of depleting your own defense, or if you think it can resist long enough for you to come and rescue him. If it can build a few barracks and give them to you, that would remove that interesting aspect of the game.

[fatherbushido]

Thanks for your relevants remarks. We have the same design problem as for converting unit. But since capturing, things are better, especially for structure. So i think we can forget giving units (despite i would like that in a battle, some spartans can give unit to athenians...) and focus on structures.

these given structures would be as captured ones

Yes that's exactly what i have in mind.

Other use case :

• when your ally recapture your stuff, he can give you back.
• when someone want leave, or something like that
• to help or be helped
• giving tribute to ennemy (he can capture, so perhaps we can give him...)

[elexis]

Another problem with the attached patch is that it allows a team to ignore the max-population limit. One player can just continue to produce units and give them to allies.

[fatherbushido]

I fixed some stuffs. Now we can only give capturable stuff (structures). If our structures can be captured, we should be able to give them.

[mimo]

Replying to fatherbushido:

If our structures can be captured, we should be able to give them.

Why ? capturing is a reward while giving structures could lead to a lot of abuses. Just thinking 5 mn about it, i can list: As soon as one player reaches town phase, it builds two markets and give one of them to its ally (even it the latter is still on village) to abuse the international trade bonus. As soon as one of the players reaches city phase, the other ones give it their cc so that it can build one fortress inside their territory to protect them, and then the "city phase player" gives them back the cc and fortress You won't any more be able to defeat any team member without destroying all of them if for example each team member gives a barrack inside its territory to the other team members

[fatherbushido]

Ok i agree that there is a lot of potential abuse, if it would be included, it must be very restrictive or planned out well.

[fatherbushido]

this is a wip, actually there is too many side effects on gameplay

[elexis]

The concerns are mostly about that tech being overpowered in several ways. It should be possible to address this with balancing. In my opinion we could make it an age 3 tech and link it to high resource costs, f.e. four times the original costs of the building that will be transfered. Furthermore we could restrict it to certain buildings (to prevent sending the cheap buildings to just gain territory).

Avoiding the player defeat is possible by sending out a woman in the early game (or letting allies build a foundation, but that should be fixed). If it's linked to the tech and high costs, it will still be an economic defeat for the player for the next 15 minutes.

The fact that allies can build two fortresses right beside each other means the buildrestrictions should also check for allied structures (maybe even enemy structures so that people can't mess with it using diplomacy).

If a player gains control of another unit or building, it should just be impossible to do things with it your civ can't do.

The button shouldn't be seen in the diplomacy screen but probably in the selection panel.

[hal9000]

Giving structures you recaptured from the enemy back to your ally is also addressed in #4049. Perhaps this should be known here.

[elexis]

After some discussions with fatherbushido, we decided that we probably don't want to add the code required to make this feature possible. There should be cost and time attached to it, building requirements checks, basically a new component to store the timer, selection panel buttons and a new dialog would be needed to to select the receiving player.

[fatherbushido]

I finally reopen that. Working at other things, I had some thoughts.

• I noticed that it was in the first design (even in the/a war story).
• Moreover we have know the necessary code to allow such things (Upgrade related code, special filters and/or civ replacements...).
• All previous remarks (mimo, elexis, ...) are still accurate.

So that's mainly a gui issue now. (But there is no urge for doing that, there is even imo prereqs patch to start looking at that).

(edit: the current attached patch is obviously naive, wrong, clumsy, bad...)

[Imarok]

Move tickets to Simulation as UI & Simulation got some sub components.