Ooops - hey, that's kinda cool

[Overcast32]

I goofed this weekend!! But found something pretty cool - if it hasn't been mentioned already.

I was moving my Missonary through Saladin's territory right next to me. I was making numbers of missonaries trying to get Christianity spread since I had founded it.

Well, I go to click on something and completely miss and *poof* there goes my missonary! I accidentally gave him to Saladin..

Then I thought about it - well, there's only one use for a missonary right? To spread the religion he is a part of... I just then realized - it didn't really matter if I gave missonaries away or not, actually in this case it was quite helpful, as I didn't have open borders with the Japanese, but I could see that Saladin did, since Japanese units were moving around in his territory. Well, all of Saladin's cities already had Christianity in them, and poof next thing I know I can see a city in Japan I guess Saladin used my Missonary! Either that or it spread on it's own.

Either way, not sure if it's been mentioned or not - but giving away missonaries seems to have a couple of uses for the good - if you are the founder of that religion! After that, I would make a missonary and move him 10/15 tiles to Saladin and give my good buddy Saladin a present His state religion and mine were the same - I don't believe I could gift the missonary to Cyrus who was buddist at the time...

[johnmcd]

You can gift them to anyone, state religion or not.

The advantage I find for them is that it means I can start making more sooner, that three unit cap is quite hard sometimes.

[Willem]

The problem though is that there's no guarentee the civ will actually use them. It may just park it in a city somewhere or even disband it. You're still better off doing it yourself if you can. Although it is a good way to get them into an empire that you don't have Open Borders with.

[Overcast32]

Yes - that is my thinking too. If I move them myself, I get the benefits of updated map information too.

But - situationally, it's a useful tool.

[couerdelion]

Just a small extra point would be if your “ally” has Engineering or Construction and you do not. The missionary could therefore move to a destination more quickly (and probably also gets another move).

Of course you have to consider what uses your ally will put these missionary to. I guess, if they have your religion as their state religion then they will probably want to convert all their cities first. You, OTOH would want to be converting cities in civs without its own religion so that the religion might spread more rapidly around the world.

Does this also give you diplomacy benefits?

[Overcast32]

I'm not sure about that - that's one thing I wanted to look in to.

When you normally gift a unit to a Civ - do you get any bonus to your standing with them? Usually the numbers just show the major items - like refusal to help in war, etc.. But I'm sure there's some other factors as well.