Gifts & Requests
Gifts to other cities
Gifts are a good way to butter up your neighbours. A gift may hold off an opportunity invasion by a rival, or get the favor of a city up enough to ask an animal or whatever else you might need in return. It's also useful to give newly conquered city a gift to get them out of the bitterness of vassalhood and prevent them from rebelling.
Goods & money gifts
How happy will a city be with your gift of goods or money?> In the case of goods, this depends on the following factors:
- Whether they sell or buy the goods you want to give: they'll be very happy with goods they buy; but a gift of goods they sell won't change their favor a lot.
- The price of the goods: the more expensive the better.
- The size of the gift: a lavish gift is always better than a modest gift.
- Whether you gave them a gift of that same good already in the last year: if you give them a 2rd gift of the same good in the same year, it won't have much effect, a third gift won't have any effect at all.
In the case of money, point 3 and 4 listed above apply, and it also matters how wealthy the other city and your own city are: if you have a lot of money yourself (> ~20k cash), your gift won't have as much effect as when you're relatively poor. Idem if the city you're giving the money to is very wealthy: it has enough money already so your gift won't add that much to their coffers compared to what they have now.
Animal gifts
If you give an animal from your menagerie to another city, you will get an animal in return, even when they're your rival, provided that you give them an animal that doesn't live in their climate. To see which climate a city has, go to the Empire map, click on a city, and look just below the big city name on the panel on the right. The next table lists the climate images/icons and the animals they can give to you:
| Climate | Animals you can gift to them to get one back: | Animals they can give to you: |
|---|---|---|
 Arid |
pheasant, panda, giant salamander, wild pig, alligator, tiger | saiga antelope, gobi bear, bearded vulture |
 Temperate |
saiga antelope, gobi bear, bearded vulture, wild pig, alligator, tiger | pheasant, panda, giant salamander |
 Humid |
saiga antelope, gobi bear, bearded vulture, pheasant, panda, giant salamander | wild pig, alligator, tiger |
Animal gifts don't improve favor.
Requests
If your favor with a city is high enough, you will be able to request goods, cash, animals for your menagerie and, in the case of allies and vassals, you will be able to ask for defensive aid and a military strike, but your favor with the city has to be very high, and expect a severe drop in favor after asking for military aid.
When asking money from another city, how much cash you'll get depends on a few things: first of all the difficulty level you're playing at: on very hard, you get much less than on very easy. Second: the economic situation the other city is in: if it's prosperous, you'll get more money. To see how wealthy a city is, look at the coins above the city icon on the Empire map.
Almost the same principle applies when you ask goods from a city: how much loads you get depends on the difficulty level, and on the amount of trade a city is willing to do each year: if it only sells a maximum of 12 loads of a good to you per year, you get less than when it sells 36 loads per year.
The next table lists how much you get for both money and goods:
| Very Easy | Easy | Normal | Hard | Very Hard | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coins next to the city | Cash you'll get: | ||||
 1 coin |
1000 | 800 | 600 | 500 | 400 |
 2 coins |
2000 | 1600 | 1200 | 1000 | 800 |
 3 coins |
3000 | 2400 | 1800 | 1500 | 1200 |
 4 coins |
4000 | 3200 | 2400 | 2000 | 1600 |
 5 coins |
5000 | 4000 | 3000 | 2500 | 2000 |
| Amount of trade/year | Number of loads you'll get: | ||||
| 12 loads/year | 12 | 9 | 8 | 6 | 3 |
| 24 loads/year | 24 | 18 | 16 | 12 | 7 |
| 36 loads/year | 36 | 27 | 24 | 18 | 11 |
Requests from other cities
Other cities may also request stuff from you, whether it be goods, money, animals or military aid. Not complying with these requests will cause your favor with that city to drop. These requests are always scripted in the mission: cities won't ask for things in an open play game.
Complying to requests can be done in 3 ways:
- When the request arrives, you have the option to send the goods/aid immediately (if you have enough goods in stock)
- Click the City Summary button at the bottom right of the city map, on the lower half of that panel, you'll see a 'requests' field: click on a request to dispatch the goods
- Go to the Empire map, click on the city from which the request came from, then click the Fulfill Requests button to dispatch the goods
Note: complying to requests for animals isn't possible if you don't have the patch installed.