by LPhillips » Tue Jul 17, 2012 7:19 pm
Giving units will break the game in some ways. It's one of those two-edged swords that pit game balance against feature utility.
1) The cost of support units in team games (or any other game) will be effectively reduced by this. I was engaged in a 40-turn game on 8 kingdoms with my team, and purchased Dragons on turn 12. Effectively, we would have all had dragons if this feature were available, for the cost of purchasing dragon production one time. The cost for sharing units could perhaps counteract this.
2) In non-team games, this becomes a feature for griefing your opponents. The formal NAP system is bad enough about this, but the last thing we need is to make "kingmaking" even more viable. The ability to "sell" cities is even worse in this regard, removing the travel restrictions. Of course, you can already do this if you trust your NAP partner.
The main problem here is support units. Players often only need 1 or 2, so even getting a red dragon for 1200 gold instead of spending 2400 on production or waiting for a hero offer is a game breaker.