I am on my 4th campaign and noticed something...

Giving middle eastern cities as gifts tends to bankrupt those factions you give them too.

Playing as England - Right after I completed a successful crusade, I continued ravaging egypt, and sacking their cities for florins. After I "sold" off all possible buildings, I gifted the cities to The papacy, figuring I would up my standing(which I did). What I noticed is the wealth standings kept going down until after the 5th city, they were "bankrupt". Eventually they lost all their cities...

I then "gifted" the next series of cities to my past/future enemies: Milan/France/Denmark, right after a ceasefire... trying to improve our realtions I noticed a considerable drop in stacks coming at me from those countries, and a drop in units overall. This is when I made the connection that I was bankrputing them. Perhaps they were buying many units to fight off the egyptians and mogols or just buying buildings for those emptied towns...

This strongly feels like an exploit, so I am not going to employ it in the future... but wanted to hear your opinions...


*** p.s. how do you find where the pope is when they have no territory? I have seen papacy stacks but cant find a city anywhere.