Suggestion for balanced Austria/Venice CS liberation

Austria+ Venice's ability to remove CS from the game feels very 'off' to some people.
There is the balance/realism argument that a large cost was paid to get those CS/ they agreed to come in.

So here is an idea, the CS marker remains, but because those CS were 'peacefully' taken, Austria/Venice get 160 free influence (liberation amount)... and 0 influence degradation (or even a slow influence gain) while they hold it.

I think if they were just able to be liberated back to City-State status it would be fine, no need for fancy influence modifiers.

OmniPotent42 said:

I think if they were just able to be liberated back to City-State status it would be fine, no need for fancy influence modifiers.

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The argument is that wouldn't be balanced for Venice/Austria. This way, if you liberate it, they are still the Ally of Austria (and probably of Venice).
Another option is restoring CS status on transfer

KrikkitTwo said:

The argument is that wouldn't be balanced for Venice/Austria. This way, if you liberate it, they are still the Ally of Austria (and probably of Venice).
Another option is restoring CS status on transfer

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Doesn't the liberating Civ of a CS gain an influence boost? If so and it was liberated then it would be allied to a Civ at war with Austria/Venice, wouldn't that mean that Austria/Venice's influence with that CS reverts to 0?

Veneke said:

Doesn't the liberating Civ of a CS gain an influence boost? If so and it was liberated then it would be allied to a Civ at war with Austria/Venice, wouldn't that mean that Austria/Venice's influence with that CS reverts to 0?

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Well if Austria/Venice had a large influence boost themselves, the liberated CS would be their ally (and at war with the liberator)

Also influence doesn't go to 0 unless you declare war on a CS. If you declare war on their ally, then the influence is preserved ( it will go back to original after peace)

I think Austria ability just needs to be changed to something else. They aren't unique anymore and don't bring any value in the game.

Venice could stay as it is. There's limited number of merchants they could produce and they could be used to double influence instead - in the game Venice often goes for Diplo victory and don't buy too much CS.

Another thought - if we have civ which could consume city-states, why not have one which could spawn them? I mean on settling a city they could chose it to be a city-state allied by default. Surely there could be some balance issues, but after Venice I think it could be handled.

I honestly am still not convinced that either of these need fixing at all. Most people don't have a problem with Austria anyway. They have a problem with Venice because they say its unstoppable. I disagree with that ( and the fact that it breaks the game in anyway), but don't feel like starting the debate again.

venice only becomes "unstoppable" if your going for a diplo victory. And We all know we can win one of those, thats my fall back if some other science or culture victory im going for doesnt work out. So yes, it is kind of screwing up my fall back but that just makes the game more challenging which i enjoy. I dont see why austria has to go either. I do think that adding the option to liberate a city state doesnt make sense but would be useful for people that for some reason always want to do a diplo victory. Also just had a thought, what if "purchased" puppets, which are unique to austria and venice, were able to be "converted" by a spy. Like what the US likes to do, we send our guys to some perfectly stable, maybe mildly repressive third world locale. We then try to set up an outster of the current regime and bring the sheep to our fold. The spy could do this similar to their normal "coup" function except their chance of success would need to be much much lower (only a lvl 3 spy could succed and then it only works half the time maybe?) And i think the city would then revert back to a CS with a mind of its own rather than a city of the coup instigator since thats usually how it works out in real life.

Austria is fine, imo. Venice is annoying and sometimes you've got to lay the smackdown on Dandolo, but otherwise it wouldn't be powerful enough.