Idea for Austria nerf

Make it such that the UA keeps the penalty for conquering, but without the Diplo Hit. Or increase cost depending on what's inside the city and it's standing army.

Your math doesn't add up, when I x3 your suggested numbers to compare it to my income playing marathon, it gets completely whacky.

I don't have 3K pocket money in the industrial age.

Put me down as "doesn't need a nerf". It's not like CS's are all that hard for any civ to acquire. This just eliminates a few rounds of fuss.

Taking the allied sacrifices the CS benefits. You are taking an ally that is giving you a nice bonus and throwing the bonus away in order to have another city in your empire. Sure, CS's have good resources, but you were getting those as an ally anyway.

steveg700 said:

Put me down as "doesn't need a nerf". It's not like CS's are all that hard for any civ to acquire. This just eliminates a few rounds of fuss.

Taking the allied sacrifices the CS benefits. You are taking an ally that is giving you a nice bonus and throwing the bonus away in order to have another city in your empire. Sure, CS's have good resources, but you were getting those as an ally anyway.

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Yes, any civ can conquer a CS to add it to it's empire, but at the cost of diplomacy, having to build units, lost buildings and population in the capture, x turns of resistance and the price of a courthouse to annex.

Austria's only cost is 500 gold and 60 influence for the one turn you make the marriage to eliminate all those negatives AND get their troops as well. Just the troops alone is almost always worth 500+ gold.

It's a cool ability, but just way too low cost for what it provides when compared with every other civ in the game, imo.

CaptainKapow said:

My suggestion:
Base the cost of marrying the city state on an individual "score" value of the city itself. This would include the buildings, troops and population. Perhaps incorporate a discount for influence over 60. That way sneaking super CS cities with crap influence will be very expensive, but otoh you are rewarded for marrying CS's you've invested time in.

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I like this suggestion the best. Maybe also have a discount based on how many turns you have been allied with the CS, but you could also have the price go up the more strategic/luxury resources they have (not counting the trade exclusive ones, cause that would make them generally more expensive).
This suggestion would also scale with the gold acquisition according to eras, since the city states also upgrade their units and buildings accordingly.

grzybek said:

I played against Austria once. They were doing pretty well. Destroyed Washington, started to go for Isabella, but then they decided to pick on me. Few turns later I had my borders with Isabella

Buff Austria - it's too weak.

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Since Civs don't get unique penalties (except India), this seems to be exclusively a human vs. AI thing, no? I mean, Austria would have been equivalent to a generic nondescript civ when you encountered them. This means that, in order to buff Austria so this situation wouldn't happen, you'd have to buff all civs. That would include the one you're playing, so you'd still be in the same situation.

ETA: I agree completely with CaptainKapow's suggestion. I also think you should have the option of recreating City-States if you annex them through a liberate option (I'm uncertain if you should get a relationship bonus for liberating them because they weren't conquered, but I do think it would be fair to be able to restore them to the map).