Awesome CS allies

So I finally finished my exams and upgraded to BNW. Shoshone, Earth, Huge, Marathon. Started in Alaska, colonised west coast USA, plus Panama. Sharing the continent with Oda, who started in Tennessee and pretty much had everything east of the rockies, plus Nicaragua. He DOW's, which I had seen coming a mile off and therefore bought two city states: Ur in Mexico, and Buenos Aires in South Dakota.

I have never seen CS allies so aggressive. Ur got pretty smashed in the initial onslaught, and pulled back to the city. I had no interest in taking Kagoshima (in Nicaragua), so I bombed it down to zero and kept it there, in the hope that Ur would come and take it instead. Which Ur duly did, using nothing but a treb and a 50hp pike (all that was left after the initial assault).

Meanwhile, Buenos Aires was a bit north of most of the action and I thought it might have been a waste of time buying them, until I noticed that they had marched all the way over to Oda's frontier city of Izumo on Hudson Bay! You could fit two cities in line between them.

I have never had such useful, aggressive allys. Has anyone else found this in BNW?

On higher difficulties I find the AI CS are usefull, but on lower difficulties they don't do anything but defend. Also have a look at what their personalities are, the ones with "aggressive" are obviously more likely to go fight enemies.

Yeah CS allies can very useful in war if you want to avoid any warmongering penalties.

military producing allies are badass. Once i had Kongo razing a morrocoan city.

I like the fact that if you are surrounded by city states, they are the meatshield if u ally them. After all the enemy has to go through them.
But if the enemy allies with them...........

a few days ago, city states started gifting me units that require strategic resources, such as Horsemen and Swordsmen, even though they didn't have access to these strategic resources in their lands. I had spare ones, was that changed as well recently?

mclericp said:

military producing allies are badass. Once i had Kongo razing a morrocoan city.

I like the fact that if you are surrounded by city states, they are the meatshield if u ally them. After all the enemy has to go through them.
But if the enemy allies with them...........

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And people say the Mongol UA is crap.

It's still crap. Even if a human is encircled by cs, an AI, or human for that matter, will have a hell of a tough time getting his units into position without tripping over cs pikemen.

Having a military CS ally has been useful to me in the past where I received military unit gifts from the militaristic CSs. Building all types of buildings and wonders while keeping military units that were gifted from militaristic City States helped me as I made a DoW on another AI and vice versa.

I always use CS allies in my war plans. Verifying there are no enemy-allied CSes at your borders is vital before DOW, and the right ally in the right place can make or break a whole campaign.

CSs are worthless on lower difficulties... Just terrible. Wish they'd build more units, take more land, and try to capture cities.

mclericp said:

military producing allies are badass. Once i had Kongo razing a morrocoan city.

I like the fact that if you are surrounded by city states, they are the meatshield if u ally them. After all the enemy has to go through them.
But if the enemy allies with them...........

Click to expand...

This happened to me in a recent game, there was just a wall of city states running straight down the continent, and they were all my allies. My very own Iron Curtain.

Sturmgewher88mm said:

CSs are worthless on lower difficulties... Just terrible. Wish they'd build more units, take more land, and try to capture cities.

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I've had CS allies capture cities plenty of times. It's not super common but does happen, and you can help if you want.

In a recent game I had been battling both Indonesia and Rome on my continent. I wasn't currently at war with either but they had been at war for a bit and were fighting over a small city of Indonesia's on a lake surrounded by jungle. Rome's pathetic attempts to take the city were amusing and I kind of ignored it while fighting another war to the north. Then I got Industrialization and saw the only coal in my region right next to the city they were fighting over! I immediately DOWed Indonesia and raced a few units over to take the city before Rome, which was finally starting to whittle down the city HP. I was starting to worry I'd have to DOW Rome too to get my coal when a CS ally I had all game long swooped in and took the city with their only pike at the last possible second. I expected them to burn the city but they kept it and a few turns later I gifted them the mine and got my coal.

Scarpa said:

I've had CS allies capture cities plenty of times. It's not super common but does happen, and you can help if you want.

In a recent game I had been battling both Indonesia and Rome on my continent. I wasn't currently at war with either but they had been at war for a bit and were fighting over a small city of Indonesia's on a lake surrounded by jungle. Rome's pathetic attempts to take the city were amusing and I kind of ignored it while fighting another war to the north. Then I got Industrialization and saw the only coal in my region right next to the city they were fighting over! I immediately DOWed Indonesia and raced a few units over to take the city before Rome, which was finally starting to whittle down the city HP. I was starting to worry I'd have to DOW Rome too to get my coal when a CS ally I had all game long swooped in and took the city with their only pike at the last possible second. I expected them to burn the city but they kept it and a few turns later I gifted them the mine and got my coal.

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I wish they didn't usually burn down cities.

Sturmgewher88mm said:

I wish they didn't usually burn down cities.

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I believe a CS's happiness is linked to it's ally's happiness. so if taking a city puts them in the red then they raze, if not then it's kept