City-states are trolls

C

Carmack

Chieftain
Joined
Mar 13, 2013
Messages
79
Is it just me, or do city-states show up in the darnedest places? They annoy me in the early game. I'll stumble upon what looks like a perfect, beautiful city location: Riverside, mountain, 1 or more luxuries. But, then I move another tile and discover a city-state is 2 tiles away, negating what would otherwise be a wonderful city location. What makes it worse is you can't raze them! GAHHHHHH!!@!@

I think I might play The Mongols next in a small world game with just me, The Mongols, versus 40 city-states.

Just had to vent that out.
 
I believe this is intentional. Having such good resources at their starting positions gives two incentives. To ally with them (to get those delicious resources they start with) and the conquer them(which has some pretty serious diplomatic repercussions but is balanced out by their amazing start positions.

On another note, it seems like most of the natural wonders in the game are in city-state borders. Especially good ones like Lake Victoria, Cerro de Potsoi, etc. Anyone else seeing this. Seems like another incentive to conquer them for me :lol:.
 
LMAO with the picture of such a "slaughterhouse" map..

I think it's not just you.. city states must be placed around specific locations, just like our settlers do, so they can grow and get more resources to spare to her allies...
 
I think city-states get placed in relatively desirable start positions most of the time. You do see a few that end up in frozen wastelands or baking deserts, but not too often. On the plus side, this can be helpful if you're playing as Venice; at least when you buy a CS you get good real estate.
 
Thats why i always play with less civs than the map type (ea 10 for a huge map). It makes sure there are at least some good places left. I love the CS mechanic too much to decrease their number
 
deity12 said:
I believe this is intentional. Having such good resources at their starting positions gives two incentives.
Click to expand...

But why put an entity in a perfect place for a successful game, and then forbid it to grow, expand - and ultimately win? :confused:
Because it's a CS... Really? :sad:
No wonder they start trolling the "real" Civs...
CSs might be an interesting gamey mechanic, but from a historical point of view: totally surreal!
 
City States are more like Trolls once they get into asking you to do dumb things for them that`s likely to cause more trouble, not less, like attacking a City State that`s protected by a powerful Civ. Or denouncing a Civ because it picked on them.
 
I agree with the OP, city states have this magical ability to be almost on a good spot, but about 2-3 tiles off, with the tiles gained being useless, mostly empty ocean, making he spot mediocre at best.
One example is a city state I found on an island with siripanda (or whatever that mountains called),which was about 7 tiles long. if they put the city in the midle, they could have gotten the entire island, 5 fish and pearls to boot! but no, they place it on the end of the island, missing the wonder and 3 fish and half the workable land :/
 
Yep, pretty much. City State placement is more often than not abysmal, but close enough to an actually good spot to ruin everything for you. Probably one of my biggest gripes about civ 5 is how there can just be nowhere even half decent to expand reasonably often. But the game is really enhanced by it at the same time, so I don't want to get rid of too many of them.
 
gps said:
CSs might be an interesting gamey mechanic, but from a historical point of view: totally surreal!
Click to expand...

IMO, Cs represent more a kond of "minor nation" (I'm not sure but the dev initially call them such) which are not interested in expansion, more than a single city. I think about Switzerland, for exemple.
CS act as buffer states, and can also represent, more or less, "non-aligned" countries between empires (think about the Cold War).

Anyway, I love the mechanic and it's a good addition to the game. I think I couldn't play Civ4 because of this.
 
Yeah,I love city states, especially ones on my borders with good bonuses (like luxes or a UU I'm interested in) But the only thing I despise about them is that they always seem to nab some of the natural wonders :p
Speaking of this I notice how they sometimes bunch together, and my favorite layout is 2 mercantile states with both porcelain and jewelry together (its kinda like running a mini puppet!)
However, I have also seen land locked martine city states, even ones in deserts, with nary a river to sail their boats? :dunno:
 
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