City States: On or off, pros/cons

City States on or off?

  • I keep them on

    Votes: 47 81.0%

  • No city states

    Votes: 4 6.9%

  • I reduce them greatly

    Votes: 7 12.1%
  • Total voters
    58
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Prince
Joined
May 29, 2009
Messages
358
Location
Calgary
Curious as to how people feel about city states. I've always been some what ambivalent towards city states, I've found them to be a little annoying. Then when I lost a game I was clearly winning in all apsects to Greece and a diplomatic victory I was annoyed.

What do they add to your experience? Take away from?

And finally do you play with them on or off?

Pros (for me)
-CS quests add some spice to games
-Helping city states survive attacks through proxy wars is enjoyable
-Buffer zones between empires

Cons
-Diplomatic victory is cheapened and just about paying out money or taking a civ like Greece (feels almost too easy imo)
-City States take up valuable real estate
-City States diplomacy isn't well hashed out. There's a mod out there that's pretty incredible for this but I dont trust mods with AI behaviour so I'm not going to try


One thing I may consider is playing with City States but keeping diplo win off. Or maybe just being more aware of the CPU about to win a diplo win who knows.
 
Resurrection said:
Curious as to how people feel about city states. I've always been some what ambivalent towards city states, I've found them to be a little annoying. Then when I lost a game I was clearly winning in all apsects to Greece and a diplomatic victory I was annoyed.

What do they add to your experience? Take away from?

And finally do you play with them on or off?
.
Click to expand...

Love them. I've been wanting something like them since I started playing civ. That said, I'm disappointed by their AI. They kinda suck really. Terrible at war, fickle, and yes, to the highest bidder always. I wish they were a little more like the AI in that they would sell their luxuries/resources via trade agreements rather than just to the ally. I love the quests as well. CS's are probably the quickest way to jump-start your civ in the beginning of the game. Allying a religious one grants a religion with minimal effort. Allying a couple of the ones that give you food grows your entire empire rather speedily. Allying a mercantile one always seems to boost my happiness +8-16 which allow for an extra 1 or 2 cities early. The cultural ones are awesome. Often double my early culture if I can ally them. Military ones seem weaker, but they can be pretty helpful as buffer states as they have great military and they do gift you top-of-the-line units so you don't have to build them. All in all, turning them off kinda nerfs you in the beginning I think.
 
They're a key part of the game. Why on earth would you turn them off?
 
there are 2 cons:

1) you're probably gimping yourself more than it would gimp the AI. not necessarily a bad thing, maybe even a point of pride in some games.

2) it gimps Greece/Austria/Venice AI's (probably others to a lesser degree). if there's a way to not have those AI in such a game, you should do that.
 
manu-fan said:
They're a key part of the game. Why on earth would you turn them off?
Click to expand...

Because an option in the game exists to turn them off or way up? That's like asking why someone would disable barbarians or play on marathon and not standard.
 
I don't know, turning off city-states would be kind of like playing OCC for me : something fun and different you could do ever once in a while, but not really thr same game.
 
I hate them. In fact, I wrote a thread on this not long after Civ5 was released. To me they are a terrible game mechanic that doesn't work at all.

I find them flawed both in terms of theme/flavor and mechanics/strategy.

I don't like starting with a map already filled, I don't like how City State follows a completely different set of rules, I don't like the boring quests and the diplomacy with/around them isn't interesting.

So, do I turn them off? No I don't. I've tried playing with them off, but the game is so clearly designed with them being there that I don't really view them as optional. They're a necessary evil.
 
CSs aren't a big issue to me so I usually keep them on. I haven't tried a game with CSs and if I have I don't remember.
 
I always change the default ratio from 2:1 which I find too crowded down to 1:1 that feels just right to me.
I guess that's the third option which I voted.

Edit: This leaves enough city states that Austria / Venice / Greece / Siam / etc. are fine. In fact, you have even more to fear from AI Venice / Austria with 1:1 ratio on standard map size as its just increased the odds of having married / bought one of the city states that would make a really good ally to the human.

Diplomatic victory is still very possible; but is more likely to take a second round. (On standard map size, the reduction of 16 to 8 city states would cause starting number of votes needed to win to decrease by 4.)

In fact, turning espionage off would do a whole lot more to make it extremely difficult to win a diplomatic victory. (No spies => No diplomats either) And has also somewhat slowed down a cultural victory in those games where the player that's going to take longest to influence chooses a different ideology.
 
I leave them on with no changes. Turning them off, as previously stated, nerfs several civs and also renders the entire patronage tree worthless, maybe except the opener just to get the Forbidden Palace though. It is also another way of turning the diplo victory option off, because there is no way to win diplo without CS'.
 
In vanilla i turned them off, I didn't play GnK but in BNW I keep them on. Sometimes I put more and sometimes less, it really depends on what I feel like. I voted for always on, I guess that's the closest to what I generally use?
 
I typically reduce the number of CS on the map by 2-5, that's not really what I'd call greatly, but they do sort of get in my way sometimes so I just usually size them down. Maybe I should play a game with full CS on and see if I like it more.
 
joncnunn said:
I always change the default ratio from 2:1 which I find too crowded down to 1:1 that feels just right to me.
I guess that's the third option which I voted.
Click to expand...

1:1 Civ to CS ratio feels just about right to me too - that way you have enough to make the game interesting, but not so many that all the good city spots are taken.
 
I like to reduce them. For me, nothing is more annoying then discovering an awesome natural wonder, like the Fountain of Youth, only to discover that it's just 2 tiles away from a CS. I don't like to disable them because it handicaps Siam, Venice, Austra & Greece too much.
 
sendos said:
I leave them on with no changes. Turning them off, as previously stated, nerfs several civs and also renders the entire patronage tree worthless, maybe except the opener just to get the Forbidden Palace though. It is also another way of turning the diplo victory option off, because there is no way to win diplo without CS'.
Click to expand...

Actually, with BNW you probably can win a game without city states with Diplomatic victory:

1) In normal play, for every 2 city states that are removed from the game (conquest / marriage / bought out), it reduces the count of votes needed by 1. With them off, it would start this way, so would need need 8 fewer votes on normal map size compared to normal.

2) With Globalism, you get +1 vote for every diplomat you have in someones capital.

3) There is a +2 bonus for being the leader

4) There is a +2 bonus for having built Forbidden Palce

5) There is a +2 bonus for being in the world ideology

6) And for every time you come in first or second; you gain +2 votes

7) In addition, there is a +2 bonus for being in the world religion (I mention it last because you'd probably already have enough to win before you could get the players to agree baring lucky timing such as someone else having proposed to ban a popular luxury)
 
I turned CSS off in Vanilla but I tend to just reduce the number of them. Too many CS tends to make it too easy for one civ (cough Alex) to take control of the WC.
Another way to reduce CS influence is to select Continents Plus - that tends to reduce the influence of CSS until the medieval era I think
 
joncnunn said:
Actually, with BNW you probably can win a game without city states with Diplomatic victory:

1) In normal play, for every 2 city states that are removed from the game (conquest / marriage / bought out), it reduces the count of votes needed by 1. With them off, it would start this way, so would need need 8 fewer votes on normal map size compared to normal.

2) With Globalism, you get +1 vote for every diplomat you have in someones capital.

3) There is a +2 bonus for being the leader

4) There is a +2 bonus for having built Forbidden Palce

5) There is a +2 bonus for being in the world ideology

6) And for every time you come in first or second; you gain +2 votes

7) In addition, there is a +2 bonus for being in the world religion (I mention it last because you'd probably already have enough to win before you could get the players to agree baring lucky timing such as someone else having proposed to ban a popular luxury)
Click to expand...

In addition to all of that, if you revive eliminated Civ's, they will vote for you for world leader.

That condition depends largely upon the warmongering of your neighbors, however.
 
Hm, but what would be the required number of votes to win diplo victory without CS'? For, say, large (with 20 CS' usually), that would reduce required votes by 10 to something like 30.

What I mean is that you would need several WL votes to win and by that time, a space race would already be occuring.
 
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