I miss City States being cool

I'm not sure if its my familiarity with the game or actual post-release changes, but I feel like the utter dynamism city states had over the game right after Civ V shipped years ago is missing.

With all the shiny features we have now, I didn't realize this until someone pointed out how useless city state allies feel.

I remember in Vanilla when CSes would capture other cities, and when two Civs would care about 1 city state so much that an entire cold war (or even hot war) would be based around the fate of that one city state's loyalty.

I wonder if anything has changed? I think espionage might have taken the fun down a little. The flippancy (no pun intended) of CS loyalties means investing too heavily in one isn't really worthwhile.

I wonder if I'm the only one too.

i argee with the war stuff around the CS's loyality and that CS's would capture other cities,but i still find them interesting. for example,in my indonesia game i have seen a CS capture a danish city. amazingly it kept the city.

I remember pretty much ignoring CS's in vanilla. I don't remember doing quests for them, because, as I recall, they were generally a pain and quite rare.

Now I'm likely to want to do things for CS's, since I feel I can keep them close though quests alone, investing a little money to make them best friends. With a religion, even better, since there is less decay on how they feel about me.

Before, wide was good, and tall was normally weaker, making CS's less valuable. I didn't want my cities growing. I didn't care to invest in culture though a CS (I would buy a temple and get better returns). Military units were far too rare to care about.

Now I want more faith. I want my cities to grow fast. I can get a huge boon from the extra culture, with fewer cities and culture being put more into great works. Military units are (or at least feel) more common and I can get nice uniques, too.

Before, you only needed votes at the very end of the tech tree, and only if someone built the UN, and unless you wanted a diplo victory, only enough to ensure no one else could win.

Now, starting in the Ren or, at worst, early Ind era, controlling CS's means controlling votes for the world congress. It means controlling the flow of the game.

For me, at least, CS's have come a long way, and have become very relevent to how I play, while, in vanilla, they felt like space wasters and targets to be taken down for natural wonders.

The City State implementation was horrible in vanilla. There were very few quests, you basically had to throw money at them. If you didn't at least befriend them, then very soon they would say they had an issue with their neighbouring CS and requested you took out that CS. This quest remained for the rest of the game!
With Gods & Kings the developers refined the system. Money to gain influence became less valuable, but instead a lot more quests were introduced and now they don't all want to kill each other anymore. Also religious and commercial CS's came into play with this expansion.

In my opinion the CS overhaul is one of the best overhauls the game has seen.

Optional said:

The City State implementation was horrible in vanilla.

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Are you serious? When Civ V was first released and reviewed, City States were one of the things that were seen as a real innovation in the series, and rightly so. Are you sure you aren't making this statement from the perspective of 20/20 vision?

I can't ignore the changes made to city states themselves have made some improvements (quests are more interesting and attainable).

It's the play surrounding them that seems less dynamic to me. I'm not sure what it is precisely, but I feel that the role they play in the game is less substantial. And it seems to be a lot of subtle little changes, not any one thing.

Another example besides espionage that might contribute: how easy it is to succeed at quests you don't need to try to win at. For example, when a city state decides that they want to reward the civ who produces the most culture over the next several turns. Well, the player producing the most culture is now automatically going to become the next best friend of that city state. That's not a quest, it's just icing on the cake for already focusing on a cultural victory.

But in the old days, I cared more about a city state because it was my neighbor. I wanted to make it an ally because it would give me a nice little bonus, some extra happiness, and it might defend me somewhat from another civ. (But maybe I was just playing poorly, haha!)

Now geography seems to play much less a role in how I approach city states. If I'm going for a strong religion, I just want to nab all the religions CSes that I can. There seems to be a lot less variety in how the CS game plays out; it's more rinse and repeat.

It's like the features seem cool but have actually taken something of the soul out of what used to be. Like now CSes are just tools to be used, but in the early days they felt more like little empires to be reckoned with.

CS's were an innovation, but so was Twilight for the vampire genre. Innovation doesn't mean good.

I agree, somewhat, with what you say about caring about them before because they were your neighbor (I still normally ignored them completely unless they had something worth conquering), but now, I care about a CS for bonuses, which sometimes leads to more tension than before, since you'll want to ally CS's near other civs sometimes.

But, you wanted the CS's near you. Now you want CS's that give you the bonuses you need. How is either one not "rinse and repeat?" You're just allying CS's for the same static reasons every game.

For quests like gain the most culture, I feel like it added a lot of strategy. Now, I find myself buying a cultural CS to boost culture (or faith) to ensure I win if I care about that CS.

I also agree, though, that before they felt like little empires to be reckoned with, as well, since, before, since it was a task of throwing endless money at them for little benefit, so I found myself just taking them out for their resources or NW most of the time.

Now, I have entered war on behalf of CS's, bought the freedom of CS's, conquered CS's to hurt an enemy, etc.

Before, they were there as an obstical, sitting near something I'd rather have in my own boarders. Now, they are tools to be used, fought for, spent on.

What Optional said. Having Venice (then a city-state) hate on Genoa for the rest of time destroyed my enjoyment of the original. Quest are much more varied now.

I do miss when the Little Powers had thier wars, where you could or another civ for that matter could be a deciding factor who won. But overall I do believe that the city states have been improved over the course of the expansions.

maybe it feels like that because allying become much easier now. late game gold is too much, while 50% gold gift quest happens too often. also the 'free' influence from having the most tech/faith/culture and the trade route quest...I'd be fine with halving the influence from these quests. spies rigging elections made it even easier.

also, CS will never build units that need resources. by late game, they become horribly weak, having no bombers or tanks, and still using privateers.

There were very few quests, you basically had to throw money at them.

I think CS are cool.
They do capture cities
Having allies is probably key to victory(unless you want the AI to dominate the WC).
They don't mind you buying land near their borders, nor will they back-stab you.
They give you stuff if you are friends/allies.

etc......

Big J Money said:

Are you serious? When Civ V was first released and reviewed, City States were one of the things that were seen as a real innovation in the series, and rightly so. Are you sure you aren't making this statement from the perspective of 20/20 vision?

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I'm not sure what you mean by a '20/20 vision', but I thought those City States were great when they were introduced. It's just that looking back from how it is now can be painful. Just recently I was following a Succession Game that was played on vanilla, and it struck me there how almost never one of the CS's around had a quest to offer. It was disappointing.
Also remember a CS could only have one quest at a time, so when they started to hate their neighbour they would never come up with anything else.

What I do miss from vanilla is the amount of war there was, and CS's could play a significant role in that. Strategically they could be very important. That has gone lost to some extent, but I think that's because the game as a whole has become more peaceful, not because the CS's have changed so much.

Although if you look at the warmonger penalty how it is now, there CS's have become more important again. Eliminating a CS gives a large warmonger hit, so they affect your reputation to a large extent. Civs who capture CS's quickly become the bad guy on any map, while if you liberate those CS's you get so much credit from everyone that you can easily steamroll half the map without anyone blinking an eye and calling you a warmonger. The CS's themselves are just passive pawns in this, but it's still good to realise they have this role.

zukenft said:

also, CS will never build units that need resources. by late game, they become horribly weak, having no bombers or tanks, and still using privateers.

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Yeah, you do wonder how they still manage to still give you unique units that require a resource!

City states are far more relevant and useful now. The few quests that did exist in early vanilla were broken or useless. Aside from the infamous "destroy city-state X" quests, which inevitably resulted in diplomatic ostracizing and chain denouncements from all AIs for the rest of the game when filled, the other quests were rare and generally unhelpful.

Getting asked to build a road to a city state was a nightmare; either the CS helpfully blocked your units with its military while refusing to build any road segments itself (something that still happens, but less frequently), or the game failed to recognize that the road was completed, and you wasted the turns and gpt for nothing.

Biologist said:

Getting asked to build a road to a city state was a nightmare; either the CS helpfully blocked your units with its military while refusing to build any road segments itself (something that still happens, but less frequently), or the game failed to recognize that the road was completed, and you wasted the turns and gpt for nothing.

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Actually, early-on, the city state's worker would partially build the road to the edge of their cultural border "toward me" all the time. I've not seen it in a long time, personally. I wondered if the code had been changed but never thought to ask.

Adjuvant said:

Actually, early-on, the city state's worker would partially build the road to the edge of their cultural border "toward me" all the time. I've not seen it in a long time, personally.

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You're right here. Also a change that got made with Gods & Kings. Although in a game I just played I did see them build part of a road to another AI, but in vanilla they did this all the time.
What seems to have improved is that the CS military units jog about a bit more, so it's easier to find space for your worker to build their part of the road. And you should always try to begin with their part of the road. Once that bit is done, the rest is easy.
A pain in vanilla was that they didn't recognise the road if part of it was through another civ's territory. That has been remedied. It's still not a great quest to get; a worker's time is a valuable resource, but not every quest needs to be easy. A remote civ asking for my religion I find even more awkward, but it's fine that it's in the game.

I would definitely like to see city states be more aggressive. Especially the militaristic ones. They're my ALLIES, and it pisses me off when I (and by extension they) DoW their neighbor and they do nothing. Occasionally, if I have gifted enough units, they'll attack. I would just like to see them more powerful and more involved. They can, and should be game changers.

to me, CS are "interesting" purely as far as for "interesting" sake. they make the game a bit varied just by existing and doing what they do.

gameplay-wise they are, usually, OP. early game Cultural or Maritime allies absolutely juice you up sometimes to the point where i could almost quit that game right there by the end of Classical era.

tactically, they are also invaluable. in war, just view a strategically located CS as a gigantic Cannon with massive hit points. and their tiles as foreign super-healing areas for your units.