1.01.383 Unmet City States declare

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When you're at war with a civ, any City State allied with this civ will declare on you, regardless of whether you've met them or not.
That should only happen upon meeting.
 
Actually, a similar thing is going on in a situation like this:



No contact yet between Warsaw and me, yet they're acknowledging I killed a barbarian on their border, and I'm gaining influence.
I shouldn't be getting anything from the City State here, no message, no influence.
 
Sorry, but contact is a prerequisite for communication, I didn't think that up.

Contact is a prerequisit for communication, not for war. The City State is allied with your enemy. Your enemy has contact with you. Since your enemy has contact with you and has declared war on you, the CS must declare war on you as part of the alliance with your enemy. Therefore the CS gets automatic contact with you so they can fulfill their alliance.

As for the second post, that is probably a bug. You shouldn't be able to get influence with a CS you have not met.
 
If you're getting this notification about a City State declaring on you the map still doesn't show where the CS is. The only way to contact them is through the diplo screen.
For actual war you need physical contact. You can open up the diplo screen and see peace is blocked, you can give them money to decrease the amount by which they're angry if you wanted, but actual war is impossible without any info on location or seeing units.

Not many Civ 5 players seem to be bothered about this, I understand that, but it's a flaw nevertheless.
Back in Civ III you could bribe civs into war with each other, but only when they knew each other, otherwise their names would not show up on the diplo screen. That's how it should be.

Otherwise you also can do a thing like this: Contact your neigbour, see if he knows any civs you haven't met yet, ally with him against them, then sign peace 10 turns later and start trading. If your neighbour happens to be Polynesia you can know the whole map early as well and start trading with everybody. You just need 10 turns of war first.
Whether the game mechanics allow this at present I don't know. It would be interesting to test, but that's what allowing war between unmet parties would lead to.
 
It is the Ally relationship that causes both. If you are at war with an AI, you will be at war with a CS that it is allied with them, and you cannot make peace, even if you have never had contact with them.

If you have an ally that "discovers" another CS, then they have discovered and made that contact for you.

Sometimes your Allied CS will discover a CS that is allied with the AI you are at war with. This means that you (through your ally) have made that discovery. Since it was already an Ally with your enemy, it declared war upon being discovered.

There is no "map trading". If you have an ally, you only have their city and surroundings (fog of war). You cannot see where they have "scouted".

There is nothing really flawed in this approach. In fact as long as the newly discovered CS is not at war with you via another AI, then this early discovery is more beneficial than any map trade. It does allow you access to what is important and that is another CS to communicate with or destroy.

Treating the CS as another AI, is flawed thinking. The CS is a "friendly" buffer between you and the AI. You can still get AI to do things to other AI. If you can get the CS to do this, you are exploiting them, due to their "neutral" status.
 
Sometimes your Allied CS will discover a CS that is allied with the AI you are at war with. This means that you (through your ally) have made that discovery. Since it was already an Ally with your enemy, it declared war upon being discovered.
I was sceptical about this when I read it, but didn't respond because I was unsure and didn't have any evidence. However, that's not how it works.

I like your idea about getting contacts through an ally, but the only way you can meet other players through an allied City State is through the bit of the map that gets lit up between allies. You'll discover them yourself through the fog of war that gets removed.
And for a City State to declare on you no type of contact through another City State is needed at all. I was lucky (or unlucky) to get the same situation again in a game, and this time I made a save and some screenshots. I'll show what happened.

Isabella declared on me on turn 24. I knew she was allied with Kuala Lumpur, but when she declared on me, she turned out to have an other ally, Kathmandu. She had found El Dorado first and had decided to let her money roll. Both CS's declared. I had not yet met kathmandu and was not yet allied with any CS that could have made this contact for me.
This was my explored world - playing as Mongolia:



You can see 3 CS's I had met: Kuala Lumpur (yellow), Belgrade (green) and Rio de Janeiro (hazy yellow). Also you can see a bit or Spain and Russia north of me.

If I would have contacted Spain just before she declared, I would have seen these parties listed as our mutual contacts:



Kathmandu is not mentioned. Although I'm still friendly with Spain, contacts do not get shared in Civ 5, you have to discover them yourself.
Unless war happens. Because when Isabella declares, I all of a sudden get to know about Kathmandu:
Spoiler :
The only plausible explanation for this that I could accept is that Spain has shared knowledge of me with Kathmandu, and Kathmandu follows Spain out of loyalty.
The only problems I would be left with then are:
* I can't think of any historical example of two parties that declare war without knowing each other;
* It's odd in game to be at war with a party you don't even get to see on the map;
* Allied CS's on other occasions sometimes follow completely their own agenda, like declaring a permanent war against a civ you have a declaration of friendship with. They're not bound to follow your diplomatic stance.

I find it good for the game that a CS you are allied with automatically declares war on any civ you yourself are at war with, absolutely agree and it should be like this, but there's no need to stretch this beyond civs they know.

I'm a little bit surprised that a lot of people seem to think it's okay, but I can't do much about that. You could indeed hold the opinion that this is a feature, not a bug, but that's something you could say about many bugs.
 
Let'stake ths down from the civilization level to a more personal one. Your friend goes to a bar. At that bar he gets into an arguement with some guy and they get into a fight. Before it gets too far, the bartender or bouncer breaks it up and calls the cops and nothing gets settled between your friend and the other guy. Your friend wants to finish it but wants some backup. He comes to you and tells you what happened. You are his friend (ally) and you agree to help him fight (go to war with) this other guy. You however have never met the other guy.

The CS declaring war thing is the same. Now while the automatic contact with the other CS is "unrealistic", it's how the game mechanics work. You can't be at war with someone you've never had contact with but war has been declared and so contact must be established.

I've had this happen to me on a few occasions and ever time, the CS city shows up on the map, but just the 1 city tile, non of the surounding land. You might not be able to see it on your minimap because of the small area that is covered but you may be able to scroll on the main map and find the CS tile.

So CS you have never met is allied to a Civ you have met. Civ declares war on you so the CS must declare war on you due to the allied status. You can't be at war with a CS or Civ you have never met, therefor contact is automatically established so you can be at war. So not a bug, just a part of the game that has to happen even though it's "unrealistic".
 
In my scenario, the unknown CS only declares war after being discovered. If it was an ally of the AI, then it should have already declared war, when the AI did. It is quite possible that it became an Ally after the war had started. It is also quite possible that the known CS could have attacked the unknown CS, thus your ally just made an enemy which is now at war with you by proxy.

We do know that CS can attack other CS and even incorporate them. I am not sure if this can happen without the mission (request) being stated or not. In your spoiler, there are no missions at all. It is also interesting that they are both culture. It seems to me there are still too many variables, to make a concrete determination.

In your scenario, I am not sure that you should be able to see an unknown CS, even if Spain knew about it. Spain is not your ally. I think that only unknown CS can be revealed by an Ally CS. It is obvious though that once war is declared, then Kathmandu, was made known (in the diplomacy screen), but probably not revealed on the map. Although clicking on it in the diplomacy menu may have moved to a position above their location??

From what I have seen, unknown CS's are discovered by Caravels, that your ally CS sends out to explore. They do not reveal the map for you, but they do reveal the "new" CS on the map for you. If you have the gold, you can then ally with them and then they can in turn reveal other CS's.


EDIT: I just discovered a CS, but it was their caravel that came to my borders that triggered it. I was of the opinion that it was the ally status that caused it. This sorta changes the dynamics. If an unknown CS who is an Ally of the AI you are at war with, (Finds you), then they declare war. This would make more sense. If they did not find you, then you would be an unknown. Once they do, then they declare war.

This goes for meeting an AI also. An AI usually comes to me first. It always seemed strange than an Ally CS would ask me to find an AI for them. The request is only completed when I send a unit to the AI borders.
 
EDIT: I just discovered a CS, but it was their caravel that came to my borders that triggered it.
This is a common way to discover remote CS's. Presumably caravels are flagged to scout. CS's don't build scouts, so they only start to do that when they get caravels.
If you meet a CS like this the name of the CS will be revealed on the map, just the one square.

@ Ranos,
Yes, on a personal level I find it much easier to understand. Not so much on an international level where a head of state has to justify why he's dragging his country in a war.
I understand your view, though, it's possible to hold that view. I already gave mine and haven't got much to add. Whether something is a bug or not depends on the intention of the game maker, and we're not sure about that.
Just a small correction; if a CS declares on you in this way their city square does not show up on the overland map.
 
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