Choosing AIs to compete with me for City States

I'd like to play a game where I plan to go Diplomatic victory from the beginning with Patronage after Tradition (maybe a little Rationalism for Secularism), but one problem I tend to have with Diplomatic victory is that the AI ignores City States too much and/or conquers them. Note I am strongly also considering Autocracy here as I've never done an Autocracy diplomatic victory but I've done it with Freedom many times.

I want to play a game where the race to ally city states are competitive from beginning to end and therefore getting Diplomatic victory is harder, to make that (usually boring) victory condition more interesting. Here's my current plan:

Basic stuff:

• Difficulty - Immortal
• Standard Map - Type unsure but one of the more basic ones (Pangaea, Fractal, Small Continents maybe)
• My Civ - England (I want to choose a Civ that's at least a little suited to Diplomatic Victory, and I haven't played as them yet)

Opponent Civs (partially based on experience and partially on civdata.com):

• Portugal - Definitely
• Siam - Definitely
• Netherlands - Definitely
• Greece - Definitely
• Sweden - Almost definitely
• Arabia - Probably
• Shoshone - Probably

Possible Civ substitutions for Arabia / Shoshone:

• Indonesia
• Ottomans
• China
• Poland

Definitely out:

• Germany, Rome, Russia, France (they do ally CSes, but they also conquer them too often)
• Austria, Venice (I want to fight for allies, not have them permanently stolen from me)
• Other really obviously inappropriate Civs like Mongolia and The Huns that are too long to list

Any thoughts about Map type, and especially AI choice, and anything else?

(Note: sorry about x-posting on Reddit but it got no useful comments so I'm trying again here).

sounds like you've thought it through. I can't add anything to your choice of opponents and agree with those you chose to leave out. Definitely include Siam and Greece who both go after CS very hard. Although many civs can choose to go patronage. There is some randomness to their flavors. For secondary choices basically anyone who isn't known to DOW CS will at least make an effort though be warned some AI DOW them specifically because they are yours so it isn't a guarantee. Having a good military and pledging protection discourages this.

For map settings I find it easiest to get bonuses from CS's when there are predominantly coastal cities like on archipelago. This also means many CS get islands to themselves and are thus safer from AI invasion and also more likely to have barb problems which you can use to complete more quests. It is also much easier to make trade routes due to the extended range of ships (thus money) which leads to more completed quests.

Keep in mind you can create duplicates of certain civs if you want too as well.

Only deity AI will manage to ally CS very early on due to their huge amount of gold. Immortal AI aren't even close, and anything under that is easy. If you want competitive, go deity. It usually takes several coup to steal AI's CS as you'll not get enough gpt to be able to buy most/all of them until you have a few stock exchanges. Start by getting the culture CS, then mercantile ones when you need more happiness. Others aren't worth it early but you'll need them eventually either for their lux or votes. If you want truly easy mode, go with Alex as you need a lot less gold to keep alliances, however he doesn't help with allying them in the first place. Any other civs that generate a lot of gold is also good for this. One thing to notice is that AI will not spend more than 500g on a single CS alliance, so if you have enough lead on them, you'll never lose the CS unless it drops below 60 influence.

Sclb said:

Only deity AI will manage to ally CS very early on due to their huge amount of gold. Immortal AI aren't even close, and anything under that is easy. If you want competitive, go deity.

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I'm almost ready to try Deity. I still need a good start location to beat Immortal. Soon, though.

Sclb said:

It usually takes several coup to steal AI's CS as you'll not get enough gpt to be able to buy most/all of them until you have a few stock exchanges. Start by getting the culture CS, then mercantile ones when you need more happiness. Others aren't worth it early but you'll need them eventually either for their lux or votes. If you want truly easy mode, go with Alex as you need a lot less gold to keep alliances, however he doesn't help with allying them in the first place. Any other civs that generate a lot of gold is also good for this.

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Yes, I know how to play; I'm not looking for thoughts on how to win this scenario, I'm looking for thoughts on how to make Diplomatic Victory less boring in Vanilla.

Sclb said:

One thing to notice is that AI will not spend more than 500g on a single CS alliance, so if you have enough lead on them, you'll never lose the CS unless it drops below 60 influence.

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Ouch. Seriously? No wonder AIs with thousands of gold still don't bother to take my CSes away. This fact actually probably makes this entire game concept pointless. No wonder why in almost every game I play I manage to ally all the CSes even without patronage.

Scib layed it out pretty well; sounds like you want to make the game more competitive; if this is the case, the answer is deity.

I'm not sure if excluding Mongolia from the list is something you want to do. On the one hand, including them actually helps you because when they take a CS, it can be very positive for you because 1.) when you liberate them, you get a big influence boost and 2.) liberating them reduces your warmonger penalty, which allows you to offset your aggression towards other AI that will shift their focus from building CS influence to aggression. On the other hand, you emphasize a game which focuses on others challenging you for CS control and maybe you don't want Mongolia "helping" you in this. But if that's the case, performing this "challenge" on anything other than deity is not really... challenging.

Well, if you're really serious, go 41cs with seven copies of Alex. On immortal, this will pose a challenge at least into the industrial era, maybe even atomic. Disabling all other victory conditions besides diplomatic may help, but it also tends to gum up the ai a bit.

I can't even imagine the hate that will come your way though. He's a booger when you have cs allies that he wants. Heck, he's a booger anyway.

Primacide said:

Well, if you're really serious, go 41cs with seven copies of Alex. On immortal, this will pose a challenge at least into the industrial era, maybe even atomic. Disabling all other victory conditions besides diplomatic may help, but it also tends to gum up the ai a bit.

I can't even imagine the hate that will come your way though. He's a booger when you have cs allies that he wants. Heck, he's a booger anyway.

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I started it last night. Currently T200, Alex has half the civs and I have the other half, no one else is even bothering.

I tried to get my religion passed in the renaissance but missed the first vote by like 3 turns, then Alex had enough CSes to beat me in World Congress round two despite my bribes to the non religious AIs.

He also eliminated Portugal yet I still have more hate from the AIs than he does, even though I only took Sweden's capital (hey, I couldn't pass up on Zeus and Alhambra, plus, you know, Longbowmen).

I don't really want to weaken Siam too much because he neighbors Greece but he won't pay me for peace... he doesn't really have any wonders I want anyway. I'm trying to build my Ships of the Line to attack Alex from the other side of the world but I'm really busy trying to get my Public Schools, National Wonders and Armories down. I should start making the fleet soon though. Unfortunately Stockholm with Alhambra isn't coastal

Wonders I have:
London:

• Oracle
• Hanging Gardens
• Forbidden Palace
• Porcelain Tower

Stockholm:

• Statue of Zeus
• Petra (a fairly crappy one, unfortunately)
• Alhambra

York:

• Eiffel Tower (in progress, I'm the only one in the Modern Era and I don't expect anyone to beat me. York isn't coastal so it can't help me build my Ship of the Line fleet)

Policies:
Tradition: 5
Patronage: 3 (Philanthropy, Consolates, Scholasticism)
Rationalism: 1 (Secularism)
Freedom: 3 (Avant Garde, Civil Society, New Deal)

While it can get a little confusing, have you thought about including two or more of the same opponent in particular I'm thinking of several Alexe's all with their city-state advantages? Also I'd go with huge map and multiple continents so you're more likely to have a runaway having control of a bunch of city-states before you can even get to them. Of course maybe by the time you finish your current game you want to go this route again .

One thing I forgot to mention is that AI will sometimes coup your CS, even if it has low chance of success. I'm not sure what triggers it. It is possible to lose your CS this way even if you have a huge influence lead. I do notice that most of the time that it is military CS that gets targeted this way.

Too late for this game, but you might like one of the “Plus” maps scripts for this challenge. The CS will be initially more remote, but more will be accessible via sea trade routes, and they tend to be clustered. The net effect in my experience is that they survive the early game better, and there is more competition from the AI over the CS.

Sclb said:

One thing to notice is that AI will not spend more than 500g on a single CS alliance, so if you have enough lead on them, you'll never lose the CS unless it drops below 60 influence.

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Seriously??? Why did they program that in the game? That's... really stupid.

redwings1340 said:

Why did they program that in the game?

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I think it is a firebreak. The Deity AIs end with essentially unlimited gold -- that is what is stupid. But rather than fixing that, which would have tricky, the developers limited the options the AI has for spending money. The net result is about the same: tough but not unbeatable opponents.

An alternative would be rich AIs getting in bidding wars with each other. They would spend all their money, but the human player would be locked out. That is no fun.

Or the richest AI would win every game by Diplo. That would be no fun either.

The AIs only dropping 500 gold at a time is a feature!

Still a very lazy fix. At least the AI should be able to prevent another player to win diplo, instead of sitting on a huge pile of gold and doing nothing.

beetle said:

I think it is a firebreak. The Deity AIs end with essentially unlimited gold -- that is what is stupid. But rather than fixing that, which would have tricky, the developers limited the options the AI has for spending money. The net result is about the same: tough but not unbeatable opponents.

An alternative would be rich AIs getting in bidding wars with each other. They would spend all their money, but the human player would be locked out. That is no fun.

Or the richest AI would win every game by Diplo. That would be no fun either.

The AIs only dropping 500 gold at a time is a feature!

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I'm not sure this is true anymore. My most recent game (not this England game, the one after that), was actually my first try of Deity as Shoshone.

It was next to impossible to keep CSes allied. Carthage and Portugal were in the game, and each time I couped a CS, the next turn the OTHER one would take the CS from me, usually ahead of me by about 60 influence which is way more than 500g at that point of the game. So either they completed a quest on the next turn coincidentally at least 5 times, or they spent more than 500g.

I did not get the message that said "blah blah Coup in city state X". I use Enhanced UI.

After a coop, I think you want to immediately drop 500 gold to keep the CS out of range of the AI.