Gentlemen's rule against buying city state and immediately declaring war

Hi

We often play with group of friends, so making gentlemen's/honor rules is somewhat easy. So we don't experience clickfest wars as we have agreed on a house rules to prevent it. However, we stumbled upon a new issue with the city states.
Scenario:
I gain ally in from a city state
Other player and the former ally buys it back
The other ally then immediately declares war on me
City state is now at war and peace blocked on me

While the tactic is sound and in the spirit of the game, the immediately portion of it feels unsportsmanlike, as the other player has no time to respond to it. Is there any good house rule to prevent this? Preferably something that doesn't disrupt the other game and doesn't increase the time spent on turns too much.
Thanks!

This is a strategic move. If I have a majority of the CS and people start trying to buy them I declare war on those people. I am not sure why you would want to prevent strategic play. Otherwise it's just who makes the most money gets all the CS not matter what..

If a city state is near some one and I want to hinder that person I will buy the city state and declare war. He then has to deal with CS units with little effort on my part. Again, a strategic move since that particular CS might not be the best to ally considering what it gives you.

I have been misunderstood. I don't wish to prevent that strategic move. But there needs to be opportunity for the other player to react to it. The issue, as I see it, is similar to how the 'unregulated' wars behave.
Although I guess there's no simple solution to it.

deyals said:

I have been misunderstood. I don't wish to prevent that strategic move. But there needs to be opportunity for the other player to react to it. The issue, as I see it, is similar to how the 'unregulated' wars behave.
Although I guess there's no simple solution to it.

Click to expand...

So, basically if you some one buys a city state you want them to wait at least say 30 seconds before declaring war so that you have a chance to buy it back.

I'm really not sure what you mean by unregulated war. Some times you get first move some times you don't. If you don't like that then fortify your units and let him hit first. In the end you take less damage overall.

We play simultaneous turns. So we need to 'regulate' the way the wars are played out, to avoid turning them into clickfests. Well maybe it is not absolutely necessary, but because we can do so somewhat successfully, we do it as it improves the gameplay.

We play wars so that, the defender moves first all his units related to that war. Then lets the attacker know that it is now attackers turn to move all of his units. Naturally the attacker originally starts the war after defender has given up his turn so the attacker can have his surprise. I have understood that it is common to have house rules like this in inhouse games.

Ive seen some gentleman rule where we had to publicly announce in chat we were going to attack a player 1 turn before declaring war (and not at the last second lol)

deyals said:

We play simultaneous turns. So we need to 'regulate' the way the wars are played out, to avoid turning them into clickfests. Well maybe it is not absolutely necessary, but because we can do so somewhat successfully, we do it as it improves the gameplay.

We play wars so that, the defender moves first all his units related to that war. Then lets the attacker know that it is now attackers turn to move all of his units. Naturally the attacker originally starts the war after defender has given up his turn so the attacker can have his surprise. I have understood that it is common to have house rules like this in inhouse games.

Click to expand...

Yes I have heard of a rule like this before, although it seems like it gives a big disadvantage to the defender. Instead of a "click fest" where the defender might have a chance to get some moves off the attacker is getting to move all his stuff first? This seems counter productive.

The rule I am most aware of is that each player takes turns moving their units during a war. For example you shoot with only one xbow, then he is aloud to shoot with one and who gets to shoot first each turn is staggered. I have never played like this before but it sounds pretty reasonable.

The biggest advantage goes to first move because that is often a heal or kill at the beginning of the turn.

CraigMak said:

Instead of a "click fest" where the defender might have a chance to get some moves off the attacker is getting to move all his stuff first? This seems counter productive.

Click to expand...

That's how it works in single player or hybrid? It's how the system is designed -- turn based combat rather than the ability to retreat a unit being focused down (assuming it would die within that single turn) or whatever.

I've been playing multiplayer for a few weeks now and it disgusts me how terrible the combat is and how focused on combat most games seem to be. Chariot archer spam and crossbow spam galore. If that's the kind of gameplay you want, the Starcraft or Command and Conquer series (or many others like those) do it a hell of a lot better.

I mean, I get it, if someone does something like spam wonders/cities and thus has no units I completely understand punishing him for it. That's how games in general work. But it's like people go into games with the express intent of teching up to crossbows and then spamming those to win. Starcraft 2 has far more varied gameplay along those lines and the games don't take several hours each either.

LordBalkoth said:

That's how it works in single player or hybrid? It's how the system is designed -- turn based combat rather than the ability to retreat a unit being focused down (assuming it would die within that single turn) or whatever.

I've been playing multiplayer for a few weeks now and it disgusts me how terrible the combat is and how focused on combat most games seem to be. Chariot archer spam and crossbow spam galore. If that's the kind of gameplay you want, the Starcraft or Command and Conquer series (or many others like those) do it a hell of a lot better.

I mean, I get it, if someone does something like spam wonders/cities and thus has no units I completely understand punishing him for it. That's how games in general work. But it's like people go into games with the express intent of teching up to crossbows and then spamming those to win. Starcraft 2 has far more varied gameplay along those lines and the games don't take several hours each either.

Click to expand...

This is true if you are referring to team games and duels. In an FFA early war is a very bad idea. If some one joins an FFA and rushes his neighbors he will surely fall behind and not win. Going to early war in an FFA ensures that you and the guy you attack will not win the game IMO. Unless of course you can take them out in 2 - 3 turns and get some nice wonders etc..

I came from SC2 and used to be diamond/masters. I can tell you that civ offers a lot more depth in game play than SC2. You have a lot more to manage and understand than in SC2 which is why I switched over. Civ 5 is a great game if you have the patience for it.

CraigMak said:

This is true if you are referring to team games and duels. In an FFA early war is a very bad idea. If some one joins an FFA and rushes his neighbors he will surely fall behind and not win. Going to early war in an FFA ensures that you and the guy you attack will not win the game IMO. Unless of course you can take them out in 2 - 3 turns and get some nice wonders etc..

I came from SC2 and used to be diamond/masters. I can tell you that civ offers a lot more depth in game play than SC2. You have a lot more to manage and understand than in SC2 which is why I switched over. Civ 5 is a great game if you have the patience for it.

Click to expand...

Wouldn't say this is necessarily true. If you can avoid a prolonged war and overwhelm your opponent with force fairly quickly (and take a good amount of decent cities) it can be quite effective. Sure you may delay your libraries and NC a bit, but once you get your economy going and your populations rising you should be able to bridge the gap. It isn't always the case this way either, but I have found from experience that early war can be quite good if you are able to quickly end a war and get back to building economy/teching.

ajar1189 said:

Wouldn't say this is necessarily true. If you can avoid a prolonged war and overwhelm your opponent with force fairly quickly (and take a good amount of decent cities) it can be quite effective. Sure you may delay your libraries and NC a bit, but once you get your economy going and your populations rising you should be able to bridge the gap. It isn't always the case this way either, but I have found from experience that early war can be quite good if you are able to quickly end a war and get back to building economy/teching.

Click to expand...

Yes, I said unless of course you can take them out in 2 - 3 turns and get a wonder. Although I myself would not recommend a war of any kind at all until your NC is up. When you're against good players every turn you don't have your NC you are falling behind. Taking a city does not make up for the lack of science caused by a delay in your NC IMO.

CraigMak said:

This is true if you are referring to team games and duels.

Click to expand...

I'm referring to everything. I've seen very, very few FFA games that didn't revolve around someone (or multiple people) crossbow rushing or frigate rushing. Granted, those were public random games so most of the people are terrible and so on. I've done one NQ group FFA that I won that didn't involve war until the very end of the game, which was a welcome change. Posturing, sure. Some attempted alliances to see if enough of an advantage could be gained, sure. But no one going "all-in" with a chariot archer/composite bowmen or crossbowman rush where they'd clearly lose if that attack didn't wholly succeed.

CraigMak said:

I came from SC2 and used to be diamond/masters. I can tell you that civ offers a lot more depth in game play than SC2.

Click to expand...

Not when your tech tree ends at composite bowmen and you ignore science/faith/culture

I've played in a significant number of games where people aren't crossbow rushing or frigate rushing, so I think you either just get unlucky in finding games or just need to play more games (or both). Additionally, as it has been mentioned, if such an all-in attack fails then you're screwed. You likely haven't teched/built up infrastructure (if you're rushing crossbows, you aren't going to have unis for a while), and will fall behind (and are already falling behind most likely) unless you take a number of cities quickly. This happens in other games too - do you complain when someone 4-gates you in StarCraft as Protoss? You defend against it by building defense, and positioning your cities well.

The biggest thing (imo) in defending is city placement, and is most often something that is overlooked by a majority of players in pub lobbies. Terrain plays one of the biggest roles in combat in this game (aside from obvious unit superiority). Position your units and cities in defensive positions to take full advantage of this. Additionally, pay attention to demographics so that you're keeping up in military production to the world average (or to your neighbors).

Finally, knights can wreck crossbows pretty bad if you use them properly.

I think it's an issue to create a ruleset (simultaneous turns) and then not abide by that ruleset. If you want an agreement not to do this sort of thing, request and have everyone agree to it before the game begins. I'm not sure how you solve this one though. Even a "warning" would allow someone with a better connection to simply buy the CS back last second before turn rollover then DoW. Enforcement then gets into the "intent" subset which goes messy fast.

Otherwise, unexpected tactics that fit within the game rules as agreed upon the game start are legit. Regardless, this isn't really a simultaneous turn rule, as someone could easily buy a ton of CS on their turn and DoW you in non-simultaneous turns too...in fact it would deny you the opportunity to react with counter-gifts entirely.

A nq rule stipulates that you have to let 1 turn delay if you try to steal cs before war.