[BNW] How to Get Comfortable with City-States

I'm looking to improve my CS game for the diplomatic and social policy advantages but I'm having trouble. I've always been extremely uncomfortable with city-states; keeping them happy always seemed like more trouble than it was worth, and before there weren't very many big incentives to ally with them.

Now, with the improvements to Patronage and the addition of the World Congress, I've been trying to work on city-state diplomacy, but I'm still finding it a huge drain on resources to keep more than a few CS's happy at once.

Does anyone have any tips on the best way to take advantage of city states, considering the improvements? Is there a certain type of CS that is preferable, or a maximum number that you're willing to invest in diplomatically? Do you seek them out ASAP, despite a considerable distance, or will you only pay attention to the CS's in your immediate vicinity?

What leve are you playing on? I only play on Prince, so any strategy I may have will only do you any good if you don't play higher than that.

I am playing on king or prince usually. Especially when trying new strategies.

First you start with a bow and arrow and work from there.

However, the number one way to get happy with CS is to open Patronage. This policy prevents you from losing favor as fast. There's not much sense in expecting to maintain CS favor with out this in play.

In the early game, pledge to protect nearby city-states as soon as you meet them, and try to wait for your influence to reach 10 before doing a quest for them. Each turn is another turn they'll be your friend afterward.
Despite this, you generally shouldn't pledge to protect city-states in someone else's sphere of power. Otherwise other Civ's will either bully them and getting hostile to you for protecting or befriend them and get hostile because of the competition.
Beyond this, the things you can do are getting Consulates (a Patronage policy which is kind of a must if you want to befriend many cs's at once) and doing the easier quests (barb camp, road, trade route, spread religion). Generally being in the lead will get you more influence through challenge quests (most faith/culture/techs in a given duration). I tend to ignore other quests.
As to types to befriend, I find Cultural and Religious city-states largely irrelevant; if you value those yields enough your own output will dwarf the bonus. Befriending a single militaristic city-state is very convenient if you are playing peacefully, letting your army build and update at a convenient pace while you focus on other things. (They don't seem to matter much when I'm pursuing conquest.)
Mostly though I pick city-states to warm up to based on the resources they have. It's a good way to get more luxuries, especially since starting positions tend to give less diversity now and luxes are a bit harder to trade with the AI for. When playing tall and finding you lack coal, a city-state can be the easiest way to get your factories running. Uranium-carrying city-states are something to look out for too, and there have been times where I bribed them simply to keep the Uranium out of the hands of other civs. (Be careful with the other strategic resources; if keeping city-states is hard for you, you don't want to get a big strategic resource penalty after losing a cs ally.)

Well here is what I do. With my 1st warrior, he scouts coast area, looks for CS, CS that have barb camps near are best!! Check CS to see if it has Quest to kill said barb camp. If it does kill it, if not scout around a bit more until it does. In this was you are gainging small bumps free of charge. Depending on map size, I play huge only, so I have 3 warriors out hunting camps until they die or run out of fog area.

Later in game pick up Patronage tree, I start this tree as soon as I can. Really once you have the Patronage tree and if you can grab the reformation beleif that nets you 30% influence with your gold. You just need the cash to back it up. And that really depends on your game play.

You pick a point in your game, when you say I need their votes, or my spice will no longer bring me trade and happiness. You need to have your econmy going stong, you need some serious gold!! IMHO, you should not really focus on this until industrial era. Unless you are a civ that has a bonus for CS. If Alex or Siam are in your games, you will have to spend some major dosh to bring them over to you. And with Alex, it will be a constant battle.

Which ones depends on what resourses they have. Beginnging of game, any of them are good. Later game, I prefer food and happy ones. You want to get luxuries, so grab ones that have things you do not at 1st.

I play on immortal mostly (some emperor, some deity), and in BNW you pretty much don't have to do any investments to hold the city states.

Start out with the Patronage opener (just squeeze it in somewhere, no need to have it be the first policy after finishing your opener tree or anything like that) and embassies (the one that gives +20 relations to everyone). Then, depending on how much you care about diplomacy, you can just pledge to protect everyone (never back down, AI forgets pretty quickly, and 5gpt is more than enough to offset the AI's bad diplo, whereas 5x30 = 150gold, which will get you nowhere with a CS).

Until both of these are done, do not do any CS quests besides clearing barb camps. Don't send them trade routes, don't build roads, don't get the luxes they want to get. After these are done, massively do every single quest the CS gives you. To trade for luxes, trade away the last copy of your current luxes (no need to buy).

Also, for far away civs that make contact with you, don't find their lands by setting up an embassy. CS-es eventually ask you to find them, and it's one of the easiest to do. Also, since for a CS-game, nothing else really matters, coordinate your faith-purchases and your GP generation to target what most CSs want you to do, even if it delays them a bit.

I don't usually spend any money on them until it gets to the point where I feel UN is about to happen (you want to have enough to vote yourself the leader; and up until then, only enough to be the top delegated non-host member, but NOT be host, because you get a diplo bonus for voting someone else host).

Since most of your gold is from trade routes, and everyone has the same number of trade routes, you can win a diplo victory using no globalization, no freedom/autocracy tenants, no forbidden palace and no AI diplomacy from any start, any position, as long as you're not persistently at war with someone who plunders all your trade routes. This works through Deity. I do mean ANY start. I've won every game where I was dead last in every demographic rating, including GNP, with the diplo victory. And, it only takes 2-3 policies to set up, so you can "switch on the fly" pretty easily even in late game.

It's basically admitting defeat, but you get a victory.

I don't usually bother with city-states until the Industrial age or so.

The single most important factor is to have a strong economy. Lots of gold per turn means lots of gifts. The second biggest thing is the Freedom tenant that improves your relationship with city-states with whom you've got a trade route. Once you have that, shuffling around trade routes to city states is amazingly powerful.

Keep an eye out for clusters of C-S quests. If 5 city-states want you to connect pearls, it's well worth a few gold per turn to a rival civ. Likewise, sometimes you can cascade the quests. Say 5 city-states want you to connect jewelry, and Jakarta has it. If you're lucky, you can built a road or send a cargo ship to impress Jakarta, and thereby win the others.