Turning down the number of city states

P

Primacide

Settler
Joined
May 2, 2014
Messages
602
Location
California
When map settings are discussed, I've found that most players drastically reduce the number of city states. I on the other hand usually turn them up, often just short of the max.

I reason that the extra food, early culture, and late game faith from the CS is worth giving up city locations, most of which I would not or could not settle anyway.

I'm curious if there are others out there who crank up the number of CS, and if you are one of the many who reduce it, what is your reasoning? I play with continents plus usually. I utterly dominate on emperor and get crushed on immortal. I'd like to know if I'm missing out on an element of the game by using many CS's.
 
I'm the other extreme; I find the game to be a lot more interesting when there are no city-states. First of all, the space they take up means that you often don't have room to do anything other than three or four cities. The extra food, culture, and faith mean that you have lots of wiggle room, so to speak, rather than having to hard build the structures necessary, and in the case of food, you have to farm rather than trade post if you want sufficient growth.

It also means you have to carefully pursue your goal if you want to get and maintain chairmanship of the board. :)

Generally, I noticed the games in which I tried to play up to city-states were orders of magnitude easier than when I didn't, but it wasn't an easier that appealed to me -- letting cities outside my direct control do all the real work for my empire.
 
I think so. The game is designed around those numbers, so when you change them one way or the other you change up how it all works together. As you've observed, this isn't necessarily making it harder or easier. If anything, it compounds the differences between difficulty settings. Maybe try a default game at emperor and see how that plays out?
 
I find them to be very frustrating in my pursuit of SV so have tended to reset them to zero. But, from what I am reading they can be useful for diplomatic victory so I am also keen to hear from people who deliberately increase the number of CSs.
 
I appreciate people sharing their thoughts. In terms of many many CS and a diplo victory I will say that the extra CS do seem to spread the AI a little thin. They won't spend tons of gold on CS despite having 3k in the treasury. They will typically target a few CS and ally them every turn. So long as you ally back (typically the minimum $250), the AI will tend to stay focused on that particular CS while you swoop up the rest.
 
I love the City States. I think they make the game more interesting, not less, and would never reduce or remove them.

I also don't find that they crowd anything. I can usually found as many cities as I need, and only occasionally have to take a CS into my benevolent embrace, for strategic reasons.
 
I don't remove city states in my games.
 
I personally find it plays best if trimmed down from default 2:1 to 1:1.
At the default ratio, you might not notice if Austria marries a city state or Venice buys one, cutting it down in half and you really will.

City states are often found in bad spots one or two tiles away from where it ought to have been, killing multiple city sites. Cutting in half limits this problem.

In addition at the 2 to 1 ratio you pretty much have the same mix of city states every game. With a 1 to 1 ratio, there's more variety in the kinds of city states between games. (You can have 4 city states that are Merchicle one game and none at all the next.)
 
I usually play max civs/city states on huge maps and marathon. Every civ ends up broke trying to constantly buy off all the city states but most don't get more than 2-3 allied unless they're Siam or #&$*#&$ Greece...that guy always ends having half of them allied by late medieval era no matter what difficulty I'm playing on.
 
Having tried both, I like city-states--around 3:1. But it's important to crank them down sometimes so you don't use them as a crutch.
 
I like city-states as well, but for me it is a matter of what type of map I'm playing. I've done both at the max and at the minimum. I do enjoy city states though, especially Militaristic ones. In a game with a lot of civs active, they can hold the key to which civs aren't participating in the game!
 
In addition to the reasons listed above, sometimes I turn the number down when playing with a larger map just to cut down on the processing times.
 
joncnunn said:
I personally find it plays best if trimmed down from default 2:1 to 1:1.
At the default ratio, you might not notice if Austria marries a city state or Venice buys one, cutting it down in half and you really will.
Click to expand...

This! Couldn't agree more.
Also, with less city states the fighting over them gets much more intense and fun. It makes placing spies in city states really useful late game since that is much more effective at keeping allies than just bribing them.

I finished a game two days ago, huge communitas map 12 civs/10 CS. Me as Russia, random opponents. I somehow managed to get Greece, Siam, Austria and Venice in the game. The only one missing was Sweden I guess.
Four city states made it to the end, and they switched allies almost every turn. Great fun!
 
City states are great when there's large sums of money in the coffers. Puppets can often generate great merchants by themselves which help give out large sums of gold per trade mission with a city state and city state ally points.
 
Very limited experience with the game so far, but I'm having fun with a King games I generated as Greece: Terra, Huge, Marathon, 12 Civs, 40 CS, 5byo planet.

Main thing I'm gathering: the city state mechanic was a brilliant addition to the game.
 
Everyone has good thoughts on this setting. I think I'm going to try my next game at a 1:1 ratio, just to see how my style will have to adapt. The diplomatic victory is my bail-out option usually, so way fewer CS may force me to focus on science as a back up plan (I usually have very long dom games). I rely heavily on CS culture early game, so this may force me to stretch as a player.

However, you haven't really played civ until you have fifteen maritime allies. Woooo-hoooo, that's a big capital!
 
Primacide said:
However, you haven't really played civ until you have fifteen maritime allies. Woooo-hoooo, that's a big capital!
Click to expand...

As I recall, martime allies produce 3 fpt to the capital or 45 food.

That's roughly equivalent to 4 cargo ships going to the capital in the modern era in a game where there's no maritime city states at all.
 
joncnunn said:
I personally find it plays best if trimmed down from default 2:1 to 1:1.
Click to expand...

This and I generally boost the number of civs so the map isn't so empty. It must be bad for Austria etc and (particularly) Venice, but I don't care.
 
qemist said:
This and I generally boost the number of civs so the map isn't so empty. It must be bad for Austria etc and (particularly) Venice, but I don't care.
Click to expand...

Austria barely uses it's UA anyway. In fact, some humans have gone thru entire games as Austria without using it either.

As to Venice, with 8 city states their AI should still be fine since there's usually at least 1 city state close by. (More so if when you added a major AI or 2 you also kept 1:1)

Now, adding additional major AI or two does have the nasty side effect of adding a lot more competition for religions since that max number of religions is set by world size and NOT number of major civs. (In the World Size XML file)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

ThermobaricPunch
Multiplayer desyncs (loading screen between turns) and weird bugs
Replies
1
Views
880
coolhandluke11
C
Henri Christophe
The Mongol conquest
Replies
5
Views
1K
lerrocco
L
A
City States and Citadels
Replies
0
Views
349
alchx
A
T
Permanent ally for city-states
Replies
6
Views
726
myclan
myclan
O
No city states spawn when using (2) Vox Populi?
Replies
1
Views
354
NigelC
N
Top Bottom