Bad luck & unusual experiences with City States (not a coup/spy thread)

I recently had an extremely unlucky situation with a civ and CS.

Almaty, who is just above my third city, is currently neutral with me and perhaps friends (not allies) with the Netherlands.

Through sheer luck or perhaps unintentional genius, the Netherlands DOW had another purpose: to generate a GG.

Apparently Almaty gave the Netherlands a quest to generate a GG (it asked me to generate a great prophet). I was 2 turns away from getting my great prophet before one of my CBs shot a spearman which gave enough XP to generate a GG, and then Almaty DOWed on me. (I knew Almaty had that GG quest because it declared war on me when it was still MY turn, right after I shot the spearman).

I was already winning the fight and almost took a city from the Netherlands, when Almaty came rushing in with spearmen, CB, horseman, and warrior against my puny 9 defense city. I was hopelessly outgunned and had to sign a temporary peace treaty (a draw).

Pre-G&K, there was no way it was going to play out this way, Netherlands didn't have 500g either so it's effectively impossible to just bribe Almaty into allying. For better or worse, this is yet another reason I like the CS system now than before. The coup/spy system may be more annoying, but I still like the system now than vanilla. It made it less about a pure economic game to a more quest-dependent system.

The CS actively went to attack you? Thats surprising.

Militaristic CS can sometimes get quite involved. I had Almaty too, and it sent 3 knights who totally stole my workers. Caught me completely off guard.

In another game, I was allied to a cultured state (can't remember which, maybe it was Kuala Lumpur) and since I was playing OCC with minimal army, it started cranking out units like CRAZY. In the end, there was barely any space inside its borders, so it started putting the units next to my borders af it was protecting me. Looked quite cool, really. Denmark tried to attack me twice, and Babylon once - they got their units squarely butchered by my allied CS. Wicked.

It's not unusual in my games. Aside from the CS itself, the AI cheats by coordinating efforts with barbs, other AI (who are supposedly enemies, mind you) and any CS it can (i.e., not your allies).

Actually, the last item isn't totally accurate, either. The AI will actually coordinate with a CS that is your ally even though it shouldn't be able to do so. The AI will have the CS move units to block you or crowd your territory, including the opportunity to ally the CS if you should fall out of alliance and then DoW you immediately so that your ally of one turn ago is now a hated enemy.

Also, the units for a CS are not necessarily only from its own production. The AI will gift units to it just as you can (except the AI has cheat bonuses for production and maintenance and can thus gift tons of units). Of course, it does this in preparation for the aforementioned switch in allegiance and DoW.

(sigh)

The devs need to tweak the AI so that it is far less warmongering.

Yeah, it really gets obvious on Immortal+ that AI is globally coordinating against you. Makes me wish the good ole "trying to win game in similar manner" modifier was still around.

But... sometimes, they just don't.

An example from a game as Huns:

Here, Boudicca is off to attack her neighbor and my friend Elizabeth (zee irony). I tried paying her off previously, but she just wouldn't accept it and would apparently only do it on her own terms. All of her Pictish, archers, warriors went west to London (not shown). She was also about to settle this settler on that hill...



Then I simply took that settler with warrior.



I wanted to take her down first instead of Liz because she was in a very strong "isolated" spot to runaway. If I had left her after I finished off Liz, she would have probably had 5 cities, into Medieval era, pumping out Pictish Pikemen like no tomorrow and it would be much harder to dislodge her from these forests.



Rather fortunate that all of her forces were in London area, and none of them ever came back to defend capital in time.

Montezuma just made a very interesting play in my current game. It's an island map, and I was building up a force to attack him on the island opposite Tlaxcala (pre-Navigation, so I need coasts and my own island is too far by coast). This island has Prague and Cape Town on it. On a smaller island nearby is Genoa.

Once I started building up my army, Monty allied Cape Town and Prague. As my surviving units tried to get away, he allied Genoa (along their retreat path). This was definitely a targeted action to bring them into the fight at that moment, rather than a coincidence of timing when he wanted CS bonuses, since the alliance ended the next turn. He'd obviously bribed just enough to bring them in to kill my retreating units.

Extremely interesting example of adapting his strategy too, since he'd shown no interest at all in city-states until that point.

I did see a possible example of that coordination - Askia (my friend, purportedly) was moving his navy very slowly, making it difficult for my new units to get past his block to join up with my army. Cape Town was doing something similar before it became an Aztec ally.

Is it just me, or are we overthinking the whole "global AI plots against you at higher levels" thing? If the AI can't handle combat, how can we expect friendly AIs to be able to realize that moving naval units in certain directions will slow you down?

Now, the fact that Monty allied with a CS in the retreat path is too logical to be a coincidence, but I still have my doubts that the global AI is smart enough to figure a lot of these things out.

Aaron90495 said:

Is it just me, or are we overthinking the whole "global AI plots against you at higher levels" thing? If the AI can't handle combat, how can we expect friendly AIs to be able to realize that moving naval units in certain directions will slow you down?

Now, the fact that Monty allied with a CS in the retreat path is too logical to be a coincidence, but I still have my doubts that the global AI is smart enough to figure a lot of these things out.

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I'm less convinced about the global conspiracy thing, I admit, but the CS alliance was masterful, and too well-coordinated (allying with exactly the three most relevant CSes in two turns, and taking one at exactly the right time for a one-turn alliance to pay off) to be coincidental. I've seen something similar, albeit less effective, before - one enemy (I now forget who) followed a war dec by allying Budapest, the only CS on my continent. Budapest was not well-placed to be an aggressor and it was my first capture of the war, but it was at least a move in the right direction for the AI.

Aaron90495 said:

Is it just me, or are we overthinking the whole "global AI plots against you at higher levels" thing? If the AI can't handle combat, how can we expect friendly AIs to be able to realize that moving naval units in certain directions will slow you down?

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Seems to be a fair bit of paranoia in some minds here. The AI may cheat but it's not smart enough to be evil.

Aaron90495 said:

Is it just me, or are we overthinking the whole "global AI plots against you at higher levels" thing? If the AI can't handle combat, how can we expect friendly AIs to be able to realize that moving naval units in certain directions will slow you down?

Now, the fact that Monty allied with a CS in the retreat path is too logical to be a coincidence, but I still have my doubts that the global AI is smart enough to figure a lot of these things out.

Click to expand...

No, we're not overthinking at all, nor are we paranoid as some claimed. It's called analysis. Once in a while might be coincidence. Every single game is not coincidence.

It isn't a matter of the AI being "smart enough to figure things out." The AI doesn't figure things out at all. Instead, it is simply coded to use whatever resources are available to it according to whatever flags are set. Unfortunately, the flags are obviously set to use all possible resources, including barbs, CSes, and supposedly enemy civs, so as to make the game "challenging."

(sigh)

Devs need to learn that "challenge" is not what games are about and is at most one of many (no-inclusive) elements of game design. Some games are purely narrative, for example. Other games may have two, three, or several elements, one of which might (or might not) be challenge.

Civ is a strategy game and historical simulation. It isn't supposed to be about challenge, per se, and certainly not challenge that makes no sense if all civs are actually attempting to win using the same basic rules. It's extremely poor design to force the human player to have to consider every single resource on the map to be an enemy when only one AI is being targeted (and there is no prior history of allegiance... in fact, there may even be a prior history of antagonism and war).

Here's an example from my current game: coveting lands. Yep, that's right... Attilla got ticked with me because he wants lands I own... even though I only had a few tiles around my capital!

He lost... eventually. It took forever because Attila used two barb camps near his capital (and second and third cities right next to it) to help him defend his territory. Did the barbs go after him? Nope. Only me, even though he had units next to them. It was a combined force of his units and barb units against mine. Annoying and stupid (also called cheating since I cannot do the same thing and augment my army with barbs).

Carthage and Sweden had been friends, and India had been guarded from the beginning (I swiped one of his workers... tough, he had free extra units and I don't). After I got rid of the Huns, Sweden and Carthage were still friends and didn't care. Nor should they since Attila was at the other end of the continent from them. No alliances in diplo or anything, either, of course.

Six turns or so pass... out of nowhere, Gustavus suddenly goes from friendly to hostile and denounces me. Diplo shows he thinks I'm a warmonger even though I haven't done anything else (aside from barbs, of course). Meanwhile, India is sharing border expansion with Sweden and is ahead in score.

Will Sweden DoW? Probably, unless I do it first.

Stupid.

This is Pangaea Plus and I don't have any city states at all. I couldn't even find any in exploration. The AIs have them, though, as I can just barely see two borders in two fog of war areas.

Oh, I should also add spying as a coordinated effort. Not spying with spies, but spying using barb units and CS units. You can clearly watch the computer use CS and barb units such as caravels or galleys (or land units, of course) to spy on you, the human, by parking the units near your territory, parallel you as you move your units, etc. It's very consistent and very obvious what it is doing. Also, it did not do this in vanilla CiV, so it is an "improvement" from G&K.

today in an king difficulty game, trying king at least once in gods n kings.

I was playing a pangaea map just to see how well I can do.

and Marrakech in 3rd ringish about three city away from my capital but close enough to be considered in my core territory so it was important to me, joined hapsburg house so i instadow'd austria immediately and launched troops at it unprepared, even as unprepared, i had 8 units southwest of it. Even tech parity as well.

To my surprise, marrakech was rather huge city state, it had 10+ troop units under its command. I haven't seen a city state that big honestly without my aid. And it refused to move out from its territory and defended the city very well, it took roughly 20 turns just to capture marrakech. And in meanwhile Almost my whole army arrived plus fresh landsknechts moving in as they get killed as well as new trebuchets being built and sent to marrakech to lay siege and crossbows.

I haven't seen a city state that tough before, and whats more, it actually fortified its units on hills and protected the city.

I had to slowly move in while defeating each unit on the way and forced to expend some units, and marrakech even managed to rebuild its defenses with aid from austria treasury, but sadly, it didn't spam any units which was main reason why it fell fairly easy.

And what's more, I even lost 8 unit sin process of taking marrakech. Mostly newb landsknechts there for fodder and a couple of crossbowmen which moved up to melee range of the city as sacrifice. <.<

That was actually refreshing, Even when it was part of austria, still refreshing to see a lonesome city use its troops well.

I discovered this in the worst way imaginable. Sidon had been my friend until very late in the game and had a super strong army. They took a city of mine in a single turn. All units except the garrison were fighting on the far end of my empire and I made no attempt to defend as I didn't think they could attack me outside of their territory.

AiTenshi1 said:

It's not unusual in my games. Aside from the CS itself, the AI cheats by coordinating efforts with barbs, other AI (who are supposedly enemies, mind you) and any CS it can (i.e., not your allies).

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Sorry, but this is nonsense. I think you just haven't had the patience to experiment and build up a good feel for how the diplomacy system works. Sure, there are quirks, but once you've learned them the approach of most of the AIs (except for lunatics like Monty) is remarkably consistent in G&K.

There are plenty of posts on this forum about how to build up and maintain an alliance of friendly leaders, at which point the friendship becomes self-reinforcing, because "friend of a friend" is in itself a positive diplo modifier. It's usually not difficult to maintain long-term DOFs with about half the AIs on the map (through a good 4 waves RAs or more).

I also think you tend to remember games where it all went wrong over those where it went right. If you're in an alliance of 5, say, then odds are that eventually it's going to break down. If you're the one who gets thrown out of the happy family, chain-denounced and dogpiled, that sticks in the memory, but just as often it's someone else. You probably hardly notice when former friends fight among themselves, because most of your friends will be miles away on the other side of the map.

One little tip that I'm sure isn't original but that I haven't seen posted here is an extension of the standard advice to leave a civ one last city to avoid warmonger penalties: all other things being equal, try to make sure that the city you leave provides a buffer between your territory and the territory of a civ you have or want to DOF with. It's very hard to maintain a friendship when you share a border...

jango76 said:

I also think you tend to remember games where it all went wrong over those where it went right. If you're in an alliance of 5, say, then odds are that eventually it's going to break down. If you're the one who gets thrown out of the happy family, chain-denounced and dogpiled, that sticks in the memory, but just as often it's someone else. You probably hardly notice when former friends fight among themselves, because most of your friends will be miles away on the other side of the map.

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I had a fun late game (Emperor) when my 5 civ alliance (of 6 civs on the map) broke down, as the other four paired off against each other leaving me as the broker in the middle (I decided when the time came to refuse to renew open borders with Egypt/Polynesia to assist Babylon/India). When Egypt eventually turned against Polynesia, I was the one they came to requesting a joint war dec. End result, I didn't have a single war declared against me the whole game.

Haven't seen the 'barbs help the AI' thing, however it would be a nice touch if - like some other games - you could bribe barbarians to fight for you (e.g. Distant Worlds, Sins of a Solar Empire) or possibly to join your side (e.g. Total War).

PhilBowles said:

I had a fun late game (Emperor) when my 5 civ alliance (of 6 civs on the map) broke down, as the other four paired off against each other leaving me as the broker in the middle (I decided when the time came to refuse to renew open borders with Egypt/Polynesia to assist Babylon/India). When Egypt eventually turned against Polynesia, I was the one they came to requesting a joint war dec. End result, I didn't have a single war declared against me the whole game.

Haven't seen the 'barbs help the AI' thing, however it would be a nice touch if - like some other games - you could bribe barbarians to fight for you (e.g. Distant Worlds, Sins of a Solar Empire) or possibly to join your side (e.g. Total War).

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No, this barb AI helping the ai civs is more of the issues of the bonuses that AI civs get against barbarians which has rather dire consequence of artifically skewing the combat into making barbs attack human player units instead of ai civ units.

like, brute can attack AI civ Warrior and take 80 damage or Attack human warrior and take 30 damage, then the brute will always attack human player's warrior 100% of the time, only exception is when the Brute think it can kill the AI Civ's warrior.

No exceptions.