All went wrong with City States

macmert

Prince
Joined
Sep 25, 2008
Messages
300
Hello,

I was trying my hand with Japan and at some point my buddy Ghandi and I signed a defense pact, at that point he was DoW'ed by the Spainards and then I factored in, I went and got 2 CS from the Spainards, at some point the war ceased and suddenly all the world was after me, denouncement after denouncement, even my buddy went denounce on me, I wonder if I did anything wrong, but there is the thing, after war ceased with Isabella, I've forgotten to make peace with the CS's that went to war with her, I wonder if that's the case...

So the question is, does taking CS (which I got as puppets) is a no no ever?

Thank you very much.
 

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if you scroll over the name of the CS it will show the amount of warmonger hate from capturing a City for CS its always extreme because you are killing off an entire civilization of people.
 
I take it you captured those 2 CS from Spain and didn't capture them yourself. I suspect you were the one doing the warmonger(ie capturing cities). As a result you have a high warmonger score which all civs hate(some more so than others). This mostly causes the AI to denounce you, and since the whole world has so does your "friend".

What you should have done is liberated those CS which would've erased all/most of your warmonger score.
 
Next time you are in a war, don't be so aggresive. Have a watch and wait attitude towards the dow and mouseover all capturable cities to see how heavy the warmonger penalty will be. Ais in civilization don't ask that much for peace sometimes anyways.
 
I take it you captured those 2 CS from Spain and didn't capture them yourself. I suspect you were the one doing the warmonger(ie capturing cities). As a result you have a high warmonger score which all civs hate(some more so than others). This mostly causes the AI to denounce you, and since the whole world has so does your "friend".

What you should have done is liberated those CS which would've erased all/most of your warmonger score.

Terribly sorry for not being clear, Gandhi and I had a defense pact and 2 turns later Spain attacked Gandhi, so the CS technically DoW'd me... but there is a good chance that their Alliance with Spain broken at some point of the game (since the war went on for a while) and I may have attacked with vengeance to the CS that are not allied to Spain anymore...

So would it matter if I capture a CS under the warring alliance? in this example Spain? so would I get the same warmongering penalty, say I captured Barcelona instead of Antwerp?
 
Why, oh why, does anyone use defensive pacts? Your post exhibits the most common misconception about DPs -- you DOWed Spain and its CS alliess, not the other way around.

In a DP, when any civ DOWs your DP partner, they are not DOWing you -- instead the DP fires and you auto-DOW the nominal aggressor and each of its CS allies, which makes you the aggressor in that war -- and it is a separate war from the war between that civ and your DP partner (i.e., your DP partner can make separate peace).

If you then compound the aggressor malus (thankfully, you didn't have a DOF with Spain, else you would also get the backstab malus) by taking cities from Spain or its CS allies, you are the warmonger. DPs are a trap for the innocent and unwary. I never use them.
 
Why, oh why, does anyone use defensive pacts? Your post exhibits the most common misconception about DPs -- you DOWed Spain and its CS alliess, not the other way around.

In a DP, when any civ DOWs your DP partner, they are not DOWing you -- instead the DP fires and you auto-DOW the nominal aggressor and each of its CS allies, which makes you the aggressor in that war -- and it is a separate war from the war between that civ and your DP partner (i.e., your DP partner can make separate peace).

If you then compound the aggressor malus (thankfully, you didn't have a DOF with Spain, else you would also get the backstab malus) by taking cities from Spain or its CS allies, you are the warmonger. DPs are a trap for the innocent and unwary. I never use them.

Oh boy I didn't know that! I was just trying to get in good terms with Gandhi and make an excuse to attack Isabella! so if I just DoW'd myself the effect would be the same right?
 
The only time I use DP's is when I want to avoid war and I make the DP with a civ that is unlikely to be attacked by anyone else.
 
Imho the only time a player should ever make a defensive pact is when he sees an army marching to his borders and no other target is nearby so you can be sure that it's either being completed a few turns later and you get the "fought against a common foe"-modifier, or it prevents you from being attacked. But even then it can still backfire, if that pact prevents the war but your ally is later attacked by a friend of yours. It's just very poorly designed and quite useless.

And taking a city state is political suicide. The warmonger score you get from conquering a city is based on a few variables: Amount of total cities on the map, amount of cities a Civ has - and an enormous bonus if you take their last city. On lower difficulties the total amount of cities on the map is usually lower than on higher difficulties, so that gives you a relatively high score for taking any city - and a city state is basically a one-city-civ that you kick out of the game - everyone will hate you for doing so. Never ever take them as long as you still need to be on neutral ground with at least some of the civs.
 
Thank you for the information, I'm still fairly new to Civ5 so I'm not sure what is useless or what is useful or how to handle the City states. I thought having a DefPact would bring me closer to other AI and prolly provide a reason to DoW on someone :) but as it turns out I became the oppressor of the oppressed :)
 
The only time I use DP's is when I want to avoid war and I make the DP with a civ that is unlikely to be attacked by anyone else.

Sorry, but this makes no sense to me. If you want to avoid war, don't enter into a DP -- when you have a DP you lose the ability to decide whether to go to war when your DP partner is attacked.

There are three important things to keep in mind: (1) even the most powerful DP partner may still be DOWed (perhaps due to warmonger hate), dragging you into an unwanted war, (2) the AI does NOT appear to take DPs into account in deciding whether to DOW you, so the power of your DP partner and the existence of your DP does not deter AI DOWs against you, and (3) a DP does not prevent your DP partner from DOWing you.

All in all, a mechanic that is useless at best and dangerous at worst.
 
Imho the only time a player should ever make a defensive pact is when he sees an army marching to his borders and no other target is nearby...

Sadly, this is the situation I often find myself in. A hasty DP at least keeps the aggressive AI a little busy. Unfortunately, supposed allies almost always bail after 10 turns.

I take it you captured those 2 CS from Spain and didn't capture them yourself.

I think it is worse than that! I take it that OP flat-out conquered CS because they were allied with Spain. It’s annoying, but one really has to fight around CS, not through them. At least no long-term harm comes from killing their units and pillaging. Just don’t capture their cities. Liberate CS whenever you get the chance.
 
Sadly, this is the situation I often find myself in. A hasty DP at least keeps the aggressive AI a little busy. Unfortunately, supposed allies almost always bail after 10 turns.



I think it is worse than that! I take it that OP flat-out conquered CS because they were allied with Spain. It’s annoying, but one really has to fight around CS, not through them. At least no long-term harm comes from killing their units and pillaging. Just don’t capture their cities. Liberate CS whenever you get the chance.

Exactly! I wanted to make them pay for siding with the aggressor :) well fighting fire with fire apparently fuel the fire, not douse it :)
 
Sorry, but this makes no sense to me. If you want to avoid war, don't enter into a DP -- when you have a DP you lose the ability to decide whether to go to war when your DP partner is attacked.

There are three important things to keep in mind: (1) even the most powerful DP partner may still be DOWed (perhaps due to warmonger hate), dragging you into an unwanted war, (2) the AI does NOT appear to take DPs into account in deciding whether to DOW you, so the power of your DP partner and the existence of your DP does not deter AI DOWs against you, and (3) a DP does not prevent your DP partner from DOWing you.

All in all, a mechanic that is useless at best and dangerous at worst.

That's good information that I did not realize. I entered a dP in my last game with Persia to prevent them from thinking about DOWing me. I wasn't aftraid I couldn't beat them, but I didn't want to fight them as I was within 2 components of a SS victory. Knowing the dp won't prevent that I'll not do it in the future.
 
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