Do you Bully city states? How?

what difficulty do you usually play? i can bully with 2 warriors at Prince and under, if i recall. i usually play immortal or (attempt) deity.

oh yeh sorry i probably should have mentioned i play on emperor

Gucumatz said:

Yea while Tabarnak's luxury selling strategy works in singleplayer - without AI doesn't work there

But building a few cheap units and using the gold to buy settlers with tradition works just as well often if there are quite a few city states near you.

Its how sometimes I outsettle other players in multi who go liberty with 4 early tradition cities

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Bravo! You posted something that is deeply inside my strong strategies for mp(and deeply underground at all...no threads about the subject into mp threads...still a ''top secret'' info for many of us ). Accumulating an early and strong army can let you bully a ton of cs. This allow you to rush buy workers, thing that you cannot get so easily under mp. Agree about going stronger against Liberty players under Tradition, but only if you can relay on cs.

About OP : Bullying cs against the AI :

First of all, the opportunity of bullying cs is reduced more and more when you play through the turns. Reaosn is simple. The AI likes to accumulate units around the turn 40 to the turn 100. But between 0 and 40, there is your chance to bully some of them.Then later when you have superior techs and you can easily get a better raw number of soldiers. Just keep bullying cs that you don't ally or be friend with. If you hit an upgrade ruin, get advantage from it and find cs to bully with your spearman the cs around. Cs usually give barb camps quests first. These quests aren't cancelled when you bully them. So, the earlier you can bully them the better.

More the cs is friendly, more it's easy to bully. More the cs is centered on the actual map more it's ''probably'' dificult. Reason is that you can't see everything around early on. You better bully coastal ones, where the chances of having other units around are reduced.

Play with a civ with a strong and early UU. It grantly give you more chances to bully some cs.

As Gucumaltz said, in mp the bullying process is very important to get an edge over opponents. Actually, the best of best strategy in mp is to raise a big army of composite bowmen and accumulate cities from humans and/or money from cs very early.

It's harder in sp mode but doable. At least you can sell stuff to the AI to compensate.

You need to be 3rd or better in military and have superior military than opponents which are close from the cs to have some success. Bully some cs that don't accumulate units on their territory, like coastal ones.

Tabarnak said:

About OP : Bullying cs against the AI :

First of all, the opportunity of bullying cs is reduced more and more when you play through the turns. Reaosn is simple. The AI likes to accumulate units around the turn 40 to the turn 100. But between 0 and 40, there is your chance to bully some of them.
More the cs is friendly, more it's easy to bully. More the cs is centered on the actual map more it's ''probably'' dificult. Reason is that you can't see everything around early on.
You better bully coastal ones, where the chances of having other units around are reduced.

Play with a civ with a strong and early UU. It grantly give you more chances to bully some cs.

It's harder in sp mode but doable. At least you can sell stuff to the AI to compensate.

You need to be 3rd or better in military and have superior military than opponents which are close from the cs to have some success. Bully some cs that don't accumulate units on their territory, like coastal ones.

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This last part is what I was missing. In my last few games, I was #2 (or even #1) on the military demographics screen, but every time I talked to a city state, I would see "they do not fear your military, and will resist tribute attempts." I had lots of units, but none were located on the borders of the city state I was thinking about bullying.

The AI doesn't fear my military in the abstract -- they only fear it when I'm knocking on their doorstep.

How much of a relationship hit do you get for bullying a CS? I usually try to ally city states, so don't have much experience with getting a really negative rep with one. Will they declare war on you if their attitude towards you gets negative enough? How frequently can you bully a CS? I assume there's some sort of limit to that so you're not doing it every turn.

Thanks!