What criteria do you use when deciding to buy city states as austria?

When do you buy/puppet them?

Do you keep them puppeted? or annex?

Don't play too much as Austria as their UA seems to me generally not working in their favor. However, situations where I do buy out city states:

• If I manage to get an opportunity with a city state that's otherwise strongly favored by another civ. Strong emphasis on this if city state is militaristic and the unique unite has not yet come into play.
• If city state has a key natural wonder, particularly if city state is religious and game has passed medieval era.
• To get a foothold on another continent if I plan to do an invasion.
• If city state is in a location that's otherwise strategically favorable.
• If a civ like Greece or Siam - or Venice - is in the game.

However, it is my general impression that they have continually nerfed Austrias UA by making changes like requirement for 5 turns of alliance (good), increased price (probably reasonable but making it much more dubious if it's worth it) and making unique resources disappear (bad, since this takes away any incentive to buy out mercantile city state and removes what could otherwise have been a unique flavor for Austria). As such, what used to be a fun and unique civ for me - fun when playing, and very frustrating when playing against, but at least that made them stick out of the crowd - has now become a completely boring and generic civ, who's UA often will have minimal to no impact on gameplay.

So now when you buy out a mercantile CS it's unique resource disappears? wow....

I was about to buy out Vilnius.. thanks for the heads up! lol!

You might want someone to confirm this, but yes I think this was changed in one of the latest patches. I know it works like that for Venice, but I'm only 95 % it's also the case for Austria.

The main time to marry a city state as Austria is if your about to lose ally status, this is especially true if the only reason you became allies in the first place was city state quests.

There's no resistance involved, so unless it would interfere with national wonder construction, its normal to annex immediately. (If it would, then puppet initially and finish that national wonder quickly and then annex)

Actually the city states costing the most carry with them a larger army, which can include naval units, so the increased price is worth it.

Enough happiness to annex.

joncnunn said:

Actually the city states costing the most carry with them a larger army, which can include naval units, so the increased price is worth it.

Click to expand...

Well I think whether you get something for the money and whether it's worth it are two different things. The price has gone up from 500 gold (I think?) to something that's generally in the range of 750 gold now, which is a significant increase. This obviously means it's less of a bargain, but also means a general postpone in the time of game you can afford it. As the game has heavily transformed into a form where late-game aquisition of towns is very unsattractive, this enforces the lack of appeal in buying the city.

On the bottom line, what we get is the possibiliy to pay a not insignificant (if not exorbitantly large) amount of money to get a city at a point in game where you most likely would not really want more cities in your empire, you will lose the special benefits you get from being ally with the city state, you will get a significant happiness hit and lose special resources, and you will have to defend a city which will likely be placed in an aqward position compared to the rest of your empire. The upside will be that you will get a handful of units (most likely with no promotions), you get a new city with some buildings without resistance and that you rob your enemies/opponents of acces to the city state benefits, but really, in most cases it seems to me that the downsides far outweigh the upsides.

1) location
2) the units I get with it
3) if my influence is about to decay, and no CS quest. In other words I have to throw gold at it anyway
4) CS type. ( I like cultural the best, because the puppet will get me culture anyway)
5) if I'm able to route a cargo ship to the capital from there

tetley said:

1) location
2) the units I get with it
3) if my influence is about to decay, and no CS quest. In other words I have to throw gold at it anyway

Click to expand...

That's a good list, and they are not mutually exclusive. But (3) seems to come up as the most frequent reason for me. Except for warmongering, each and every CS is better IMHO as an ally rather than a puppet.

CS type. ( I like cultural the best, because the puppet will get me culture anyway)

Click to expand...

Are you sure about that? All the other CS types loose their special benefits once puppetted. I have noticed that married CS come with their cultural buildings, and that cultural CS have every cultural building available for the era, but do they really generate culture like they did when they were an ally?

joncnunn said:

There's no resistance involved, so unless it would interfere with national wonder construction, its normal to annex immediately.

Click to expand...

Why is that? Annexing still causes increased policy costs, so unless you need units, why annex until and unless the governor starts building something stupid?

Maybe not like when they were an ally, but they do like they were friends.

beetle said:

Are you sure about that? All the other CS types loose their special benefits once puppetted. I have noticed that married CS come with their cultural buildings, and that cultural CS have every cultural building available for the era, but do they really generate culture like they did when they were an ally?

Click to expand...

Well you won't get any "special" city-state culture like you did before, but obviously if you annex the city you'll get the full benefit of any cultural building in the city, and if you keep the puppet you'll get 75 % of the benefit of any cultural building in the town, so in that way it will effectively work a bit similar to what you got from the city state in the first place.

kaspergm said:

but obviously if you annex the city you'll get the full benefit of any cultural building in the city, and if you keep the puppet you'll get 75% of the benefit of any cultural building in the town

Click to expand...

Not obvious to me! I did not realize that puppeted cities generated only 75% of the culture compared to founded/annexed cities. That also answers my question to JonC! The extra 25% culture prolly makes up for the increased SP cost. So no downside (aside from increased National Wonder cost) to annexing?

so in that way it will effectively work a bit similar to what you got from the city state in the first place.

Click to expand...

Right, but assuming the same buildings, is that not true for all the CS types? That is, does an annexed formally cultural CS generate anything over and above what you would get from any other annexed CS type?

Still, this implies that cultural CS are very good targets for marriage, since (unlike the other CS types) there is no downside. Cultural gain before marriage == cultural gain after.

In multiplayer, it's pretty much all about the troll factor.

Is it a mercantile city state? Buy it.
Is it neighbor to another player? Buy it.

Buying mercantiles takes a hit to your happiness.
Maritimes give a food bonus to your capital and your other citiea you will not continue to get after you buy that CS.
Militaristics keep gifting units even as friends. Why buy their units when they're already gifting you units.
Faith CS are similar to cultural in that they will continue giving you faith after you buy.

All CS will give you 25% science anyway even if you don't buy, if you go down patronage.
All CS will slowly make your gold cost back if you puppet.
The religion dynamic changes with all CS once you buy them. I.e. where before you got shared religion bonus to your influence, now you get pantheon and follower benefits from that city. Which may mean a different religion and/or pantheon may make sense.

beetle said:

Not obvious to me! I did not realize that puppeted cities generated only 75% of the culture compared to founded/annexed cities. That also answers my question to JonC! The extra 25% culture prolly makes up for the increased SP cost. So no downside (aside from increased National Wonder cost) to annexing?

Click to expand...

Well actually the point of my post was not so much the 25 % penalty, but yes, you do get a 25 % penalty to culture and, I think, also to some of the other yields (Science? Faith? Don't remember exactly which.). And like you say, this penalty was added to make it less of a default cause to puppet rather than annex when going conquest. But it's not possible to give a unique answer as to whether it'll be better to puppet or annex since the increased culture cost for more cities will apply to the overall policy cost whereas the 25 % penalty applies only to the puppeted city - so in general, the larger the difference is between the culture output of the of the city in speak and your other cities (particularly capital), the more appealing puppeting will be.

Especially as Austria, here's another thing to look for: CS near a natural wonders, but the NW not within borders. By annexing early, you could accelerate this by 50 turns!

tetley said:

Faith CS are similar to cultural in that they will continue giving you faith after you buy.

Click to expand...

Yes, but even after annexing and buying a faith building, the faith output is not close to what you were getting from them as a CS ally.

Pretty much the same criteria for founding a city, but factoring in happiness abit more and factoring in gold.

beetle said:

Why is that? Annexing still causes increased policy costs, so unless you need units, why annex until and unless the governor starts building something stupid?

Click to expand...

1. BNW reduced the base per city policy costs from 15% to 10% (both numbers are on standard map size and smaller). It's like G&K if you had gone Liberty.

2. Puppets have a 25% hair cut in both science and culture. Moreover in the case of actual implementation of culture, it actually multiplies what culture would be by .75 and truncates the result. (e.g. If the city only has a monument, that 1 raw culture is eliminated entirely.)

3. In most cases the puppet city governor already is doing something stupid with regard to work force allocation.

4. The city must be annexed before you can cash buy tiles.

1. I really don't like that you lose the Unique Luxury when buying a Mercantile City. With that the UA doesn't seem that useful as in G&K when in my experience Austria was the Civ to beat when they were in the game.

2. I really like that you have to wait 5 turn before buying a CS. It gave a very nice balance to the UA, because in my games against Austria, it happened often that she becomes an ally with the CS with which i have been an ally for half the game and buy it in the very same turn. It really pissed me of if i was trying to get a diplo win.

3. I have a neutral opinion on making it more expensive to buy a CS. On one side you have Austria, which is not a very good money-making civ, but on the other side you have the novelty brought with BNW, like trade routes, world wonders (Colossus), social policies and tenants which can make easier for Austria to make money

That is my opinion on Austria

Always buy the ones close to me/close to my next victim, expanding my borders or gaining a small army near an enemy are easily worth 700 odd gold, consider the fact that buying a monument, archer and shrine are 730 gold and you can see the benefit in buying a pop 10 city with no resistance. Losing 12 cpt is easily overcome by the advantage of what the CS gives you in terms of units and buildings