(BNW) How to convert city states back?

Lorthy

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 5, 2013
Messages
3
Hey guys,

I got this issue with city states by the end of my games in civ5. One AI always tends to turn most city states into their Ally (even my former allied ones ) and it becomes impossible to make them my ally again. The AI pulls off an easy diplomatic victory with the most votes aftherwards.

Is there any particular way how to decrease the AI's influence over the city states? I tried a coup with my spy but it the chance of success is 0%, no luck with giving gold and other stuff either.
In case of spies, what influences the chance of coup success anyways?

Appreciate any thoughts.
 
Chance of a coup is based on difference of influence. If you mouseover the influence bar it'll tell you how much more the ally is than you (assuming you have at least the 60 to be ally if they weren't).

To get them back you'd need lots of gold and to not be at war with them so you can pad your influence while using spies to lower theirs. Having a religion helps as you can convert them so your influence declines slower than theirs.

The big issue will be if they have patronage or a UA that helps (if Greece it'll be near impossible since with shared religion and patronage their influence does NOT decline each turn).

AI tend to have strong economies late game due to their bonuses so they can dump a lot of gifts on them.
 
Depends on the ideology the AI has adopted. Freedom and Autocracy have tenets that boost influence with CS's. An autocratic AI will most certainly have most CS's near it's borders well under it's influence.
 
As a last resort you could always try capturing the city states. Marrying or purchasing city states causes the number of votes needed for victory to decrease, but capturing them does not. The rest of the world will probably hate you, though.
 
Greece, and to a lesser extent Siam, are the only ones who should be giving you any issues with CS's.

Just do the odd quest for them, connect a resource, kill a barb camp, etc. Later in the game just toss a 1000gold at them from time to time.

This is really not something that should ever be an issue, you want CS allies in all you games, yo want the food ones early, the culture ones after renaissance, the faith in general so you can faith buy, and the happy ones if you over expanded. On any difficulty below Immortal, you should be able to ally most if not all of them pretty easily, and your game will be better for having them
 
Thanks everyone for the info.

I got one more question about CS. Do you think it is balanced to have number of civs:number of cs at 1:2 ratio (e.g. 8 civs with 16 city states) or you prefer lowering number of cs in the map?
 
The one mistake I keep making is to ignore city-states until it's too late. If you do that, it can make diplomacy a very steep hill to climb. That, or if the rival civ in question has all those allies just because he's such a horrible runaway that he wins every quest, you may well be doomed.

Thanks everyone for the info.

I got one more question about CS. Do you think it is balanced to have number of civs:number of cs at 1:2 ratio (e.g. 8 civs with 16 city states) or you prefer lowering number of cs in the map?

Bringing that number down much farther than 1:2 makes diplomatic victories really hard to come by.
 
This is indeed a case where prevention is easier than cure.
So after my second spy (first is reserved for my capital); it goes to the city state I most want to ensure stays my ally. Then the turn after an AI sends money, I just coup it back and based on mechanism that results in me having more influence than if the AI hadn't sent money to begin with. (I do same thing to my 3rd & 4th spies only they are more likely to be sent to city states that I'm not yet an ally of)
 
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