gosh...make city states less stupid plz..

seriously it is so easy to abuse city states. it really think this game would benefit if city states were not so easy to take advantage of.

for example, program them to always have a spearman or whatever parked on their worker... players just come up and say, "oh hey a free worker" every time. its silly. I consider my first scout I make to be my worker collector. I wish it was not so.

also make it so they can declare war on you... if you have military units in their territory and your relations with them is at maximum dislike, make it so they attack you, not say durdurduuur as you neatly set up your catapults around their city. so lame.

Last and perhaps worst is how you can declare peace at a whim. If you declare peace what SHOULD happen is all your military units are removed from their territory along with 10 turns of mandatory peace... its so dumb how you can just blast their city with a volley from catapults and archers, declare peace, then repeat this process until the city is yours.

jeez I know im ranting a bit sorry but I really think this would help CS out, make them go from being a joke to a worthy foe if that's what you choose to make of them.

Mandatory peace after would be nice, but i'm fine with City-States stating defensive (after all, they are City-States)

Also, if you hate being able to steal workers easy, don't steal them. I'm pretty sure the AI doesn't.

Self imposed handicaps can work and helped me really enjoy Civ 3 despite many similar-ish issues. However, I totally get why someone would not like to do that to balance a game. I don't like to have to do that myself, but it doesn't bother me much to have to do so either. Some games are so bad you can't do it and have it still be enjoyable. In Civ 4 I roleplay a lot to handicap myself against AI trade and relation manipulation.

I think city states need a lot of work in general. As it is, I don't really see why they put them in the game. City states aren't integrated into anything in the game. You can just ignore them with no worry of penalty. Defending them gives free units at the expense of land and conquering gives you control over that territory. Either way you choose, you get a luxury resource. There are no downsides to them but the only real useful thing they offer is a luxury resource which can be there due to map generation, not city states.

I think they are a waste of programming honestly. Just a feature thrown in for the sake of "new". Maybe I just don't see their "vision", I dunno. The free workers you describe has more to do with AI's poor unit movement in general than city states themselves though. Figured I would grab a pitchfork and rant with you though.

Hmm, this wouldn't be a complete fix, but I would support this quest appearing if anyone's influence dips down to -60 with them.

"Sidon is concerned about the movement of Mongolian troops in their city state. They will reward any civilization that denounces Mongolia or pledges to protect them, giving the civilization 40 and 20 additional influence for each respective action."

This would encourage other civs to go and protect city states that are under threat, not just ones that already are at war, and give diplomatic consequences to massing up your troops too much before attacking. The penalty for attacking a city state is pretty high already, but this can be a good punishment for building up your troops too much in preparation for an obvious attack.

CS are asking to denounce bully civ, after demand (but not always). They also need troops for wartime with any other civ or CS, and they will reward you.

As for lux, they grant you unique lux like jewellery or porcelain.

They give you unitis.

You gain cult or rel every turn in amounts that is hard to obtain in early game.

Then don't do it Sammydakid. Operate on a honor system. I have never done what you have listed. Its just being lame.

Instead, I capture Monty's workers :3 I dow, pillage and raid monty's lands and give jaguars a hard time to mass up and attack me.

But instead, do fun stuff like, for example: Alexander is protecting city state of Monaco and he is allied to it. You go ahead and extract tribute from it. Alexander gets angry and you tell him off. Alexander denounce you for it, you go ahead and denounce him.

Then here comes the fun part, dow that city state of Monaco, send in your soldiers in the borders and pillage everything and capture any workers you can and shell the city abit then leave the borders and make peace with city state.

It sends alexander a message that he can't really protect the city state. You're the one who's protecting it, not alexander.

Every time you declare war your warmonger penalty will rise(you wont be able to get allies against a CS), even with civs you haven't met yet. You might find yourself in a 1000 year war with everyone when the WC is founded......

If you DoW 2 city states, all other CS's become wary. If you keep DoWing and making peace, you're going to have very bad relations very fast with CS's

Then I'll just squash everyone under my iron fist if they don't like it.

You shouldn`t need to impose handicaps on yourself just to give the Ai a chance. We play games like this to use every ingame means to win (those of us who don`t use cheats), so we shouldn`t have to think, `I`d love to take that Worker, but oh no, I won`t because the CS won`t do anything about it!` We should instead think `I could take that worker, but then he`d declare war on me!`

Callonia said:

Then I'll just squash everyone under my iron fist if they don't like it.

Click to expand...

Yeah this method doesn't work on harder difficulties.
Some form of diplomacy is needed for early survival on Immortal+

What the OP is describing does work, but it makes you hated.

Socratatus said:

You shouldn`t need to impose handicaps on yourself just to give the Ai a chance.

Click to expand...

I'd say that not abusing a game mechanic isn't the same as imposing a handicap. Now you could argue whether stealing CS workers is an abuse or not, but that's irrelevant. It's obvious from the post that the OP thinks it is. So the solution is simple - if there's something that you personally think is an abuse, then don't do it.

EDIT:

That said, I too would like the city states to be "less stupid." I think they are an interesting concept with a horrible implementation. As they are, I think they harm the game more than improve it.