CS's almost always embargoed

I've seen it in about 20-30% of all BNW games i've played. And it's only been passed half of the time. My current game has it in effect actually which has been a huge pain for me because i'm Shaka going on a rampage and I have only a handful of cities I can trade with to my gpt was suffering for half of my game so far.

I don't see it as silly at all, either by the human or by the AIs.

If any AI does not currently have any CSs within trade range or even if they have them, chooses not to trade, while other AIs or the human is getting value from trades, then obviously it's a good move to vote for the embargo.

Wodan said:

If any AI does not currently have any CSs within trade range or even if they have them, chooses not to trade, while other AIs or the human is getting value from trades, then obviously it's a good move to vote for the embargo.

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Yup, and I'm also often proposing this if I'm UN leader and there isn't better policies to pick (which usually aren't unless you go for CV). It forces AI to trade with others, which hopefully includes me. Even better if you got good city with EIC and are Morroco or Portugal.

I see city states embargoed all the time. It doesn't really make sense to treat all of them the same, when city state A may be in a totally different situation and part of the world than city state B.

There should be an option to embargo individual city states. This would add depth and strategy. Suppose there is a major civ that you want to weaken, you could embargo city states that are allied to them, but leave your city states alone and continue to trade with them.

Well, on the "doesn't make sense" front, I'm not sure it makes sense period. Real world example: the world has basically embargoed North Korea, but I think China and some others are still trading with them.

Wodan said:

Well, on the "doesn't make sense" front, I'm not sure it makes sense period. Real world example: the world has basically embargoed North Korea, but I think China and some others are still trading with them.

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I agree, that's why I think civs should have an option to defy the world congress, with a diplomatic penalty.

Nothing strange in my games.

When I or some AI have multiple allies someone who hasn't will propose this when possible.

CS usually always get embargoed late game for me. I usually play Order if I get first pick so I go along with it. I can see how this would be a Freedom problem though, if you can't muster the votes.

A civ can't trade with a another civ they are at war with. So it makes very good sense to pass Embargo City States if someone is diplomatically isolated and at (or likely to soon be at) war with the world.

I get it in most of my games. I agree banning is a tactic to limit the by civs following the patronage path tp limit other civs making Diplomatic Victory that much easier.

In "my game" they can ban CS's all they want. I always have a hoard of cash by the late game, (35,000-50,000GP+) and I will not let another civ gain enough influence to win the Diplomatic Victory vote. Still, even 50K can run out while endlessly bribing CS's, so unfortunately, once DV becomes available the winning choices, realistically, are narrowed to Diplomatic Victory or Domination.

Thus, I see Diplomatic Victory as the easy cop out that Science Victory was in earlier editions of Civilization...not very satisfying but a quick way to end the game, when my early and mid game strategies fail to work brilliantly.

Nonetheless, while Diplomatic Victory is pretty lame, the diplomatic game through the World Council has become the first potential rival to military victory as a "complete" game experience...it's just not there yet. (I still haven't gotten fully immersed in the cultural game - I enjoy it in principle - but when I get to the point of trying to figure out that chart and "theming" I find it about as interesting to me as trying to read a printer manual).

I see it all the time, very early in the game, first or second concil, i played 6 full games so far everything on standard.

I like to open patronage and take the 3 first policies, i also war a lot.

Aaron90495 said:

In almost all of my BNW games, CS's are embargoed very quickly, usually within the first 3 World Congress proposals. By the end of the game, I have 10 CS's asking for TR's, and the Freedom tenet is unusable.

Is anyone else running into this? And why does the AI love this proposal so much?

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Constantly. Pretty much every single game someone proposes it and at least half the time it passes.

Yes, in my three BNW Games, always city-states was embargoed.

It seems almost like a default decision if the AI can't think of something better to do. It's obviously bad for Freedom diplomatic players, but it's also quite painful for Morocco (in one game, they managed to pass it and hence I lost a lot of cash.)

In my experience, the "default decision" is to embargo a lux resource. Seems like there's always enough AIs willing to vote for it for it to pass, and the AIs who should care (those with the resource) seem to put more emphasis on voting for the other proposal, whatever it might be. I had one game where a half dozen luxuries were banned.

I think, the simple fact is, even if your gunning for Domination or Science or Culture; you should really not neglect gaining power and prestige in the World Congress; to prevent bad things from happening to you there