More Aggressive City States: Can you Dominate by Proxy?

Doing a large, Emperor, DOmination victory on 'Large' (theyre not) Islands.

I have most CSs allied because of gunboat diplomacy. Whenever I go to war, the gold income of my enemy craters, than craters some more when all the CSs start pillaging their trade routes.

CSs are powerful, esp. when they've been umolested for 100 turns and have alot of good units buildt up.
 
One thing that can be changed. Allow gifting CS units every turn, but only once in every three turns you will receive a influence boost.
 
I think you can already gift every turn so long as you do so by moving the unit into CS territory and gifting the unit from the unit controls, and not the CS window. You probably don't get the influence that way, but the unit is still transferred.

My preferred gifts are usually SAM's and Rocket arty.

also, Gunboat Diplomacy just seems so great! I only used it once, but wow! results!
 
bumping this again.

Anyone know in the AI logic what determines how many CS units will go beyond its borders. too often the CS will just defend itself even if it has tons of units. I hope there is way to make them more aggressively send units against other city states especially.
 
No idea of the logic, but they certainly come after me, and can pose more problems than the AI Civ attacker with mass Pike spamming. A small Byblos force came from nearly 10 tiles away and attacked my capital - gives me a new appreciation of allying close CS when on the offensive against a Civ.

I'd be interested to know whether CS mentality or type affects its behaviour in this respect.
 
What I'm getting at is that I'd like to have two thinks, probably LUA, to add to the City State diplomacy mod:

1) City states randomly declare war on each other (if they share territory)

2) a Great Diplomat action where you can get a city-state to declare war on its neighbor(s).
 
Just going on what I have experienced...

Anyone know in the AI logic what determines how many CS units will go beyond its borders.

When they go on a tear, only a couple stay behind.

too often the CS will just defend itself even if it has tons of units. I hope there is way to make them more aggressively send units against other city states especially.

I think it all comes down to line of sight. CS units will attack, but they don’t know where a players cities are, except when they border. Even with shared borders, until they spot a unit, they are not very aggressive.
 
a CS can capture any city.
They will always Raze if they can.

they cannot raze a capitol, or another CS.
Someone posted a screen of a small continent with 4 CS on it, all 4 dominated by one CS. Thats a powerful ally! 4x the resources for one allied CS.

I suspect there are other situations : Spice islander cities are sometimes un-razable?
CS bought by Venice or Austria, Razeable? (i think they are, but not sure).

I have had fantastic results in the past by gifting Mobile Sam + rocket arty to a CS who is at war.

however, the AI is SOOOOO bad at unit movements and combat that its hardly a reliable strategy. Nice when it works though.
 
They will always Raze if they can.
No, they won't.
An AI (with some notorious exceptions like Attila) will raze a captured city if holding it puts them to :c5angry: (very unhappy) while a CS will raze a captured city if holding it puts them to :c5unhappy: (unhappy).
Their threshold for razing is lower and they rarely have many different luxuries so they usually raze captured cities but that's it. They are not hard-coded to always raze. This information comes from whoward who learned it directly by looking at the game's code.

Also, now that i mostly play deity i noticed CS will often keep the first city they capture. Deity gives more happiness bonuses to AIs (including CS) so they less quickly drop to unhappy.
 
No, they won't.
An AI (with some notorious exceptions like Attila) will raze a captured city if holding it puts them to :c5angry: (very unhappy) while a CS will raze a captured city if holding it puts them to :c5unhappy: (unhappy).
Their threshold for razing is lower and they rarely have many different luxuries so they usually raze captured cities but that's it. They are not hard-coded to always raze. This information comes from whoward who learned it directly by looking at the game's code.

Also, now that i mostly play deity i noticed CS will often keep the first city they capture. Deity gives more happiness bonuses to AIs (including CS) so they less quickly drop to unhappy.

That's good info. If I ever get around to LUA coding a CS declaring war event I'll add a unique happy building that gives them +100 or something so they keep it. But really why do CS have to deal with happiness anyways???
 
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