Balancing citystates: ignore/capture/alliance

The topic recently came up again about city-states. In vanilla the only two viable options are alliance or ignore, because capture has such big disadvantages:

Thalassicus said:

alpaca said:

Why is is not viable to conquer CS? The only reason I see is the diplomatic penalty, really. You get a serious diplo hit for wiping out players, and even more so if the player was a CS. That's the only thing which keeps me personally from capturing nearby "excess CS" I can't pay for. Maybe if the penalty was decreased a bit it might become more worthwhile.

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The diplomatic penalty with major civs is relatively minor (if that's what you're referring to).

Basically, the huge disadvantage of conquest is neighboring CSs suffer faster influence loss with each CS captured (including the ones that asked to kill the CS). After just 2-3 captures (depending on personalities) we enter permanent war, locking out other options for the rest of the game.

If we invest in more than 2 citystates we must choose between conquest and alliance, and these options are mutually exclusive. Since the conquest influence effects create a chain reaction (citystate declares permanent war, and if you attack it, neighbors further away will perma-war), an ally+conquer combined strategy for a particular block of CSs (such as on a particular continent) isn't an option. To be clear, I'm trying to make this choice favor both ally/conquer options equally depending on circumstances from game to game.


Conquest has several disadvantages:

• Influence degradation with other CSs, leading to higher bribe costs and eventually perma-war.
• CSs are all capitals, harder to take than a major civ's regular cities and cannot be razed.
• CSs highly prioritize defensive buildings.
• Influence boost from any CS offering a quest to kill it is transitory.
• Loss of unique bonuses like +1 in all cities.
• Blocks the Diplomatic game victory option.
• Steep diplomatic penalty with major AIs, especially those protecting the citystate, leading to loss of trade relations.

Both ally and conquer options share some similar characteristics, such as requiring investment and preventing other AIs from allying with the CS.


Since conquest quickly turns into an all-in affair while alliances are more flexible, and the advantages of the ally+ignore strategy appear to outweigh the advantages of conquer+ignore (whether this is due to psychological reasons or actual gameplay merits), people typically choose the ally+ignore strategy, and this strategy is what I've seen in most discussions about citystates. People ally with all the Maritime ones and ignore the rest, it's a no-brainer.

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Since the goal of these mods is to improve options available to players, starting in late October I've been working on ways to balance the three options of ignore/capture/alliance equally viable strategies. In the early November version of Combat v16 I added several bonuses for capture:

• Maritime: Looted food supplies provide for +3 in Capital.
• Militaristic: Conscripts a duplicate of the capturing unit from citizens of the citystate.
• Cultural: Looted cultural artifacts increase the central empire's culture equal to 30 turns of alliance.
  • +240 - Ancient
  • +360 - Medieval
  • +600 - Industrial

Even with these bonuses in place over the past few months however, feedback's indicated everyone still pursues the alliance-or-ignore strategy. So in mid-January I buffed the bonuses:

• Maritime: Looted food supplies provide for +5 in Capital.
• Militaristic: Conscripts 2 duplicates of the capturing unit from citizens of the citystate.
• Cultural: Looted cultural artifacts increase the central empire's culture equal to 50 turns of alliance.
  • +400 - Ancient
  • +600 - Medieval
  • +1000 - Industrial

Nerfing alliances any more than has been done already is not easily possible (discreteness issue of 1) so that leaves buffing conquest. This is why I brought up the topic elsewhere of scaling up yields in the game (Double Down?)... to see if that might be an option to solve the discreteness problem (with yields in general, it causes issues elsewhere than citystates). That route doesn't appear very feasible however.

The reason I chose bonuses specific to each type of citystate is primarily because it makes sense to create a balance of long-term gains vs short-term benefit. In addition, the balance of building types in a captured major-civ AI city depends on the AI's flavor settings, while capturing a citystate does not have these flavor-based bonuses, because citystate production options are much more restricted in the game files. In other words:

• Total number of buildings
  Same for all cities.
• Proportion of building types
  Inequal between CSs and major civs.

Feedback is always welcome, citystate balance is something I've been working on for a long while now.

My opinion is that capturing maritime should send +1 pop to your five largest cities (or however many you have). As I mentioned in the other thread, I've had +5 pop sent to my already full capital and this threw it into severe starvation, which was really annoying as I got warning notifications about it every turn as the extra citizens slowly died away.

Capturing militaristic should give two units, as it currently does, but I think there needs to be a check on available SRs. In one game I had two iron and two swordsmen. I captured a CS with a swordsman and was given two more swordsmen. Unfortunately this threw me into -2 iron and all of my swordsmen then fought with the -50% missing resource penalty. So if the SR isn't available then a non-SR unit should be given (or a unit using a SR that is available).

I think the reward for capturing cultural CSs is good right now, but it should check to see if that bonus allows you to immediately choose a new policy and pop up the policy screen if so.

I can understand how it might be a surprise... though the capture bonuses have been around two months, and are detailed in the readme.

I'm somewhat hesitant to add safety at the loss of strategic planning... someone might want to capture with a swordsman even if it throws into deficit, knowing they're about to hook up some iron. Alternatively, it's simple to capture with a different unit. Likewise, with sufficient farms the population boost can be very powerful.

It'd help to have more playtesting feedback on the matter. I don't think there's been much testing done on the viability of a capture-citystates strategy... until I released the current public version, I haven't actually had any responses indicating people tried this strat in the past few months it's been available. It'd be nice to know how viable it is, considering the downsides to capture.

On the subject of nerfing alliances with CSs i had a couple thoughts.

First, currently militaristic and cultural both give bonuses that are empire size indipendent, but maritime city states are very size dependent in that a civ with 20 cities gets 15 more food per turn then one with 5 cities. This one doesn't fit in with the overall flavor of the other city states but also makes large empires easier to get. (In my opinion large empires should be harder to get but more powerful once you get them)

So i was thinking if its possible, maybe maritime city-states could give X number of food the top 5 population cities in your empire. Numbers would need balancing but it would make them fit more with the feel of the other two and also help balance large vs small empires which i know is another goal of yours.

As far as the balance of capture vs ally, I think the bonus could be big as long as other civs that are in the area should not be happy about it and that if another civ is allies with them, it should be enough for them to want to liberate them from you.

Edit: Also if you are boosting capture you need to make sure City-states have good enough defense because otherwise it could lead to rushes that through off the balance drastically at the very start of the game. (you can warrior rush early but it takes a while to get enough gold to friend a city state.)

Also this could lead to ppl taking over all of the citystates near them for the bonus while allying those far away because in vanilla there is no difference to allying those far away from those right next to you. This is a big problem because it allows less choice because it becomes a no brainer because:

In vanilla if you had money to friend 2 CSs you would but now you can take over all the ones near you for bonuses and still ally the 2 CSs but just further away. Until the distance thing is fixed i dont think that adding such huge boosts is a good idea. I also think ppl haven't said its OP cause a lot of ppl wouldn't find out about it unless they follow the forums and haven't found out how easilly it can be gamed.

Thalassicus said:

I can understand how it might be a surprise... though the capture bonuses have been around two months, and are detailed in the readme.

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I knew exactly what was coming, but I guess I was just surprised by their unexpected negative effects. What about different bonuses based on era? For example, pre-Renaissance +5 pop in capital and after that +1 pop in top X (or all) cities?

Thalassicus said:

someone might want to capture with a swordsman even if it throws into deficit, knowing they're about to hook up some iron.

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This is a good point, and it's actually exactly what I did. You could always gift/disband the units too, if you were desperate to get back to balanced SR.

Thalassicus said:

It'd be nice to know how viable it is, considering the downsides to capture.

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I've had a couple games where, for various reasons, I took a CS capture approach. Besides the issues mentioned above it was otherwise fine. The CSs and some other civs hated me, but I was powerful enough to hold them off. Will try it again when I play as Genghis.

I would say that the big challenge with capturing Maritime states in particular is that the bonus isn't scaling. I would be really interested in grabbing one for +5 pop in the early going but once I have a dozen cities I would much rather be friends. If that bonus scaled with eras just as the other ones do I think it would make CS assault a really viable strategy.

orangecape said:

I would say that the big challenge with capturing Maritime states in particular is that the bonus isn't scaling. I would be really interested in grabbing one for +5 pop in the early going but once I have a dozen cities I would much rather be friends. If that bonus scaled with eras just as the other ones do I think it would make CS assault a really viable strategy.

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I don't think the mechanic is meant to replace friendship, just to present an incentive to capture, which there isn't really in vanilla.

It's quite difficult to capture a CS in the early game, and in the later eras, growth is usually pretty slow - a boost of +5 Pop in the capital seems like a fair amount no matter when: I don't think scaling is necessary.

rhammer640 said:

maritime city-states could give X number of food the top 5 population cities in your empire.

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It's been my long-term goal but I never really had the know-how to implement something like it without c++ access until now. With some experience with Lua recently, I think I might be able to do this. I'll put it on my todo list at least.

I'd agree with Seek that scaling isn't necessary given the current values, I'd also argue that +5 pop in the capital is just too strong in the early game.
Makes rushing a nearby MCS an *incredibly* powerful strategy.
So I'd consider a scaling effect, but where the +5 pop is towards *high* end from the late midgame or so, and the bonus is lower in the early game.

Another alternative: make it transfer the citizens from the city state to your capital, rather than just creating magic citizens for free.

Or at least cap the bonus at say 1/3 of the population size of the city state. How is a size 4 city going to add 5 citizens to your capital?

But then, as I argued before, I don't really see a strong need for any extra bonus for capturing city states at all. The main benefit of capturing a city state should be depriving your opponents of its bonuses.

Thalassicus said:

It's been my long-term goal but I never really had the know-how to implement something like it without c++ access until now. With some experience with Lua recently, I think I might be able to do this. I'll put it on my todo list at least.

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awesome, i really think that would add a lot of balance to the city states.

I agree with ahriman that scaling the population gains would be a good solution if your going to keep the mechanism in place.

I do plan on giving citystates initial defensive units equal to HandicapInfos -> AIStartingDefenseUnits. I find it odd they don't start with defenders like regular civs. In addition, since all citystates have a palace, their strength is higher than normal cities and they heal twice as fast. Has anyone actually had success rushing citystates?

On a side note, it puzzles me so much focus is still placed on maritimes, when after their nerf from 3 to 1 I actually feel the others are quite powerful. Capturing a cultural is equal to 50 turns of Stonehenge instantly (three free policies). Capturing a Militaristic turns 1 swordsman into 3, more value than the cost of the Pyramids.

I can maybe shed some light on why I personally focus on Maritimes.

Cultural CS are good from the get go but their contribution becomes fairly measly at the end of the game when your civ is producing 1000+ culture a turn. Maritimes are actually pretty bad at the beginning when you have 2-3 cities but they ramp up and scale with the size of your civ so they remain relevant even in an endgame empire. I focus on Maritimes because I intend to stay friends throughout the game and I rarely go for a fast world conquest.

If I was the sort of person who wanted to win fast I could see befriendly a cultural CS and letting them ramp me up to a few policies and then let them go back to neutral and eventually kill them for the quick bonus.

I think of the people who play your mods most of them like to build things and play a long game (since that is a big focus for your mod) and for that strategy Maritimes are the best. People who just want to rush out a small map would do very well to worry about cultural CSs for fast Honor policies but I suspect that isn't generally the sort of person your mod attracts.

For what it is worth Militaristic CSs actually scale the best in my opinion. Their contribution remains consistently useful throughout the game rather than being especially good in the early or late stages.

If you buff Cultural CS contribution too much it would be OP in a small civ, just as it is weak for a big civ right now. Honestly I like the idea of maritimes providing a fixed amount of food spread evenly over your cities to bring all 3 types into line with not scaling with empire size but that seems like it might be a lot of work. If Maritimes provided a food bonus of 3/6/12 over the eras and that food was divided among your cities in some sensible way it would go a long way to equalizing the CS types since none would scale fully with empire size.

One thing that has always bothered me about Militaristic CS is that the unit spawns in the city-city that gave you the unit instead of in my cities. That always reduced their value to me. Maybe have gifted unit appears in your cities, and increase the number of unit you receive from CS to 4. I am not sure if it is even possible to control where the gift unit spawns so this might be pointless. If you could control, you think overpowered?

Thank you for that detailed feedback orangecape. I use varying perspectives like this to help gauge what directions I should go in for changes.

@rcspring
I actually know exactly how to do that and it'd be quite easy with current tools.

The system I have in place gives free units when the CS is captured, so I'd just create a side-system that periodically gives free units when it's allied (and remove the vanilla effect). I could drop these units at the capital, or whatever city's closest to the CS, control their unit type, and so on. My biggest complaint with Militaristic CSs has always been they usually spawn without any experience. I could set it up to scan for the highest-XP city available in the player's empire, or scan the average XP of units in the army, and give the created units that XP level.

So it's basically a question of... what would yall like to see for Militaristic city-state alliances?

@Thal
I think for gameplay, it would be more fun if they would be dropped near the capital and gain the XP bonus of that city. Usually when I get units from a CS at the other end of the map and it would take ages to bring it to my main army, I gift it again to that CS.
But in "reality" it doesn't make sense (for me). The CS is training the unit, so it *should* have the XP from the CS buildings (if they even build such). And additionally, because the CS trained and gifted the unit, it's only logical that it spawns in their territory.
Maybe one solution would be that the spawn time scales with distance to your capital (emulating walking time of unit from CS) and then spawns in your city.

From a realism perspective, what if the citystate is sending military advisers to the central empire to recruit and train troops? It'd make sense to do it with the rest of the military establishment where there's more funds, supplies, and training facilities. The maritime and cultural citystates do send their resources to the central empire after all.

At the very least, it'd probably be logical for them to do the training at the nearest player-owned city on the borders of the empire.

I would prefer to see the CS unit arrive at the nearest city, with the XP from the CS buildings. Do they build barracks and other XP buildings?

@Thalassicus:
That would actually make sense.
And it would be a good idea as well

And I agree with you that CSs should have initial defenses, maybe even a worker. They are really helpless in the beginning when there is a barbarian encampment near (especially as I like to enable raging barbarians ^^)

I think that the designers intentionally made capturing CS'es undesirable as you need them to survive in order for the UN win (silly as it may be) to be possible. I disagree with the way they went about hurting you for attacking though, it's overly severe punishment which occurs after a threshhold has been crossed and is irreversible.

@Thal: This wasn't listed as an option, but could it scan for an average of the XP from all cities? Ie, if one city has a barracks but the other two cities do not, the unit would get 3 XP. I typically have one city specialized for unit production, but ignore barracks, et al, in my other cities. This would create incentive to build up XP buildings everywhere.
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I know it's one of the "big mods" out there and a lot of folks know about it, but I'd just like to say that Gazebo's City-State Diplomacy Mod is really fantastic and relieves some of the proximity issues a lot of people have with regards to CSs. Give it a try!