City-State Discussion

Louis XXIV

Le Roi Soleil
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With the addition of new types of city-states, the removal of a few old ones, and the fact that they're moving some around, what do you think they're going to do.

Obviously, militaristic has been stripped badly. There were originally 8 and now they're down to 5. I also think 50 would be a lot of City-States. We know Tyre is moving to Mercantile. I could see a couple others doing something like that.

So what do people think? How would you organize them and how many new ones would you add (on top of Marrekech, Prague, Lisbon, Antwerp, Jerusalem, Vatican City, and Zanzibar).
 
I would imagine they have added new names for all the city states. They will have them balanced quite evenly I am sure.
 
You forgot Vatican City.

Personally I'm looking forward to the changes and having more choice when it comes to types of City-States, but possibly being more restricted: if there are usually a good handful of, say, Militaristic CSs per game, the number will be reduced, which means there will be more competition for influence. I think it will tie in very nicely with some of the changes to CS diplomacy that have been mentioned (multiple quests, elections, different ways of gaining influence and so on)
 
Thanks, I added the Vatican. I think too many City-States can lead to adverse effects since I don't think they'll add more to the game. That's why I don't think they'll have 50. I wonder if they'll add more to a map or if we're keeping about the game number.
 
There are a whole world of city names out there they have not used yet. Yes and Vatican City is one of those. I am sure they will have plenty to go around to fill in the added city states. I don't think that they'll have more of one type than another, but who knows. Hopefully they will give us more heads up about mercantile city staes tomorrow. The should balance the different types of city states rather evenly. There should not be many more of one type than another. Als, they should be able to have a list to fill 50 names, fairly easily. The devs are not stupid they have the city states taken care of pretty neatly I'm sure.
 
Less militaristic CS's also devalues United Front. It needs to be either buffed or moved out of the Order Tree into Patronage. Personally I think all CS SP's should be Patronage, period.
 
I think they should buff the units given by city-states somehow,to make them worthwhile . One of the ways to do it is to give Promotions that would only be avaliable when they got much xp(like March,Blitz,Woodsman,for example) without affecting the promotion rank(it would work like the Samurai and the Minuteman free promotions) .

For city-states,there are plenty of them in America . For example,Buenos Aires can be a Maritime city-state,Panama city and Havana can be a Mercantile city-state and either Caracas or Bogota may become an Militaristic city-state .
 
Also with the new CS types it should be possible for the Educated Elite SP to always yield the same kind of GP depending on the CS type. Militaristic gives Khan (a.k.a. GG with 5 move). Religious gives GP. Cultural gives GA. Mercantile gives GM. Maritime gives GS. Adds a new strategy element, letting you prioritize further which CS to ally with.
 
I think they should buff the units given by city-states somehow,to make them worthwhile

True. I'd like to see UU's that are not yours. Now that would make militaristic CS's really cool. And I'd like to see them gift some air units, so you can immediately rebase them. And I'd like to see them build some ships--it's possible you would otherwise have no coastal cities.
 
At least it's easy to add new ones. For instance, we got only 2 American CS (Quebec City and Rio). They could (and should) add Vancouver, Mexico City, São Paulo, Buenos Aires and so many others as Maritime, Mercantile or Cultural CS.

Personally I think it's hard to think of Militaristic examples, though, unless we look for historical cities like Troy and Ceuta. But it's hard to tag a modern city of "militaristic".
 
I hope there won't be more CS. So if you have a game with for example 15 CS now, you can expect about 5 maritieme, 5 cultural and 5 millitaristic. In the expansion you'll still have 15 CS but you can expect 3 maritieme, 3 cultural, 3 militaristic, 3 religious and 3 mercantile CS.

Thus not more quantity but more variety I hope. This will be more fun, and create more choices for the player but also more competition.

As for names and such I don't really care much.
 
And not only variety in that way. What already is known for a long time is that CS's can have 2 or 3 quests going on at the same time. A lot of new ideas for quests have been made, and new ways of gaining influence are being added. It's less about just adding money, the developers wanted to make it more interesting.

I personally don't think the amount of civs or CS's per map needs to change. Some new info will need to be put into the map scripts to cover for the new resources, that at least, but basic placement and quantity of CS's can remain similar.

I'm not sure less military CS's will make competition for those CS's heavier. Until now a lot of AI civs simply don't bother about CS's, and the ones that do seem mainly interested in the strategic resources - notice a CS with some horses or iron is usually allied quickly.
 
And not only variety in that way. What already is known for a long time is that CS's can have 2 or 3 quests going on at the same time. A lot of new ideas for quests have been made, and new ways of gaining influence are being added. It's less about just adding money, the developers wanted to make it more interesting.

I personally don't think the amount of civs or CS's per map needs to change. Some new info will need to be put into the map scripts to cover for the new resources, that at least, but basic placement and quantity of CS's can remain similar.

I'm not sure less military CS's will make competition for those CS's heavier. Until now a lot of AI civs simply don't bother about CS's, and the ones that do seem mainly interested in the strategic resources - notice a CS with some horses or iron is usually allied quickly.

I agree, I don't think there will be a particular strong competition for one type of CS. It will be very game dependant. Nobody is going to care about millitary CS in a peacefull game. But if many civs are going for culture victory the competition for cultural CS will be heavy. This is good, more variety per game.
 
right now, you can have up to 28 city-states on a map, so i don't see why there should be any more than 30, which is 6 of each type.
 
More than 28 - say 40 or 50 - would be good for variety's sake. I've said it elsewhere before, but it's weird when city states are repeated in random maps more often than civs. Also, this Vatican City things is hilariously misguided.
 
Personally I think it's hard to think of Militaristic examples, though, unless we look for historical cities like Troy and Ceuta. But it's hard to tag a modern city of "militaristic".

Tel Aviv, Beirut, Kabul, Islamabad, Grozny, Khartoum, Tehran, Bogota, Kampala, Mogadishu, Colombo.

All of these are the capitals of highly militarized states, none of which approach the hegemonic nature that would indicate being included as a civilization (at least not in their modern incarnations). They're all also notable for other things, such as Tel Aviv being a mercantile center, but a "Militaristic" designation would reasonably capture their impact on the current world stage.
 
right now, you can have up to 28 city-states on a map, so i don't see why there should be any more than 30, which is 6 of each type.

The problem is there are plenty that fit well where they are and don't fit for others, so they would have to more or less be removed from the game to go down to 6. I did manage to think of a way to make it 8 cultural, 8 maritime, 8 mercantile, 6 religious, and 6 militaristic (36 total). To be more accurate, I have 9 maritime and need to move one to mercantile and I need to think of one militaristic (easy enough) and three religious. I'll post my thoughts and see if anyone has any suggestions (maybe enough for 6 each). I'll put an asterix if it's my speculation:

Cultural
Brussels
Bucharest
Florence
Kathmandu
Kuala Lampur
Monaco
Warsaw
Prague

Maritime
Cape Town
Genoa
Helsinki
Quebec City
Ragusa
Rio de Janeiro
Stockholm
Sydney
Venice

Militaristic
Almaty
Belgrade
Budapest
Hanoi
Sidon

Mercantile
Lisbon * (although likely)
Marrekech * (same)
Antwerp
Zanzibar * (same)
Tyre
Geneva * (complete speculation)
Singapore * (same)

Religious
Jerusalem
Vatican City
Lhasa *
 
Isn't Milan one of the Celtic cities? I believe it was a Celtic urban center before the Romans captured it, right?
(Although seeing that civ-Celts are often highly anglocentric I doubt it)
 
Milan is an easy militaristic. Siena would be cultural, I'd think. Valletta would be cool as either religious or militaristic (Knights Hospitallers). You could also add Asisi as a religious one. Pisa was under the yoke of Florence for much of this period, so I think they might be in a second tier. You could also have Naples.

That being said, while I'd love to include more Italian City-States, it also wouldn't hurt to include more diverse areas.
 
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