More Aggressive City States: Can you Dominate by Proxy?

aimlessgun

aimlessgun

King
Joined
Jan 4, 2010
Messages
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I've noticed that my allied CS units now leave their territory pretty aggressively and go after my enemies (dunno if this is just with the last patch?). Think it's possible to win a domination victory with city states doing all the capturing for you?

I really want to try this, actually. No diplo penalties for being a warmonger either!
 
I actually just finished a game, where I won a domination victory. But, one of my allied city states actually took the first city of a war against Rome. At the time Rome was leading in military power so I was pretty surprised that they were able to do that.

He was actually helpful to me in getting a foothold in the beginning parts of a long war and distracting the Roman army just enough until I could capture a couple cities and weaken his military enough to have the advantage in military power.
 
CS land units still seem to have a fixed range - certainly where you could roughly predict where they will go. You would need to have them control a city next to every capital. I guess in theory you could do this... but it's going to be a loooong game.
 
I used this for the end of my China LP, but I wouldn't consider it a 'solid' strategic choice. The CSs don't always go far enough or actually finish a city sometimes.

It all depends on their unit types and how close a city is to another one. if they randomly raze a city that's close to another that they might take, they'll effectively cut themselves off from being useful. So against an AI that packs the cities in, they can be useful. Against one that puts 6 tiles or so between cities, not so much.

That, and they're going to try to defend the whole area. So you'll have to pump out the units and gift them over before they're going to keep moving to the next cities. But the first 1-2 cities, no problem.
 
A CS will only Raze an enemy city, they don't hold them. At least from my experience. They also will not travel too far from home (on land). So, I dont see this as a reliable or even viable tactic.
 
Waydeuce said:
A CS will only Raze an enemy city, they don't hold them. At least from my experience. They also will not travel too far from home (on land). So, I dont see this as a reliable or even viable tactic.
Click to expand...

The question isn't whether CS will hold enemy cities - it's under what circumstances. I think it has to do with happiness.
 
aimlessgun said:
I've noticed that my allied CS units now leave their territory pretty aggressively and go after my enemies (dunno if this is just with the last patch?). Think it's possible to win a domination victory with city states doing all the capturing for you?
Click to expand...

I had a game when I had superior technology to compared to my AI neighbor.

Then for reasons unknown, he declared war on one of my allied city states, and it became permanent war between them (couldn't force peace through diplomacy).

Since I was in no mood for war and didn't wanted my ally CS destroyed, I gave CS advanced units for help.

The result was complete and utter defeat of AI civilization.


Note:
All conquered cities by city state got razed, exempt cities previously owned by conquered city states and capitol cities.
 
In one of my games, a CS took the city of Babylon itself and held it.
 
I saw a screenshot of Cahokia eliminating Poland by taking Warsaw
 
They will always keep capitals as they can't raze them.

They will almost always raze other cities because city-states inherently have happiness issues - but sometimes they will keep them.

I saw a screenshot around here not too long ago that showed Songhai getting dominated by Jerusalem (the city-state had something like 5 cities).
 
I really, really don’t believe CS ever hold cities (except capitals). In that Jerusalem screenshot, the extra cities were in the process of being razed. I don’t think it is about happiness either, they are just programmed for the behavior. As to OP, getting a CS to capture capitals is tricky, but having them be the one to kill of the last AI city is not too hard to arrange.
 
beetle said:
I really, really don’t believe CS ever hold cities (except capitals). In that Jerusalem screenshot, the extra cities were in the process of being razed. I don’t think it is about happiness either, they are just programmed for the behavior. As to OP, getting a CS to capture capitals is tricky, but having them be the one to kill of the last AI city is not too hard to arrange.
Click to expand...

I believe I have seen a CS keep a non-cap city once. Just once, though. Could be misremembering that, of course.
 
I had one game where my ally Tyre was right in between England and Rome, both of whom I was warring against. Both had fairly tightly packed cities with only one city between their capitals and Tyre. Tyre kept capturing and raising the near cities and Rome and England would keep resettling them. This happen twice each I think before Tyre said "Screw This!" and captured Rome and London.

That was ages ago but ever since I always try to ally with Tyre just for sentimental reasons. And if any other civ even looks at them funny they become my number one enemy.
 
I guess you could gift military units to the CS to help, but as the other poster said, far from reliable.
 
If, at the end of my turn, I have worn the city defenses down to zero with ranged units, I find that a nearby CS ally will pretty reliably capture the city. Sometimes they seem to need a couple turns. If I have a mounted unit with LoS (from the CS territory to the city I want them to hit) then I might gift that unit on that same turn.
 
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