[NFP] New City States - Your Thoughts/Rankings?

[TCBB]

Some of you might remember that I hosted the 'city-state elimination thread' a while back, sometime after the Maya & Gran Colombia pack was released.

(link: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/city-states-elimination-thread.660516/)

I've finally got round to playing a few games post-Babylon patch, and I'm wondering where everyone thinks the new city-states fit into the pecking order – and also, whether any of the old city-states have gotten better or worse after balance patches?

I haven't encountered all the new ones yet. But here are some thoughts on those I've found:

• Ayutthaya (gain culture equal to 10% of the construction costs when completing buildings): seems pretty strong. Any boost to culture is always appreciated, as reflected by the high ranking of most cultural city-states in the last thread. Unfortunately, I only got suzerainty quite late so I don't know how helpful it is in the early game when that extra culture is most powerful.

• Wolin (receive great general / admiral points when killing units): I rate this one very highly. It lets you rush an early great general without any investment into expensive encampments – I reckon it could slot in as the best of the military city-states (which scored pretty average overall).

• Nalanda (lets you build Mahavihara tile improvements): not sure what to think. On the one hand, my instinct says that science bonuses are always good because the meta rewards science. Yet on the other, I couldn't find any decent spots for them in my most recent game (as Scotland): campuses obviously go near mountain ranges, but that means there's little space to fit a Mahavihara or two. The free housing is appreciated, though.

• Samarkand (lets you build Trading Domes): did not rate this at all. Trading Domes simply don't provide enough gold to justify the builder charge, especially in the early game. With the obvious exceptions of Zanzibar and Cahokia, the commercial city-states remain the worst category by far.

I haven't encountered Johannesburg (extra production for each resource you have) or Chinguetti (extra faith for trade routes), so I'm interested to hear what people think about them.

Some extra thoughts:

• Lahore (lets you build Nihang units): has been nerfed hard, as the cost of Nihangs now scales with eras which requires much greater faith investment. I definitely don't think it should rank as the best militaristic city-state any more.

• Vilnius (extra culture depending on alliances & theatre square adjacencies): while I wouldn't place them any higher than C tier, you can actually get some use out of Vilnius because it's much easier to get theatre square adjacencies now. At any rate, rescued from the dredges of F tier.

• Zanzibar, Buenos Aires, Muscat (extra amenities): have they become more powerful because the rewards for reaching happy & ecstatic are now significantly increased?

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

Wolin is especially useful for Leaders like Gorgo, Alexander, Shaka, etc. Here are my reasons:

Gorgo: Not only will you be getting Culture from kills, but you'll also be getting Great General Points as a side note.

Alexander: Get Wolin before you go to the Classical Era, and you've basically won. Hetaroi and Hypaspist rush your enemies, and you will win 99% of the time.

Shaka: Impis and Great Generals are a terrifying combo.

 

[Vargas1]

I like Johannesburg a lot. I tend to improve at least some of my bonus resources, so that coupled with luxuries and strategies can really jack your production up nicely.

 

[kryat]

I have found that I like Samarkand and the trading dome. While the base gold isn’t that great, I the trading domes are good to combo into stacked trade routes out of a single port city. Their placement have the awkward non-adjacent rules, but if you’ve played India or Cree, you kinda get used to it. Throw in the extra gold from a city with a governor and Great Zimbabwe (if you’re lucky), and maybe a few other trade bonuses here and there and you can have a very wealthy city.

 

[Drivingrevilo]

I agree that Wolin is very good for domination. But as with the rest of the militaristic states, its use cases are kinda limited. The only one that helps for non-domination is Valletta: I tend to avoid them except maybe Kabul.

I agree with OP regarding Samarkand. I feel the Trading Dome should provide +1 amenity as well. At the moment, it's just inferior to the Cahokia Mound in almost every way: in the early game, you need to invest a builder charge to get maybe +3 or +4 GPT out of Samarkand, two builder charges to get +6 or +8, which compares to +3 GPT, +1 amenity, and +1 housing (all scaling as game progresses) from a Cahokia Mound. Plus, on many maps clusters of luxuries just aren't very common – incidentally, my main complaint about Magnificence Catherine – whereas Cahokia Mounds can fit into almost any terrain.

Haven't found Johannesburg yet, but it sounds strong – if I'm understanding the very poorly worded description correctly.

 

[Henri Christophe]

Boïs Caiman to represented Haiti in this game.
Religious city and suzerain effect give a Voodoo Priest.

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

Boïs Caiman to represented Haiti in this game.
Religious city and suzerain effect give a Voodoo Priest.

Ummm... Nice idea, but this isn't a City-State idea thread, it's a City-State ranking thread. So good idea, wrong thread.

 

[Henri Christophe]

ops. sorry

 

[BD123]

Nalanda is fun bc if you lose suzerainty of it after building a mahavihara, then regain suzerainty, you get another free tech. Idk if anyone else has gotten what I'm sure is a bug though. I just don't see Samarkand being especially helpful bc I don't struggle with gold a lot and find the other yields more important.

Ayutthaya surprised me with the amount of culture you can amass if you like to build up infrastructure. I like having populous cities with every building in a district and every district in the city so the culture really gets rolling for me in the early to mid-game but it plateaus after that point when the civics get pricey and you're no longer shaving off a turn or two from a civic by finishing a few buildings.

 

[Banazir864]

Nalanda is fun bc if you lose suzerainty of it after building a mahavihara, then regain suzerainty, you get another free tech. Idk if anyone else has gotten what I'm sure is a bug though.

Definitely a bug: You can unlock the entire tech tree in a single turn just by repeatedly unassigning and reassigning Amani.

 

[enKage]

Ayutthaya is top tier cultural together with NanMadol now. You don't need theatres if you have it.

Change to trade routes cards (suzerein counts as alliance) directly rises Kumasi from pretty meh city to top tier too. Don't underestimate Samarkanda - I can imagine strong build around it with great Zimbabwe espescially with boosted religious communities and Reyna in city.

Speaking about extra ammenities - don't forget that Cahokia is the best among those and Muscat Buenos Aires and Zanzibar don't even compare to Cahokia. +2 ammenity per city is nothing else like rising happiness level by one translating to lets say +10% yields

With so many changes we need another elimination thread

 

[UWHabs]

Chinguetti is top tier if you're going religion. Had it in a game I was going religion and it was giving me +10 faith per trade route. I think it hits every trade route, domestic or foreign, so you don't have to change your strategy other than sending routes from your largest cities out. Of course, you need a religion to use it, so that would drop it a little. Not sure if it works if you haven't founded a religion, but if it does, it alone might be worth spreading a religion to make sure you have a majority one.

Wolin is awesome if you're going military. Definitely one of the better military city-states, as you can get a good amount of GG from kills, and it's also nice being a bonus that you don't really have to make too much effort to get. For some reason, I think I've had this in all of my last few games.

Haven't really experienced the others in the new pack much.

 

[enKage]

Not only for religion game. As Cree or Persia, where you usually have centralised domestic trade and get bonus early trader (pottery/political philosophy) (especially Cree as you can also easily hit pop10 pre t75), Chinguetti allows crazy monumentality without even building a single holy site and really shines in science victory

The best set of City states for Cree if anyone wants a crazy game:
Trade
- Cahokia
- Muscat
- Hunza
Cultural
- Ayutthaya
- Nan Madol
Religious
- Cinguetti
Scientific
- Geneva
Industrial
- hongkong
Military
- Ngazargamu

Any remaining for any scientific

 

[Dotsworthy]

Johannesburg is a strong city state, potentially top tier if you discover it early game as it's easy to have 3-4 unique resources in a city and early game that can help to grow and expand your empire very quickly.

Ayutthaya is also excellent. 10% culture on every building really adds up.

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

Ayutthaya is also excellent. 10% culture on every building really adds up.

Very good early game, able to shave off a few turns to get Political Philosophy or Early Empire. Late-game, though, it's not as good. However, getting it early negates this because Ayutthaya will have served its place.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

My scoring (Previously 34 is the maximal score)
Nalanda: 1000, nothing to say, SV at T60 is insane.
Ayutthaya: 25, good though
Wolin: 22, the first GG is very strong, but then the value of GG points may vary in different situations. Based on era, world era, era of your units, etc.
Samarkind: 14, under the help of the double gold bonus update for Commerical CSs commercial CSs are not very bad.

 

[TCBB]

So basically what we’re saying: all the new ones are pretty good!

Nalanda is fun bc if you lose suzerainty of it after building a mahavihara, then regain suzerainty, you get another free tech. Idk if anyone else has gotten what I'm sure is a bug though

This is a known bug. Spiffing Brit and PotatoMcWhiskey did a team-up video on YouTube where they showed it in action.

Chinguetti allows crazy monumentality without even building a single holy site and really shines in science victory

I hadn’t even thought about monumentality, that’s a great point. None of the current religious city-states really help with monumentality (they’re all more geared towards actual religious victory, or are just plain trash like Armagh), so Chinguetti is an interesting outlier.

With so many changes we need another elimination thread

Agree with this. Personally, I would also like to see another ‘best AI opponent’ thread. I really enjoyed that one, and I think some of the new Civs (Maya, Babylon, Ethiopia) seem to be very competent opponents. The AI also doesn’t spam holy sites nearly as much as they used to, which helps out all the Civs who have no incentive to be distracted by religion (e.g. Cree, Rome, Australia). Plus, I didn’t think Kongo deserved to win in the first place

 

[bengalryan9]

Agree with this. Personally, I would also like to see another ‘best AI opponent’ thread. I really enjoyed that one, and I think some of the new Civs (Maya, Babylon, Ethiopia) seem to be very competent opponents. The AI also doesn’t spam holy sites nearly as much as they used to, which helps out all the Civs who have no incentive to be distracted by religion (e.g. Cree, Rome, Australia). Plus, I didn’t think Kongo deserved to win in the first place

Might as well wait until we have all of the new civs first. Plus it doesn't look like the current elimination thread is finishing any time soon anyways.

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

Might as well wait until we have all of the new civs first. Plus it doesn't look like the current elimination thread is finishing any time soon anyways.

Apologies about that. Although, it does mean we will be able to include more of the NFP Civs and Leaders into the threads.

 

[pokiehl]

My scoring (Previously 34 is the maximal score)
Nalanda: 1000, nothing to say, SV at T60 is insane.

Don’t you think it’s inappropriate to rank something based on a bug that is clearly going to be fixed? You should at least have mentioned that in your post, lest you mislead someone uninformed.