AI attacking city states every game is frustrating

[UWHabs]

Why do you say that? In the games I've been observing, most City States are conquered after they've already built their walls. As far as I can tell, starting the City States with walls would delay the timing of the conquest of some of them until the AI has Swordsmen or Archers, but most would still go under. It would also have knock on effects in terms of what the AI civs do with their armies during that time (attack each other? nothing?)

I'm genuinely curious about how those who argue for starting the City States with walls think that would improve gameplay. I don't think it would have a significant impact on the number of City States conquered, but it could impact the timing. Would that timing make a big difference?

Pushing the timing back means that you're probably going to more often get AI vs AI battles early, or AI vs human ones. Maybe it has enough time for AI civs to get a couple envoys in a city-state and thus change their mood against it. Or it gives the city-state enough time to get some units online and better defend themselves. It at least gives them a fighting chance, and pushes back when people might want to attack them to a point that you can also maybe do something about it. If you push it back long enough for someone to suzerain them as well, that could have another impact in terms of possible CB too.

 

[Virdrago]

A couple ideas I have:

1) Usually at Emperor or above, city states start with a couple of units while AI civs usually have two cities up and running early and both are pumping out units. Give city states more starting units, say 3 warriors and 2 slingers. That way, it may provide a deterence at least, and definitely a slowdown (in my experience) of having a quarter of the city states gone before the Classical era. It may make it harder for a quick early takedown by a human player, but usually the start of the game is about survival anyway on higher levels.

2) Make it so the suzerain can't declare war on it's tributary. I've watched this happen more than a few times, and my first thought is, why?

3) Make penalties for capturing a suzerain's city state actually a penalty, at least diplomatically. If you are suzerain, declaring war on your city state constitutes war on you. If a civ is at war with a city state without a suzerain, and it becomes a tributary during the war, have certain diplomatic options for the new suzerain: Either the suzerain pays the attacker to make peace, a chance for denouncement if not, and, as a last resort, automatic war if the city state is taken if you are still suzerain when the city is taken (without or with a low warmongering penalty). Move Protecterate War to a much earlier age, there are many instances of it as pretences for war during the Ancient and Classical ages in real life.

4) Stop having declared friends attacking your tributary. I have seen this pretty much every game I play, and it is highly annoying to have a declared friendship, and suddenly your "friend" decides that since you now can't attack them, and denouncing them will cause serious diplo penalties, they can take out your suzerained city states with impunity. You can't join an emergency on your friend, so what's the point? Stop declaring friendships?

 

[Archon_Wing]

Why do you say that? In the games I've been observing, most City States are conquered after they've already built their walls. As far as I can tell, starting the City States with walls would delay the timing of the conquest of some of them until the AI has Swordsmen or Archers, but most would still go under. It would also have knock on effects in terms of what the AI civs do with their armies during that time (attack each other? nothing?)

I'm genuinely curious about how those who argue for starting the City States with walls think that would improve gameplay. I don't think it would have a significant impact on the number of City States conquered, but it could impact the timing. Would that timing make a big difference?

CS's would still fall yes, but we'd more well equipped to do something about it. The idea is not to prevent them from taking CS's, but rather to slow them down.

 

[kryat]

I think it would help if you had the option to declare a city state under your protectorate like in V, then receive an alert when another player attacks it, “Jerusalem calls for aid against the evils of the German empire”, that you could then declare a protectorate war against. Keep protectorate war at the same civic unlock. It wouldn’t help in the very early stages in the game, but it would help protectorate wars feel useful. Right now, you can only declare it for city states you are suzerain over, and there’s no notification when they are attacked.

It also makes perfect sense for them to revert to being city states not free cities when lost by loyalty. But, they should also not be immune to the loyalty mechanic, even if they had some bonus resistance to it.

 

[montalaar]

system is broken. solution is needed. almost each game same scenario - wiped city states. whole mechanics is broken.

one suggestion i like is if any civ declare war on city state, it autodeclare war on its suzerain.

 

[x2Madda]

A lot of the suggestions is to make CS harder to take out but the fundamental flaw that AI is bad at warfare just means CS would end up delaying or outright wiping out AI civs. I honestly thing the base game situation is fine as it is and I know that makes me the minority in this thread but I have seen and been in countless GOTM and almost always the best solution is warfare.
Making AI lose half their army to a CS would just make wars even more of a joke than they already are. Even in Civ5 CS were easy pickings with their survival resting more on if you wanted the bonuses they offered or not and little else bar diplomatic victory (where killing those you somehow couldn't afford to bribe off was also a legitimate tactic).
What kind of relationship is wanted with CS? We can send them trade routes and complete quests for them but if CS were relegated to nothing more than a text prompt I feel the relationship would remain the same. Might even be a god direction for them to be just text and not physically on the map in Civ7

 

[RickSL]

Giving city states combat bonuses in their own territory, when fighting a defensive war, would maybe help.

 

[Nobody]

Play as Australia and liberate for double production.

 

[orasis]

how is it exciting watching AI attack city states? i can understand if you could do something about it but you cant. They are on the map to be able to compete for resources over, not for free city plots which is exacerbated by other AI behavior issues with the game. eg city spamming in nonsensical locations.

That is not what I said. I said it gives you a choice - do you declare war or not? Early wars have little to no penalty. So, is that CS important enough for you to wage war to defend it? Can you even afford to send units this early with all of the barbs around?

How is that not fun?

 

[Pistol90]

Why not simplest solution in the world , like in Civ 5 ---- Pledge to protect. That is basicly how small states in todays world exist

 

[playshogi]

I like to take advantage of the AI conquering city-states. Park a couple warriors nearby a city-state likely to be declared on, then join the fun when the war starts. Declare war and move the warriors next to the city and wait until the AI red-lines the target then capture the city. If I have only 1 warrior nearby, I try it anyway although odds of success are much lower, but definitely not zero.

 

[Halcyan2]

Haven't played Civ VI in awhile. Just finished my first Rise and Fall game.

Early on, AUSTRALIA takes out 2 city states. Given their liberation agenda, you would think Australia wouldn't be as interested in taking over city states. Georgia also took out one. And then the Mapuche did, triggering an Emergency that I did solo, to liberate Carthage. Later on, I also liberated the city states Australia and Georgia took (all the way across the world).

Later on, my ALLY (Scientific Ally) Korea declares war on one of the City States (Kandy) that I am suzerain of. There is absolutely NOTHING I can do to prevent Korea from taking the city. Since I am ally of Korea, I can't denounce or declare war (such as Protectorate War). When the alliance is over, I denounce but I can't even declare a Protectorate War (Kandy is already dead) or even a Liberation War. The best I can do is declare a normal war (taking warmonger penalty) with the goal of liberation.

It's really screwy when your allies attack your city states and you can't protect them.

 

[Brianstorm]

They should go full DMC Revolutions and let the city states form a Civilization.

 

[x2Madda]

Why not simplest solution in the world , like in Civ 5 ---- Pledge to protect. That is basicly how small states in todays world exist

Pledge to Protect was silly in execution while good in theory. AI would simple waggle a finger telling you how naughty you were if you attacked a city state they had sworn to protect but it was extremely rare they would go to war over it. The flip side was as a mechanic it was often in your best interest to pledge to protect every city state you met! Rather than it being a tactical choice you would just simply do it every time for the +10 bonus so they nerfed the worth of PtP to +5 which then made it not worth doing at all!

They should go full DMC Revolutions and let the city states form a Civilization.

Not sure if this is a joke? If they did this they may as well remove city states because what would be the difference between a CS and a rival Civ at that point?

City states are a good idea just executed poorly at this time. I like the idea but we are limited in how we can interact with CS; they are a bonus piece on a board game like collecting '200 for passing go'. We want to not only keep them for our own benefit but we also want to be the main benefactor of them and at present we really lack the tools to make this happen.

Well, we can always kill off the rival civs. That is always an option.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I think it would help if you had the option to declare a city state under your protectorate like in V, then receive an alert when another player attacks it, “Jerusalem calls for aid against the evils of the German empire”, that you could then declare a protectorate war against. Keep protectorate war at the same civic unlock. It wouldn’t help in the very early stages in the game, but it would help protectorate wars feel useful. Right now, you can only declare it for city states you are suzerain over, and there’s no notification when they are attacked.

It also makes perfect sense for them to revert to being city states not free cities when lost by loyalty. But, they should also not be immune to the loyalty mechanic, even if they had some bonus resistance to it.

You could occupy their territory with a protectorate deal, otherwise it would be pointless, Fred would laugh anyway, but that would be something better than start a race on whom conquer most civ state faster than the others.

 

[Scaramanga]

I try to liberate when I can for war mongering reduction. Or try to prevent capture initially when Surprise war is not so costly diplomatically. Protectorate wars are pretty great for justifying a war I was planning anyway.
As for allies declaring on client states... I guess I'd have to make sure my ally has some envoys in the same city states so they have some investment in them. I could maybe build the Foreign Ministry and just block the city from being captured with the levied troops and my own.