Austria Review - Unique Abillity, highly exploitable?

[dexters]

There should be a mechanic to unmarry or rather for a married CS to revert back to a city-state.

The way the game treat it is basically a bloodless conquest of the CS. I think for all Cs, conquered or otherwise, their status should be tracked in the diplomacy screen, allowing other civs to ask directly for those states to be freed.

The current mechanic seems to be missing key options. you can annex puppet a CS you conquered, you can gift them away but you can't liberate them. I assume this is to prevent self-liberation, but I think code can be put in place where the liberation bonus goes to someone else or isn't applied.

If they allow a city state to always be tracked by the game and build mechanics around it, such as allowing players to freely give up control of CS they conquered, then the diplomatic marriage mechanic could be be fun.

I haven't faced Austria yet so I have no real opinion on the specifics. This is just generally things that bug me about the city-state mechanic.

 

[etipton3]

Anyone know how much gold it takes to annex\puppet a city state with Austria?

 

[fuzzatron717]

500 on warlord 1500 on king

 

[etipton3]

you forgot prince...

 

[comatosedragon]

500 on warlord 1500 on king

I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that the price remains constant? That is, it was 500 on prince and king [have not tried higher or lower difficulties yet].

 

[Camikaze]

Moderator Action: Merged with existing thread on Austria's UA.

 

[RealHuhn]

I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that the price remains constant? That is, it was 500 on prince and king [have not tried higher or lower difficulties yet].

I play on emperor at the moment on standart map size and speed and it's definately 500 gold. Although I'm only in the renaissance, so maybe it changes in late game.

And what can I say. I usually don't call everything OP but getting a new city plus ALL THEIR UNITS !!! for only 500 gold is pretty ridiculous. Around turn 100, I married a militaristic CS and got 3 knights, 2 longswordmen and 2 composite bowmen. Nobody even had chivalry by that point and I was fighting swordsmen and spearmen .

Don't tell me this is balanced and I'm already afraid of playing against Austria xD

 

[Seek]

500 on standard speed 1500 on marathon

Fixed that for you.

 

[Jimbo30]

It's laughably OP. How the hell does stuff like this make it to the launch when I could tell it was massively OP before I even tried it out? What are the devs doing?

 

[Camikaze]

It's not 'laughably' OP at all. It's OP, sure, but considering the opportunity cost involved in terms of forgoing large city state bonuses, the lower amounts of gold available earlier in the game, the fact that you are actually quite able to prevent Austria from allying in the first place (though the AI has a harder time stopping you in return), and the fact that uniques should be considered as a whole (are the UA and UB really that powerful?), it's not like it's even close to game-breaking. It's just one of the many things in the game that is OP. In my last game, Austria was wiped off the map by Attila in the early stages. In the game before, she didn't engage in any diplomatic marriages. It's not like Maria Theresa is dominating or will dominate every game. She just has a higher chance than most, because she is OP. But saying it is 'laughable' or implying that the essence of the UA is fundamentally flawed is quite odd, IMO.

 

[TheArchduke]

Especially as with most CS the bonus they provide is better then having a city.

The oppurtunity to assimilate pesky city states in great locations is nice to have but OP in the hands of the player? It seems in the hand of AI things get ugly though as money=no problem on higher difficulties for the AI.

 

[RealHuhn]

It's not 'laughably' OP at all. It's OP, sure, but considering the opportunity cost involved in terms of forgoing large city state bonuses, the lower amounts of gold available earlier in the game, the fact that you are actually quite able to prevent Austria from allying in the first place (though the AI has a harder time stopping you in return), and the fact that uniques should be considered as a whole (are the UA and UB really that powerful?), it's not like it's even close to game-breaking. It's just one of the many things in the game that is OP. In my last game, Austria was wiped off the map by Attila in the early stages. In the game before, she didn't engage in any diplomatic marriages. It's not like Maria Theresa is dominating or will dominate every game. She just has a higher chance than most, because she is OP. But saying it is 'laughable' or implying that the essence of the UA is fundamentally flawed is quite odd, IMO.

Especially as with most CS the bonus they provide is better then having a city.

The oppurtunity to assimilate pesky city states in great locations is nice to have but OP in the hands of the player? It seems in the hand of AI things get ugly though as money=no problem on higher difficulties for the AI.

Have you guys read my post? It's not OP because you get an additional city (which in itself is very powerful because you get a fully developed city with pretty much all buildings for the same cost of a settler). No, it's OP because you get about 8 modern units on top of it.

I bet anyone who argues against it hasn't played with Austria yet. Just make a few quests, save some money and as soon as the CSs upgrade their units to longswordmen or something, buy 3-4 CS and get around 25 units for 1500-2000 gold. Yeah, that's totally fine lol

 

[Melchizedek]

If you're worried about Austria ruining the city-state aspect of the game for you, then go kill her. The AI is supposed to challenge you! One of the problems with vanilla is that there's not much the AIs ever do to make a good player change his strategy.

 

[Gucumatz]

Oh I thought it cost much more gold. Well that changes things - If it is only 500 on standard it needs to be increased.

I may have to try it out on multi

 

[Elhoim]

As many others have said, the thing that annoys me most is that she completely takes out CS of the game. If you could liberate them, I would be quite fine with the UA (although I agree it needs some balancing).

 

[janboruta]

After playing 3/4 of a game with Austria and against them in Into the Renaissance I can write down my feelings.

In the game as Austria I aimed for the Coffee Houses to crank out Scientists and Artists faster than anyone else. This will especially help against runaway Confucian Egypt who has a border with me. I've yet to unlock Hussars but I hope that I won't have to use them anytime soon. I was allied to four City States, two of them militaristic (one is giving me Janissaries - oh the irony), but I married Cahokia right next to my borders because one civ was constantly rigging the elections there and there was a failed coup, so I wanted to deny it to anyone. However, the happiness hit was SEVERE and now I need to find another mercantile CS to fix that. In human hands the Austrian UA can be powerful (lots of science and culture from a puppeted city, all units and luxuries), but it has a huge opportunity cost. It's a good way to go with a wide empire or to connect a handful of demanded luxuries. I would find it useful also when you marry into a CS on another continent and intend to go domination. I agree that the price of marriage should be higher. 500 on standard speed, 1000 on epic and 1500 on marathon is just not enough. The first marriage could be so cheap, but next ones should have some kind of price progression.

In the hands of AI this UA is as beastly as it is annoying. Austria will have my hate and contempt forever for buying off my long-term mercantile and religious allies (Augsburg and Wittenberg). But Austria in my scenario seems to rather go to war than ally with CSs. I have 10 CS allies that keep electing me as Emperor and I have been Papal controller for about 200 years now. However, Austria is still the massive runaway with the most cities and population. I sense that this will be the civ gathering as much hate as Siam in terms of CS policy.

 

[Altisma]

If you're worried about Austria ruining the city-state aspect of the game for you, then go kill her. The AI is supposed to challenge you! One of the problems with vanilla is that there's not much the AIs ever do to make a good player change his strategy.

There is more to this game than AI vs Player. How about Player vs Player?

 

[gozpel]

It's not over, until the fat lady sings!

I have to try Austria tomorrow, before they nerf it.

 

[machival]

It's not 'laughably' OP at all.
[...]
In my last game, Austria was wiped off the map by Attila in the early stages. In the game before, she didn't engage in any diplomatic marriages. She just has a higher chance than most, because she is OP. But saying it is 'laughable' or implying that the essence of the UA is fundamentally flawed is quite odd, IMO.

AI is completely clueless about the game, so your point is moot.

I don't see how this isn't fundamentally flawed. The things Austria can get with only 500 gold are simply unreasonable, and not only those but also the strategic possibilities that buying an entire CS across the other part of the map can give.

This will be changed in a future patch, so yea, it's laughably OP. Though there are other laughably OP things in this game as you said..that's only for the worse not for the better.

 

[ezbutton]

I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this but if you decide to annex the puppet after diplomatic marriage the city doesn't require a courthouse! So this UA is probably on the OP side of things, because its 500g (on standard) to buy 2-3 units which alone makes up the gold value, but also a settler/city and the 5-10 buildings in it. Also, CS have a start bias and generally have at least a strategic resource or two in addition to their luxury. I could imagine this is a real terror in MP games.