Beware: allied city states can backstab

[Thalassicus]

Odd situation I'm in during my current game:

1. I met a city-state with no ally.
2. Gave the CS 1000 gold, became its ally.
3. Arabs declared war on me.
4. My ally declared war on me.

Edit: Nevermind, disregard this - reloaded an autosave and discovered the Arabs must have bought them off, the city-state switched allegiances just before the DOW. Their influence must have been higher, despite the fact we were both allies.

 

[Hyspasist]

Think it may depend on who has been buddy with them longer. They'll side more likely with someone who's been around for a few centuries as opposed to someone that just showed up.

 

[Grotius]

I've generally avoided allying city-states that already have allies, seeking out non-allied city-state as a first priority. But if I can afford it, should I also ally with city-states that already have allies? The original poster's experience suggests it might be a bit risky.

 

[jaycuhbbb]

I've generally avoided allying city-states that already have allies, seeking out non-allied city-state as a first priority. But if I can afford it, should I also ally with city-states that already have allies? The original poster's experience suggests it might be a bit risky.

It's odd, sometimes civs won't care if I swipe an ally from them and sometimes a civ will complain if I merely attempt to influence a CS that isn't even their ally (but are in their "sphere of influence"!

 

[MasterDinadan]

Civs only seem to take offense when you try to ally a city state that is near them geographically. This is pretty silly, since the geographic location is almost trivial.
Although, claiming a city state near to a distant civ may let you wage a "proxy war" where you put yourself in very little danger being geographically remote, while your allied city state harasses the victim. I guess this is actually a sensible concern, and may be the reason civs are wary of you when you do such a thing.

 

[Tyops]

Allied city state zones count as friendly for the purpose of upgrading units. It's a good place to set the stage for a distant attack.

 

[Thalassicus]

Think it may depend on who has been buddy with them longer. They'll side more likely with someone who's been around for a few centuries as opposed to someone that just showed up.

Well, as specified in #1 this city state had no ally, it'd never been allied with anyone but me. I think what happened was the Arabs gave them a large gold donation to get them to switch allegiances. Just something to watch out for.

The reason it was a problem was I was playing for a cultural victory and this city-state was the military one providing me units, right in the middle of my cities. When it switched from ally to enemy I lost the 1,000 gold I'd invested and he attacked me with his half-dozen units.

 

[Pragmatic]

I was fighting Montezuma. I had allied with a few city-states, including one on their southern border. Monty allied with this one, and when he DOW on me, it cascaded to a bunch of other city-states DOW on me.

So for the cost of about 250 gold, I regained my Allied status with the southern-border city-state. All the other city-states in their group flipped over to siding with me, as well.

Or something like that. It was fun.

 

[drawkward]

as stated in the civlopedia, they can only be allied with 1 person at a time, whoever has more influence. i've had 160+ influence with a city state and just been "friends". what must've happened is the aggressor bought off the city state then declared war, so before the DOW, you were no longer an ally of the city-state

 

[Cyberian]

I had a strange one in my current game.

Had a military City State near Persia.
I gifted them a couple of units.
I then declared war on persia.
After taking Persepolis I made peace.

Now the strange thing: The City State did not make peace as they usually do. They managed to raze three persian cities until I declared again and finished the job.

 

[Magic1264]

Sorry if this sounds like a silly question, but do the Allied non-military city states do anything for you during a war? I've played about 4 games (prince) so far, and I've never seen a city state be able put up any military offense, let alone a defense, to a civ that wasn't me.

 

[drawkward]

They do, but I think that generally they have fewer military units, so are less effective or less noticeable. On higher difficulties they will have larger standing armies and it's more obvious.

 

[Cyberian]

I have a maritime City state near my borders that helped me quite a lot in war against my neighbor.

But I don't know why he got that many units while other cultural/maritime CS never seem to build any. Maybe it has to do with them being attacked early on by another civ.

 

[Jellly]

Also, although city states are usually quite weak, I've found they are useful when there is one or two of them squaring off against other civs undefended towns. I remember in one of my games Seoul managed to grow to 3 cities because the civ was too distracted by my attacks elsewhere.