Can you liberate a city state from another city state?

[shadow2k]

I need a little help figuring this out. Short version is Genghis conquered a bunch of city states, everyone else is all buddy buddy, and everyone declared on him for warmongering. In the confusion, he lost one of his conquered CS's, and they puppeted it.

So Ormus (maritime) now has a puppet named Zurich (mercantile). If you click on Zurich to bring up their city screen, it takes you to the owner, Ormus. I want the mercantile CS restored so I can get the unique lux back in play.

So, I assume I can declare on Ormus, liberate Zurich, and then make peace. Ormus might hate me for a while, that's fine. How will that affect the other civ's view of me? I stopped ever attacking city states long ago due to such harsh warmongering penalties for doing so. But...I'm actually liberating one. So how would other civs react to that? I don't really want all the other civs getting pissed at me for it. Not yet anyway.

Spoiler :

 

[Browd]

Does Ormus have an ally civ that you can DOW (instead of DOWing Ormus directly)?

 

[ThorHammerz]

So how would other civs react to that? I don't really want all the other civs getting pissed at me for it. Not yet anyway.

It boils down to:

- Who is has declared their protection for that City State
- How many city states you have declared war on (directly) so far (they will treat you as a CS-Aggressor after 3 DoWs).

 

[Lanijon]

The main reason why AI civs get so upset by CS aggression is because they view them basically as tiny civs, so wiping one out gets weighted the same as taking the last city from a real civ, i.e. enormous warmonger penalties. Since you'll be leaving Ormus with a city though, and liberating the only city you take, I assume the only civs who might be ticked off are the ones who are protecting Ormus.

 

[shadow2k]

Thanks for the replies. Let's just say for argument's sake that nobody is an ally of Ormus, and nobody pledged protection. I can work around any of that type of stuff. My main concern is how this is calculated in terms of warmongering, because the penalties add up quick, and I like to put it off as long as possible. Because really....I am going to kill all the civs eventually.

If the AI is viewing CS's as one city civs...is Ormus just any old two city civ now? There's no special modifier just because they're a CS? If so, then liberating Thebes from a two city Mongolia should be the same as liberating Zurich from Ormus. Am I understanding that correctly?

 

[_amaroid]

Bad news for you:
I believe mercantile city-states lose their unique lux after capture. They do not get it back after liberation...

 

[LordBalkoth]

Amaroid is correct.

 

[shadow2k]

Oh man, that sucks.

But seriously, what is up with Ormus? They took another city, but they seem to be burning this one down.

Spoiler :

I've seen a CS capture a city here and there, but never multiple cities in the same game without player intervention (bomb the city to 0 so they can burn it for you). I wonder how large you could grow a single CS by turning on the no razing option and "helping" them along...

 

[LordBalkoth]

They'll generally burn cities down unless they manage to get a lot of happiness from it. However, they CANNOT raze other city states or capitals, period.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Egypt is very easy to pick on he is a lot like me in the sense that he doesn't focus a lot on military making him a very weak target.

 

[Lanijon]

Thanks for the replies. Let's just say for argument's sake that nobody is an ally of Ormus, and nobody pledged protection. I can work around any of that type of stuff. My main concern is how this is calculated in terms of warmongering, because the penalties add up quick, and I like to put it off as long as possible. Because really....I am going to kill all the civs eventually.

If the AI is viewing CS's as one city civs...is Ormus just any old two city civ now? There's no special modifier just because they're a CS? If so, then liberating Thebes from a two city Mongolia should be the same as liberating Zurich from Ormus. Am I understanding that correctly?

Yes, that's correct. There are no special modifiers for city-states that make them worse to DOW or conquer than regular civs. Killing them off is only a severe penalty because warmonger hate in general is higher when your target has fewer cities. (Likewise, liberation bonuses become much higher when you're liberating someone with few cities, which is why CS liberation is so huge.) Mind you, abusing city-states enough can make all of them hate you and go perma-war on you, but you don't have to worry about that from just one war.

So yeah, liberating Zurich and Thebes are both safe to do. I won't call them identical since the liberation bonuses are different, but the warmonger hate you'll garner for the DOWs are the same, and in both cases it'll disappear after you liberate.

Also I forgot to mention this before, but the patch last fall actually halved the warmonger penalty vs. city-states, so even though conquering one is still bad, it's not quite the death blow to diplomacy that it used to be. Not that this matters here since you're liberating, but it's something to keep in mind.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I believe they have removed the pernament-war attirbute in G&K and BNW, it is instead a lower thresehold so they are always angry at you.