Changes to City States

Ryuu Falconwing

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Pretty simple question: Because we know city states are returning, how do we want to see them improved? What worked? What didn't? Would it be awesome for them to have actual leaders as well?
 
Naah, Well given that "city states" are coming back, I assume they're limited to one city but I would like them to actively albeit VERY VERY VERY slowly expand. two cities. something along those lines.

Basically have them as Minor neutral civs that aren't big enough to dominate the world but could be used and exploited to help your ideals (allying it for example, etc).
 
I would like to see diplomacy without direct bribing, especially with city-states. Hard to tell more without knowing what is in diplomacy now.
 
I hope they don't spawn when the map is generated and I hope they don't have all kinds of special rules attached to them. And I certainly hope there will not be a secret city-state-alliance.

City States in Civ5 was really poorly implemented with extremely heavy-handed rules to try to hold the concept together.
 
One thing they can do is to allow city states close to each other to form a confederation, kinda like what "Switzerland" is . This confederation should blend characteristics of a city-state and a "default" civilization .

One thing they can do is to act as a "bank", where you can "deposit" the money of your civilization and "borrow" money from them . That feature could be added to compensate a "corruption-like" feature, where civilizations can lose their excess money to it .

"Corruption" feature could also be part of a bigger "Justice", "Social Unity vs Diversity" and "Political Influence" feature .
 
I would like to see them a minor civs. Civilization who doesn't necessarily play for the win but still do trading, you can alliance with them and sometime they even go in wars.
Minor Civ ideas: Switzerland, Ireland, Champa, Sri Lanka etc.
 
I'd like to see improved diplomacy beyond bribery, and an improved quest system if one is included at all.

Really, I think they'd need a total mechanical rework to be worthwhile.
 
I think one article mentions quests.

For me they were one of the best additions in Civ V, these minor pawns in the great game of the larger empires. I don't think there's a system for them that can satisfy every player, I hope they change the system a bit for a sake of refreshness, but I was happy with Civ V way.
 
The quests could be good, but need a redesign. I can't think of a single time they ever influenced my playstyle. I just reaped the rewards when I got them and didn't worry about it.
 
Naah, Well given that "city states" are coming back, I assume they're limited to one city but I would like them to actively albeit VERY VERY VERY slowly expand. two cities. something along those lines.

Basically have them as Minor neutral civs that aren't big enough to dominate the world but could be used and exploited to help your ideals (allying it for example, etc).

I would like to see them a minor civs. Civilization who doesn't necessarily play for the win but still do trading, you can alliance with them and sometime they even go in wars.
Minor Civ ideas: Switzerland, Ireland, Champa, Sri Lanka etc.

These are excellent ideas! I'd love if they were more of a small/minor empire thing capable of founding only a few cities at greater expense and without the uniques the major empires would have.

Also, no more modern cities as city-states! I can't stand Sydney, Vancouver, etc. :rolleyes:
 
Which article said city-states are coming back? To be honest, I'd just as soon cut them. I appreciate the idea of having them. I thought the way the new diplomacy system was described could use them well. But they ended up being too much of a headache last time and I feel the biggest flaws with them are hard to overcome.
 
These are excellent ideas! I'd love if they were more of a small/minor empire thing capable of founding only a few cities at greater expense and without the uniques the major empires would have.

Also, no more modern cities as city-states! I can't stand Sydney, Vancouver, etc. :rolleyes:

I also agree with these ideas. I don't like them with their own set of super-rules where they can supply an entire civilisation with 1 food per city no matter how large the civilisation is.

Being tiny, limited empires, they should know their place and just kiss up to the bigger empires and try to ally other small empires/city states to not be an easy prey to the larger civilisations. Trying desperate to ally some empires and maybe supporting some wars on the winning side, they could edge out a place using politics in the instate relations. That way, they could have a diplomatic function, being 'protected' by larger civilisations.

If they have their own set of rules, then the game loses some immersiveness and believability as if you had homo sapiens version 1 who build civilisations expanding into many cities and homo sapiens version 2 whocould exploit earth in a radical different way supplying entire civilisations with food from the small area of one city.
 
I would like to see them a minor civs. Civilization who doesn't necessarily play for the win but still do trading, you can alliance with them and sometime they even go in wars.
Minor Civ ideas: Switzerland, Ireland, Champa, Sri Lanka etc.

I like this idea.
Personally I'd prefer them more be "minor nations" than "city states", and more "civilisation living on its own but never aspiring for empire" than Civ5 heavy handed artficial limitations (and this ridiculous bribing).

I'd like to see such minor civilisations develop more than one city (slowly and always on much smaller scale than regular civilisations, so no minor civs bigger than 3 cities for example), occasionally wage war with each other and even major civs, and capable of entering confederations with other minor civs (like mentioned example of Switzerland).

This would also allow the game on including some minor nations and tribes whose aspirations to major civs roster would be controversial (Shoshone :crazyeye: Switzerland, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Albania, Liban etc)
 
The biggest flaw of Civ 5 city-states was that they were often more powerful than the other "super powers".

Their cities had some of the highest defense in the game, which AI's loved to suicide upon.

They had similar tech to the tech leader, so Korea snowballing on the other side of the map means the "city-state" next to the huge, expansive Russia is kicking their ass with military tech two eras ahead.

The bonuses of keeping them allied far outweighed the bonus of conquering them. Put that in perspective a moment... a player will gladly raze a 20 city Iroquois without a second thought, but would never dare conquer a single city-state else they lose access to porcelain and gain MASSIVE warmongering penalties for genocide. (Even though you can raze 19 Iroquois cities, leave them one crappy one, and get out with a fraction of the warmonger penalties).

The entire system seems completely backwards of how it should be: City-states should be weak players on the map, and while there may be game systems which benefit of keeping them around, the normal state of gameplay should have most of them absorbed by the end of the game... either through conquering or joining certain nations.
 
I'd like to be able to raze city-states if I so choose. If they're changing the Diplomatic Victory so that it no longer depends entirely on them, that should be doable.
 
The biggest flaw of Civ 5 city-states was that they were often more powerful than the other "super powers".

Their cities had some of the highest defense in the game, which AI's loved to suicide upon.

They had similar tech to the tech leader, so Korea snowballing on the other side of the map means the "city-state" next to the huge, expansive Russia is kicking their ass with military tech two eras ahead.

The bonuses of keeping them allied far outweighed the bonus of conquering them. Put that in perspective a moment... a player will gladly raze a 20 city Iroquois without a second thought, but would never dare conquer a single city-state else they lose access to porcelain and gain MASSIVE warmongering penalties for genocide. (Even though you can raze 19 Iroquois cities, leave them one crappy one, and get out with a fraction of the warmonger penalties).

The entire system seems completely backwards of how it should be: City-states should be weak players on the map, and while there may be game systems which benefit of keeping them around, the normal state of gameplay should have most of them absorbed by the end of the game... either through conquering or joining certain nations.

I kinda agree despite I state quite opposite things in my previous post :p

I think, most of all, they should be more dynamic, not static 'unmovable fortresses' that never do anything, as in civ5.

On the other hand I agree with you that I'd prefer to see them absorbed by bigger states by the end game - I hated in civ5 how in the end there were a lot of random singular city enclaves in the middle of other nations :p It was so ugly and artificial.

There should be three possible fates of CS:
1) Conquered (and that should happen far more often than in civ5 where there were absurdly high penalties for that)
2) Vassalized and peacefully integrated by bigger powers (as in paradox games: first you develop so you are vastly stronger than them, then they agree on being vassalized, then you can integrate them which takes some time)
3) Uniting with other city states/minor civs in some kind of federations - this is far less likely to be implemented than previous solution but I'd love it.

The problem with most CS being dead by late game is, that'd disable diplomatic victory as we know it from civ5. However the concept of "bribing city states across the world" was so weird, arcade and problematic since the beginning, I have no problem with abandoning it for something different.
 
This would ruin the game for the civs focused on the city state relations.

So? Then those civs should protect the city-states by allying with them or declaring war on me. I'm sure I'd rack up huge diplo penalties with them if I really went around razing all the city-states.

It seems really ahistorical and game-y to me anyway that city-states cannot be razed. Cities got razed all the time. Look at what Alexander did to Thebes after it rebelled against him, or what the Romans did to Carthage. Plus, sometimes city-states are one tile away from where I'd really like them to be. Always frustrating that I can't fix it.
 
Honestly I want more diplomatic options when dealing with city states, like protecting them actually meaning something, and eventually be able to turn them into client states or vassals.
 
The problem with most CS being dead by late game is, that'd disable diplomatic victory as we know it from civ5. However the concept of "bribing city states across the world" was so weird, arcade and problematic since the beginning, I have no problem with abandoning it for something different.

Well it was mentioned one victory was removed and another added in...

We can assume culture is still in, else why bring back the entire great works system?

We can probably assume some tech related victory is still in, especially since we know there will be a space race.

I suppose domination could have been scrapped, but I seriously doubt it.

Diplo was easy, the weakest of the previous victory types, so I would not be surprised if it did get scrapped for something else.

I suppose time victory could be a surprise, but for some reason I don't think even the developers take that one as a true victory, and probably wasn't apart of the comment about removing one.
 
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