City state exploit

greenfieldpark

Warlord
Joined
Aug 28, 2007
Messages
249
Ive become desperate to find a way to make authority work on quick speed. Its kind of devolved into me finding new creative (exploitative) strategies.

Its long known you can dw on city states, steal a worker, and get peace. This has been mitigated by making captured workers very inefficient for a long time. I like this as it allows for the player to calculate if its worth doing.

My strategy is to dw kill a couple units, make peace immediately preventing the city state from counter attacking.

This allows me to lvl up my units amd get the precious culture and science from unit kills. And eventually conquer the city.

My question is this: is this an exploit or an acceptable strategy.

The downsides to this strategy is increased city state decay from angering the city states, as well as increased war monger penalties.

I expect this strategy to be met with denouncements and cut off from the rest of the world through sanctions.

So only viable if you plan to be a war monger anyhow.
 
Yes it is definitely an ok strat.
It is good for culture and prob a bit of science, if you have founded with hero worship you get nice rewards.

There are some caveats ...
You will get horrible resting influence with other citystates.
AIs could get "liberate cs" quests.
There is an exp cap when fighting CS units (same as barbs I think).
A too early CS conquer and you wont have access to courthouse = happiness down the drain.
CS often have somewhat poor locations, often (but not always) low food tiles.

One CS war with worker steal and killing a few units is sort of safe and almost always beneficial.
 
Yea, I definitely don't think it's an exploit due to the downsides but I do wish City States fought back a bit better.

one other thing you can do is once you've killed their units and peaced out you should be able to get a maximum tribute with them because your army will be much bigger than theirs.
 
Multiple neighbours may get the "declare war on civ" quest and declare war on you at the same time while allying the CS, making you fight a multiple-front war early.
 
I fixed the exploit where you can get infinite warmongering penalty from constantly declaring war on City-States and manipulate AI opinion that way, so should be fine. It comes with costs, and City-States are meant to be pushed around.
 
Yea, I definitely don't think it's an exploit due to the downsides but I do wish City States fought back a bit better.

one other thing you can do is once you've killed their units and peaced out you should be able to get a maximum tribute with them because your army will be much bigger than theirs.
I do indeed do this too. Wipe out a few units. Get max tribute, then take city.

Im lucky in that on this map the city states actually have good land. Also the city states are ahead of me in infrastructure so upon capture the cities are nearly on par with my current cities.

Does feel a little dirty though.

But like yall have mentioned there are seriois downsides like the entire world hating me to balance it out :)
 
.... Also the city states are ahead of me in infrastructure so upon capture the cities are nearly on par with my current cities.
Very nice, I never thought about this. I just used IGE to look inside the CSs in my current game and it is true. They are better developed than most secondary AI cities. Next time I'll play Rome and try it, just to see what happens.
 
The ultimate reality is that city states exist to be exploited and used. Everything about city states are meant to serve the player in achieving their goals in the game through either free cities, units, or yields.
 
Generally I'd rather buy a worker with gold instead of stealing from a city state, because the build times are just too long.
That isn't really an exploit considering conquered city states aren't all that good
 
Generally I'd rather buy a worker with gold instead of stealing from a city state, because the build times are just too long.
That isn't really an exploit considering conquered city states aren't all that good

Glad the consensus is that its not an exploit. I dont like to game systems.

And while city states are usually quite bad, in this game I lucked out and a few of them are quite good and are now mine :).
 
I love abusing city states. Sometimes authority doesn't even need a real war when you have the "CS abuse economy"
 
Obviously with authority you can do the "infinite tribute" with a scout in the early game and later on, but it becomes harder.
Only city state's I'd say are worth conquering are: Mercantile, and cs's in strategic positions
 
Obviously with authority you can do the "infinite tribute" with a scout in the early game and later on, but it becomes harder.
Only city state's I'd say are worth conquering are: Mercantile, and cs's in strategic positions
What is this infinite tribute thing you speak of? A single scout doesnt net much tribute and there is a considerable cool down until you can tribute again.
 
What is this infinite tribute thing you speak of? A single scout doesnt net much tribute and there is a considerable cool down until you can tribute again.
I usually just find a city state tribute it, and move on to another one. Most of the time I get a Scout upgrade, so I can get about 40-60% of their yields
 
This strategy is a must for Celts and Aztecs. You must constantly be at war in order to fuel your economy as those two nations. Don't forget however to demand tribute before war.
As these nations i first of course clear out barbarians which gets me to Authority policy that grants 25% culture from demanding tribute from CS. Then i do this policy. During this time i will also be destroying closest AI second cities.
 
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