City States in Civ7 - the good, the bad

[j51]

I think the IPs definitely need to be more of a threat in all ages, but also that they’re better than Civ 6 city states. I love having the special bonuses separated from specific city states. It makes it much easier to mod and have a much wider number of IPs than just the same 50 or so city states that 6 had.

Also props to the historians at Firaxis for such a great, deep bench of historically relevant choices for IPs! Especially in antiquity.

 

[MutilationWave]

I hope that those bonuses are altered or removed in a future patch. They're just too powerful.

Totally busted. Someone got a turn 14 victory in modern after blazing through antiquity and exploration.

Military IPs have become the new chopping forests to get projects done.

 

[Berrern]

In my current game as Tecumseh and Greece (it's one hell of a combination!!), obviously focusing on City States, I learned something new!

As you might have seen in my other posts, I'm always getting frustrated when suzeraining the last few IPs, as they trigger the future tech / civic, thus advancing the age and ruining my plans...
Well, when you get the "Choose suzerain bonus" notification, you can just ignore it. Instead perform all the other pending actions (e.g. grow town, move troops etc.) and then rather than choosing a bonus, just force end the turn! You still won't lose the ability to choose the bonus (you can do so on the next turn), and crucially, it won't give you any free tech/civic until you choose a bonus!

This little trick helped me squeeze 8 more turns out of the Antiquity era, which was just enough for me to complete the Military legacy path

I also believe I set a new record for combat strength from city states , thus proving the point of other posters here that the CS bonuses can be way overpowered when stacked:

 

[Kwami]

Yeah, +42 seems a bit broken! I'd like to see a cap of +6 or so, similar to the cap that comes from empire resources. Even +10 would probably be OK. More than that is just silly.

 

[Berrern]

Yeah, +42 seems a bit broken! I'd like to see a cap of +6 or so, similar to the cap that comes from empire resources. Even +10 would probably be OK. More than that is just silly.

I totally agree, a cap is needed!
Although it gets complicated, I had three different combat bonuses:
- Tecumseh gives 1 combat bonus for all units per CS
- A Greek Civic gives 1 combat bonus for Hoplites per CS
- A military CS gives 1 combat bonus for infantry units per CS

I had 14 city states, so 14 x 3 = 42 combat bonus

Even if you capped each at 6, that's still 18!

 

[tedhebert]

I really like the changes to City States they made with VII... although I agree that it can be quite broken, as the +42 CS up here shows

What I really dislike though, as I do like to game this a lot, is that there's no way to list the bonuses you picked once they're chosen... wish someone would make a mod to list them all

EDIT: I mean the leader menu lists the CSs by who suzed them, but cliking on one will take you to a menu of the CS in question, without showing the bonus or even moving to that CS on the map... and then there's not going back to where you were in the leader menu... UI is just so lame sometimes...

 

[MutilationWave]

Yeah, +42 seems a bit broken! I'd like to see a cap of +6 or so, similar to the cap that comes from empire resources. Even +10 would probably be OK. More than that is just silly.

+6 doesn't even level you with the +8 deity opponents get automatically. I have to say that even +10 is too low, considering the insane amount of influence you have to put in to get this.

 

[Kwami]

+6 doesn't even level you with the +8 deity opponents get automatically. I have to say that even +10 is too low, considering the insane amount of influence you have to put in to get this.

But consider that you aren't supposed to match the deity level and that you can get this bonus from at least three different sources, as described above.

If you're playing as Greece, then you really don't need that much influence at all. And if you're playing as Han or one of the other civilizations that gives you a lot of bonus influence from traditions, then you'll have no trouble getting what you need.

 

[MutilationWave]

Maybe influence needs another look. I've noticed that along with the nerf to hub towns, official city connections dropped very low even when there are roads. See ya 40 influence per town, not even 20, way down.