City States?

[droberts97470]

How do you annex them?

How do you trade with them?

Basically, wht good are they and how do you find out how to use them?

 

[Ahriman]

How do you annex them?

If you want to annex them, conquer them like any other city (click on them to declare war first).

You can't trade with them like you trade with other civs. But if they are friendly or allied, they give you stuff (Maritime give food, cultural give culture for social policies, military give units) - and if you're allied, they give you your resources.

To become friendly or allied, either fulfill quests for them (the quests come up on the right side of the screen) or click on them and gift them gold.

 

[civnoob13]

Basically, wht good are they and how do you find out how to use them?

They are arguably some of the most powerful aspects of the game. You can give them gold, or complete certain quests that they ask of you to gain influence. 30 influence makes them a friend. 60 will make them your ally, where they give you extra bonuses and any resources they control. They will also go to war with you when an ally. If they are militaristic, they will ocassionally give you some military units, if they are maritime they will give you a certain amount of food per turn in all your cities, if they are cultural they will give you a certain amount of culture per turn.

Militaristic is by far the weakest, but culture is very powerful. If you use them correctly, about 1/4 of your culture can come solely from CS's. It will be very hard to win a cultural victory without them.

But maritime are by far the best. With them, you can found a city with close to no food and a ton of production. the city can rely entirely on food from city states, and so can completely focus of production, meaning you can have cities with 100+ production (when you build the relevant buildings too)

To annex one, just declare war on them and take them over.

 

[Rathelon]

I never liked vassal states in Civ IV, and I'm feeling city states make it much easier to win in this version (especially diplomatic victories). Not to say they are a bad idea, but their benefits are a bit too much. People relying on maritimes for food (a crutch, if you ask me), getting bonus culture for culture victory, buying votes for easy diplomatic victories, or getting free units to help the warmongering.

I've seen some comments about this version of Civ being too easy. Maybe turn off the city states then and play old style Civ where your enemies were just barbarians and other civilizations.

 

[Sonereal]

I never liked vassal states in Civ IV, and I'm feeling city states make it much easier to win in this version (especially diplomatic victories). Not to say they are a bad idea, but their benefits are a bit too much. People relying on maritimes for food (a crutch, if you ask me), getting bonus culture for culture victory, buying votes for easy diplomatic victories, or getting free units to help the warmongering.

I've seen some comments about this version of Civ being too easy. Maybe turn off the city states then and play old style Civ where your enemies were just barbarians and other civilizations.

The problem is that Diplo victories are impossible without city-states. T

 

[Rathelon]

Not impossible. I'm pretty sure I've had an AI vote for me in one of the games I was playing. You need a 2/3 majority vote to win the UN election, that being two thirds of the remaining civilizations and city states (including you). It would mean you would have to either start being nice to some of the AI's to make them your friends (like we used to do in previous versions). Or, if you want to be the warmonger - pick one AI to be your friend and kill all but one of the rest until it's just you, your buddy, and one other.

 

[Tylerryan79]

I've never seen a civ willing to vote for another civ, it kind of defeats the whole "play to win" ai huh? You can look in the victory screen to see who has what votes, and I've never seen an AI not vote for itself.

 

[kcwong]

Not impossible. I'm pretty sure I've had an AI vote for me in one of the games I was playing. You need a 2/3 majority vote to win the UN election, that being two thirds of the remaining civilizations and city states (including you). It would mean you would have to either start being nice to some of the AI's to make them your friends (like we used to do in previous versions). Or, if you want to be the warmonger - pick one AI to be your friend and kill all but one of the rest until it's just you, your buddy, and one other.

AIs, no matter how friendly, won't vote for you - with one exception. Liberated AIs are quite likely to spew foul words at you all the time, but when UN votes come up, they vote for you.

 

[dublos]

AIs, no matter how friendly, won't vote for you - with one exception. Liberated AIs are quite likely to spew foul words at you all the time, but when UN votes come up, they vote for you.

So.. theoretically.. in a game with 0 city states and only straight up AI opponents.. build hard and fast but let a run away AI kill off every other AI.. then liberate each of them and hold a diplomatic vote?

 

[Pantastic]

Not to say they are a bad idea, but their benefits are a bit too much. People relying on maritimes for food (a crutch, if you ask me), getting bonus culture for culture victory, buying votes for easy diplomatic victories, or getting free units to help the warmongering.

IMO the problem is not that the benefits are too much but that the AI doesn't care about them. If the AIs used their huge gold reserves to compete with you for city-states, you wouldn't be able to stay allied to 10 different ones for centuries on end at minimal cost, and you wouldn't be able to budget so easily for benefits.

 

[eviltypeguy]

IMO the problem is not that the benefits are too much but that the AI doesn't care about them. If the AIs used their huge gold reserves to compete with you for city-states, you wouldn't be able to stay allied to 10 different ones for centuries on end at minimal cost, and you wouldn't be able to budget so easily for benefits.

They wouldn't have huge gold reserves if they used it to compete with you for city states.

Even then, you can break an alliance a city state has with someone else by completing a quest for them, or for liberating them if they are captured by another Civ.

 

[Sonereal]

Not impossible. I'm pretty sure I've had an AI vote for me in one of the games I was playing. You need a 2/3 majority vote to win the UN election, that being two thirds of the remaining civilizations and city states (including you). It would mean you would have to either start being nice to some of the AI's to make them your friends (like we used to do in previous versions). Or, if you want to be the warmonger - pick one AI to be your friend and kill all but one of the rest until it's just you, your buddy, and one other.

Are we playing the same game? I've played a game where even my best friend voted for himself and I ended up spending several thousand dollars to get city-state allies. If its just you, your buddy, and another, you got three votes going three different directions.

 

[Pantastic]

Even then, you can break an alliance a city state has with someone else by completing a quest for them,

Not quite, you break an alliance if your influence gets higher than theirs. Because the AI doesn't spend much effort influencing CSs, you usually get higher than them if you complete a quest, but I've had a full bar on allied and had to pay cash to actually get them to declare an alliance. If a civ dropped an extra 1-2k gold on a pet civ, you wouldn't take it with just one quest.

or for liberating them if they are captured by another Civ.

This still only puts you at a high influence number, a rich player can still bribe above you to take the alliance.

 

[kcwong]

This still only puts you at a high influence number, a rich player can still bribe above you to take the alliance.

A very cheap trick is when going to war to liberate a city state, let the enemy retake it. Then take it back. Repeat several times.

The gratitude from liberating a city state stacks... so by liberating it several times you will have unbeatable influence with that city state, no one can take it away from you without spending several thousands bucks.

This should be fixed I think... cancel or at least drastically reduce stored influence when a city state is conquered.

 

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

I haven't tried this yet, but can you conquer a CS, sell it to a rival civ, war-dec them, take back the CS and liberate it?