Decreasing CS Influence Gains

[Kryhavok]

What causes the influence gained from gold-gifts to city states to decline? Is it just dependent on the era you're in or something? Even with the Patronage tree filled in, 250G was only getting me 20 influence, and then it went down to 15!

 

[Civ'ed]

I have no idea, but it has nothing to do with the era you're in. I figured that out a few minutes ago. I spent the entire first half of the 21st century (fifty turns) in the renaissance and my influence gain dropped from 60 to 35 (with 1,000 gold forked over. The cheek of it.)

 

[E66man]

It goes down based on your city-state reputation. So for example if you've puppeted a CS it gets harder to bribe the rest.

 

[Kryhavok]

It goes down based on your city-state reputation. So for example if you've puppeted a CS it gets harder to bribe the rest.

That makes sense. I had 1 or 2 at war with me due to their allegiance to enemy AI, and another 1 or 2 angry with me. Thanks!

Edit: Does it ever recover? I feel like it went down when they were mad, but now they everyone is back to neutral it's still crummy.

 

[bryanw1995]

here's a dirty trick: sell/give any puppetted CS's to your weakest rival, then dow that rival, take back the CS's and "liberate" them. they'll be your buddy then for centuries!

 

[E66man]

Edit: Does it ever recover?

I'm not sure since I haven't been looking out for it, but I suspect it's harder to get it back up than to have it go down. If for example you puppeted one CS, then the fact that you still have the puppet is going to keep you at a minimum level of soured relations with everybody else even if you aren't actively at war with them. Likewise, if you end up getting into the 'permanent war' situation with a CS, then you can't undo that.

I don't think there is any way to check what your current global CS-reputation is, since the Neutral/Friendly/Allied label doesn't do it (they're local). I guess seeing what the current influence prices are is about the only way to make a guess.

 

[Kryhavok]

I havent/cant Puppet anyone, I'm playing a One-City Challenge. Its hard enough that I'm short on gold and now I can't even maintain my CS relations

 

[Supr49er]

Maybe an opponent got the Order Social Policy and chose United Front?
This will cause your influence to decrease 33% faster.

 

[harry_flashman]

You just get less and less influence the more times you give them money. So it's more efficient to give larger amounts. I try to avoid anything less than 1k and I usually wait to gift money until patronage is unlocked.

 

[Kryhavok]

You just get less and less influence the more times you give them money. So it's more efficient to give larger amounts. I try to avoid anything less than 1k and I usually wait to gift money until patronage is unlocked.

I try this, but it takes me too long to get to Patronage and by then a lot of the city-states are allied with the AI, or are being attacked or angry with me for some other reason. Doesn't happen like that every time, but in my most recent game it did and it kinda sucks. CS aren't as big of an exploit as everyone makes them out to be, unless I'm just doing it wrong.

 

[edcrane]

here's a dirty trick: sell/give any puppetted CS's to your weakest rival, then dow that rival, take back the CS's and "liberate" them. they'll be your buddy then for centuries!

This hasn't worked for me, post-patch.

 

[Dermo]

Maybe an opponent got the Order Social Policy and chose United Front?
This will cause your influence to decrease 33% faster.

You'll get a pop-up when this occurs.

I've noticed this happening too, well before the Order social policy was available.
After repeated purchases of influence, the amount will drop. This may be their way of nerfing the CS's in the last patch (don't remember seeing this happen prior to that)

 

[Blitz47]

Based on my little experimentation, I believe the game keeps track of the # of times you have given $$$ to City States and the amount of influence you can get goes down with each gift.

Try this, don't give anything to city states, complete city state quests if you wish, you'll see the influence you can buy doesn't change much if you don't give $$$ to CS. As your economy takes off, everytime you give $$$ to any CS, the next gift give you less.

Cheapest way is to liberate them back from AI later

 

[bigwinw]

You'll get a pop-up when this occurs.

I've noticed this happening too, well before the Order social policy was available.
After repeated purchases of influence, the amount will drop. This may be their way of nerfing the CS's in the last patch (don't remember seeing this happen prior to that)

I can say that this is also true in the Vanilla version. At first I was getting 30 per $250 then later I was getting 25 per $250 and later only 45 per $500.