Epidemic of warmongering city states

Octonde

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 13, 2013
Messages
37
About every other game I find a city state that has conquered another, or two that are actively at war. I see their units damaging each other. The odd thing is, they are both allied with me.

As best as I can tell this is due to coups. During peace treaties the CS treaties are included automatically, so everything is stopped. However a coup can be successfully carried out against a city state with which you are at war. Obviously the odds aren't very high, but with a fully-leveled spy and a just-rigged election (which lowers the AI's standing), they're not impossible.

If you complete the coup you'll be at war still, but with the city state not allied with your enemy. Afterward you can request peace, causing the city state to switch to your side. Since you'd not declared war on it you won't be at the -60 standing. However, there was also never a full peace treaty, so maybe the other city states never got the message to stop fighting. I've not managed to keep track to see exactly what city states do what, but this is the only theory that makes any sense.

Has anyone else run into this? Does anyone have an alternative theory, maybe with better evidence? (that is to say, more than the next-to-none that I have here)
 
I've always asumed that (hostile?) citystates sometimes declare war on their own on others they don't like (usually the victims of their bully-quest).
 
I've always asumed that (hostile?) citystates sometimes declare war on their own on others they don't like (usually the victims of their bully-quest).

I have noticed this as well. In my latest game Budapest declared on Quebec. Quebec captured Budapest. Quebec was then captured by Darius.

Warmonger city states is a nice change of pace from boring passive ones.
 
The reason is simplier:

Whenever a city state becomes an ally of a new civ, it DOWs both that major civ and all its always.
However, this does not auto triger peace. To get peace, the major civ now needs to declare peace on that city state; which would also stop wars with your city states.

But this leaves a time period in which it would be possible for a civ that's an ally of one of them to now ally with the other city state while these two city states are still at war with each other.
 
That's pretty cool but I've never seen it. I've had plenty of my allied city states capture enemy cities though and they always raze them. So what happens if one city state captures another?
 
That's pretty cool but I've never seen it. I've had plenty of my allied city states capture enemy cities though and they always raze them. So what happens if one city state captures another?

I've seen a city-state with control of another city-state before, though I believe it was in G&K.
 
Yes- I actually posted about this in BNW. Along with what Joncnunn says (and I willl admit I can't follow it clearly) I have noticed it when I ally with a city state that has previously been allied to another Civ.

It is annoying that you can't tell them to pull their head in. I wonder what would happen if you went ahead and and swore to protect them both.
 
It's pretty sad. I had once Sofia as my ally, and her neighbor, Monaco, was Austria's. I went to war with Austria, Monaco attacked to Sofia. Somebody couped Sofia one turn before I made a peace with Austria. Monaco was also couped or something, it wasn't anymore Austria's ally. So after I get Sofia my ally again, they were still in war with Monaco. Their fight kept going for hundreds of years until Sweden conquered Monaco.
 
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