Game Idea: City-states Unifying to Become a New Rival/ Civs Fragmenting into CS

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I think it would make for an interesting scenario if clusters of city-states, united and formed a new rival civilization during the course of the game. Real life situations of this happening are Germany, and Italy, during the 19th century. Perhaps a militaristic city-state could decide to go on a campaign to unify a cluster of city-states in order to spawn a new rival. With the reintroduction of religion, perhaps this could also play a part in inspiring unification. Or perhaps city-states that are similar in some way could aspire to unite, please feel free to add to this.

Moreover, with the introduction of religion, this could help to play a role in session from an empire. Imagine a religion from a foreign power is prevalent within your empire, and they decide to break away and form a new city-state. A real life example could be Yugoslavia, whose division was facilitated in part by religious differences.

Further, say a civilization is being run poorly, (i.e. high unhappiness, and financial turmoil) it would be interesting to see it fragment into smaller states. This should especially be the case for occupied-cities. A real life example of this would be the USSR, after the fall of the communist government.

Let me know what you think. :thumbsup:
 
This is actually a really cool idea, and would make for more dynamic gameplay. Imagine combining that with espionage - players could send in spies to start off revolutions/coups. It's a shame Firaxis will never actually do it themselves...I suppose we have to wait for the source code to be released.
 
Well given that City States usually hate their neighbors (re the requests), wouldn't be peaceful unification that often.

But in the event one city state conquers another city state (or a city belonging to a major AI), might be an interesting idea to promote that city state to a full civ.
 
City-states in CiV are a 1.0 version.

It will be interesting to see if they evolve in future versions of the game.
 
If anyone in this thread has played RFC for Civ4, it has a system similar to this.If one civ is unstable enough, a city will sometimes secede from that civ and become an independent city;and if instability gets bad enough, the whole civilization can collapse into independent cities, and sometimes come back later.

If I am correct, the Civ5 version of RFC is in development, and I wouldn't be suprised if city states are used the same way independent cities were in the Civ 4 version.
 
The problem is this: I would gladly pay money to have my empire fragment into city-states. Settlers are cheap. City-States are a limited resource. The benefits I could get from allying with my former cities (think having five cities turn into maritime city-states) would encourage me to mismanage my empire in order to trigger it.
 
The problem is this: I would gladly pay money to have my empire fragment into city-states. Settlers are cheap. City-States are a limited resource. The benefits I could get from allying with my former cities (think having five cities turn into maritime city-states) would encourage me to mismanage my empire in order to trigger it.

Cities that don't start out as City-States who break off and become City-States should be of a unique type, "Secessionist" or "Independent" or something to that effect, who don't provide any unique bonus apart from the resources they have connected (and any Patronage bonuses you may have). They'd still give out quests, but vying for their favour is only worth it if you're going for a diplo victory, if you need their resources, or if you just want those damn Patronage benefits so bad for whatever reason.

Obviously, breakaway City-States would start with horrendous relations with their parent power, maybe even at war. It'd probably also be a good idea (though maybe hard to implement) to have Aesthetics not apply to City-States who seceded from you. It should be possible to puppet breakaway City-States when you retake them, and if a third party takes them, it should be able to give it back to the original civ (prompting the annex/puppet dialog next turn), or, because they didn't start out as a capital, raze them. If a fourth party takes it from a third, it should also be able to Liberate it as a City-State again, and the original founding civ should not be able to raze it. If the parent civ is dead, Liberating a Secessionist City-State should probably bring back the original founding civ instead of the city-state.
 
Also, perhaps foreign powers should be put in a contentious situation, and choose to recognize the new civ or cs. If you choose to recognize the new political entity, it should give you good relations with the new state (friendly, or Friends for CS), and negatively impact relations with the parent civ. Choosing not to recognizing the new state would have the opposite affect to foreign relations.

Moreover, perhaps the parent civ should be permanently at war with those particular CSs for at least 100 turns. This whole phenomenon should happen in a mid-way portion of the game. I could imagine the re-introduction of Nationalism as a tech to trigger this. That way, it would deter the player from purposeful mismanagement to gain allies.
 
Cities that don't start out as City-States who break off and become City-States should be of a unique type, "Secessionist" or "Independent" or something to that effect, who don't provide any unique bonus apart from the resources they have connected (and any Patronage bonuses you may have). They'd still give out quests, but vying for their favour is only worth it if you're going for a diplo victory, if you need their resources, or if you just want those damn Patronage benefits so bad for whatever reason.

So, in other words, they're probably something to completely ignore unless a better city-state gives a quest to kill them, in which case you can kill them. Would the total number of votes needed for diplo victory increase with each new city-state? That seems a good way to prevent the AI from getting diplo victory - add 10 new city-states that are only worth it for this one purpose. Whenever they get close, just add more votes.
 
Happiness below 20 creates hostile units in your area, insurgents or rebels if you want to call them that.

Something new is that cities drop in health due to rebels on the inside when your happiness is below 20. When health goes below 0 it turns into a rebel state.
They will function on their own and will prioritize military units and military buildings, they are locked into a permanent war with you and are neutral towards all other civilizations (no possible way to ally them at this point).
- Puppet cities will lose health twice as fast.
- Cities with no or less happiness buildings will drop health before cities that do have a lot of happiness buildings.
- Cities further away from the capitol drop in health before cities that are close to the capitol.
- Capitol can never turn into a rebel state.

The civilization that previously owned them can:

- Fight them and take back the city. Options are to annex or puppet it.
- Negotiate Peace: For a price they will turn peaceful towards you for 10+ turns, they remain a rebel state.
- Declare them an official City State: They turn peaceful towards you. Everybody can now ally them but the only thing they give is the resources in their territory.
- Retake the city by means of diplomacy. You need at least 20+ happiness and offer a price (in gold). They return to your empire as a regular city.

Other civilizations can:

- Support the rebel state. (Something like denouncing.) Supporting the state will give a positive diplomatic modifier towards others that support the rebel state and a negative modifier with the civilization the rebel state originated from.
- Support the civilization. Supporting the civilization will give a positive diplomatic modifier with the civilization and others that support the civilization and give a negative modifier with the rebel state if it becomes independent.
- Ignore the rebel state. Nothing happens.
- Take if away by force. They can annex and or puppet it. Regular diplomatic penalties apply.

Once the civilization declares them an official city state other civilizations can ally it and gain the resources.
If DOW'd or conquered the same diplomatic modifiers apply as with any other city state.
They do not give a vote towards the diplomatic victory.

An independent (rebel) city state will produce buildings and units just like any other city state.



I feel that this is balanced pretty good.
- You will not want to turn your cities into rebel states unlike if they turn into regular maritime etc city states.
- You can completely undo the damage if you desire.
- Other civilizations can make use of your mistake in various ways without being overpowering.
 
The problem is this: I would gladly pay money to have my empire fragment into city-states. Settlers are cheap. City-States are a limited resource. The benefits I could get from allying with my former cities (think having five cities turn into maritime city-states) would encourage me to mismanage my empire in order to trigger it.

Easy solution: any breakaway CS's will never ally their previous owner.

At the OP:
You mention the idea of CS's unifying into a civ. I think this idea sounds cool, but really unworkable. CS's spawn pretty far apart from each other, so if 3 of them were to unify, you'd wind up with three cities spread out that are all one civ, which would both look weird and make them pointless. They wouldn't be able to set up trade routes, and they'd have a hell of a time trying to fend off attackers with their cities so spread out.

However, I like your idea of cities breaking away a lot. I think that the city that wants to breakaway should first send a message to the nearest civ, asking to join that civ. If you accept, it will join you, but with a pretty big diplomatic hit against the civ that previously had the city. And if you don't accept, than there's a chance that it will try to breakaway and form it's own city-state. This city state would immediately be at war with it's previous owner, until that owner officially declared the city independent (or recaptured it). During that war (as in all CS wars), other civ's would have the option to gift military units to help the civ, or outright declare war to help out. And once it became independent, it would immediately be maritime if it was a coastal city, and it would have a 50-50 chance of being cultural or militaristic if it's not coastal (I'm intentionally leaving religious and mercantile out, because we don't know how it would affect game balance if extra ones would be added). Thoughts?
 
Brainstorm. Imagine starting a game as a newly emerging Civ in the midst of a randomly generated game. Or perhaps, you start off as a CS, and you forge your new nation through diplomacy, and/or conquest. All the while foreign powers seek to aid or hinder you. You can start off with a decent army, of say 8 units equipped with a GG. I think the industrial era would be an interesting time to start. Also, the renaissance would be cool; around the time of the peace of Westphalia.
 
You could have a new cs mission, help unify an empire. Take several cities and gift them away, gain a permanent ally/vassal state
 
Easy solution: any breakaway CS's will never ally their previous owner.

Well, if the idea is to represent revolutions, a la the United States, that's not particularly realistic, is it?
 
Cities that don't start out as City-States who break off and become City-States should be of a unique type, "Secessionist" or "Independent" or something to that effect, who don't provide any unique bonus apart from the resources they have connected (and any Patronage bonuses you may have). They'd still give out quests, but vying for their favour is only worth it if you're going for a diplo victory, if you need their resources, or if you just want those damn Patronage benefits so bad for whatever reason.

Obviously, breakaway City-States would start with horrendous relations with their parent power, maybe even at war. It'd probably also be a good idea (though maybe hard to implement) to have Aesthetics not apply to City-States who seceded from you. It should be possible to puppet breakaway City-States when you retake them, and if a third party takes them, it should be able to give it back to the original civ (prompting the annex/puppet dialog next turn), or, because they didn't start out as a capital, raze them. If a fourth party takes it from a third, it should also be able to Liberate it as a City-State again, and the original founding civ should not be able to raze it. If the parent civ is dead, Liberating a Secessionist City-State should probably bring back the original founding civ instead of the city-state.

agree a lot with this. they would become "Independant Cities" and not CSs. These could gather and form a new civ. We could also propose them to join our empire from a certain level of influence. As someone said, recognizing their independance and maybe pledging to protect them could boost influence. Or just giving units, and of couse quests.

And I don't think they should automatically start with bad relations with the mother civ. When one of our cities really rebels, we would be given the choice to try smashing the rebellion, at the risk of future hate from the city, or to let them go and keep decent relations, maybe even peacefully get them back later.
 
Well, if the idea is to represent revolutions, a la the United States, that's not particularly realistic, is it?

I thought about that too, that's why I think peace should be blocked for at least 100 turns after secession.

Maybe even just 50 turns. Moreover, by the time that duration of war is over, the CS may be solidly allied with another civ.
 
You could have a new cs mission, help unify an empire. Take several cities and gift them away, gain a permanent ally/vassal state

That would be cool. This could allow the player to act much like the British Empire historically in the relations they had with continental Europe; striving to keep a balance of power. I could imagine a scenario much like the 7 Years War, where a power like Britain could seek to aid a country like Prussia in order to check another hostile rivals power, France. However, I don't think the alliance should be permanent. Rather, it should be risky to help these CS form as full-fledged Civs, as later in history the new Civ could become extremely aggressive, (i.e. the Axis countries in WWII, Germany and Italy both formed out of CSs). Perhaps some of these new Civs should be inclined to pursue autocracy in order to become a major player? I'd like to hear other peoples' thoughts.
 
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