Is Civ-like trade possible for City-States?
- Thread starter ferr.ox96
- Start date
Spatzimaus
Mad Scientist
Not easily.
There are a few fundamental differences in how city-state works, things that would be completely unbalanced if they were to be treated like a normal civ.
1> City-states do not keep their strategic resources; they automatically gift them to their allies, so city-states can't ever build units or buildings that require a strategic. No factories, no nukes, no tanks, no knights. (Militaristic ones can "build" a Tank to gift to their allies, but that's not the same thing.) Conversely, gifting a unit that requires a resource to a city-state doesn't give them the -50% no-resource penalty.
1a> City-states also gift luxuries to their allies, and appear to have no Happiness of their own, so they'd have no need to trade for additional luxuries.
2> C-S's also produce far more gold than a normal city would, because of a hidden multiplier, so any trade involving gold would be imbalanced. (They also get a production boost, but that's really to offset the lack of railroads, factories, etc.)
3> City-states (and barbarians) have a secondary "tech stealing" mechanism, where they gain technologies depending on how many main civs have them, in addition to normal research; this'd screw up any concept of Research Agreements. (Note: they can use this mechanism to gain Disabled techs as well, even though a normal civ could never research those.)
4> City-states, while capable of generating culture for border expansions, never select Policies. They also can't build Wonders or spawn Great People. While none of these directly tie to the issue in question, it's just another example of how different they are, fundamentally.
I'm not saying that it can't be done, but honestly you'd be better off inverting the problem; take a normal civ, and prevent them from building additional Settlers (by making a UU Settler unique to those civs and setting its cost to -1; they'd still get a Settler from that one Policy, but no building them).
There are a few fundamental differences in how city-state works, things that would be completely unbalanced if they were to be treated like a normal civ.
1> City-states do not keep their strategic resources; they automatically gift them to their allies, so city-states can't ever build units or buildings that require a strategic. No factories, no nukes, no tanks, no knights. (Militaristic ones can "build" a Tank to gift to their allies, but that's not the same thing.) Conversely, gifting a unit that requires a resource to a city-state doesn't give them the -50% no-resource penalty.
1a> City-states also gift luxuries to their allies, and appear to have no Happiness of their own, so they'd have no need to trade for additional luxuries.
2> C-S's also produce far more gold than a normal city would, because of a hidden multiplier, so any trade involving gold would be imbalanced. (They also get a production boost, but that's really to offset the lack of railroads, factories, etc.)
3> City-states (and barbarians) have a secondary "tech stealing" mechanism, where they gain technologies depending on how many main civs have them, in addition to normal research; this'd screw up any concept of Research Agreements. (Note: they can use this mechanism to gain Disabled techs as well, even though a normal civ could never research those.)
4> City-states, while capable of generating culture for border expansions, never select Policies. They also can't build Wonders or spawn Great People. While none of these directly tie to the issue in question, it's just another example of how different they are, fundamentally.
I'm not saying that it can't be done, but honestly you'd be better off inverting the problem; take a normal civ, and prevent them from building additional Settlers (by making a UU Settler unique to those civs and setting its cost to -1; they'd still get a Settler from that one Policy, but no building them).
