Liberating a non-Conquered city?

[Asklepios]

Apologies if this has been asked before:

Can you "Liberate" a city when you conquer it, if it originally changed possession through means other than conquest?

For example, if a city state is bought with a Merchant of Venice, or diplo-annexed through marriage, can you then Liberate it to its original state after conquering it?
What about if it flipped from ideology - can you then Liberate it back to its original player?

 

[TeriXeri]

I'm not 100% sure but I can remember not being able to liberate a puppet CS from venice in one of my games.

 

[Browd]

Cannot liberate former CSs that were diplo-annexed by Austria or acquired with a Merchant of Venice. In each case, they lost their CS status and it cannot be restored. However, if such a city was later conquered by another civ, you could liberate it back to Austria or Venice, as the case may be.

 

[Asklepios]

Cannot liberate former CSs that were diplo-annexed by Austria or acquired with a Merchant of Venice. In each case, they lost their CS status and it cannot be restored. However, if such a city was later conquered by another civ, you could liberate it back to Austria or Venice, as the case may be.

Thats good to know.

Mostly I was asking in the context of playing against Venice, when the AI snatched away one of my long standing city state allies. I was wondering if I made war whether I'd be able to make them a city state ally again, as that would have been more useful to me than just gaining a pretty weaksauce tundra city (that happened to be generating a mass of food for my empire).

What about flipped ideology cities? If Russia flips a US city, and I war with Russia, can I then liberate that city on capture back to the Americans? Not that I would do this often, but it might come up!