Logic behind all city states ITR ban

[Glassmage]

I don't get that resolution. Why don't you get to pick which cs you want to ban? Why ban all of them? That doesn't even happen in real life and I can't think of a good strategy in the game to use that.

 

[Bakspatel]

The good strategy is to first ban any trade to your biggest foe. When you combine this with a total ban with CS this totally beats that civ's trading capacities and cripples his empire.
On a major plus side, banning trade with CS means that the other civs are forced to trade with each other. So if you have other civs and CS nearby you can only profit from those resolutions.

 

[Monado]

The only in-game strategy I can think of is:

1. Embargo X Civ from trading with other civs.
2. Embargo all city states (including civ X's remaining international routes)

Just forcing one civ to have to use all internal trade routes and really hurt the cash flow.

I've done that, and then after passed the unit maintenance cost increase to cripple Shaka one time.

 

[Ulthwithian]

I would think the primary reason is because there are only so many WCs that will happen in a game, and only embargoing one CS is more or less a waste of a proposal.

It also makes it much harder to pass, because it will impact anyone who is trading with any CS, not just one.

To state it a little clearer, if I embargo one CS, most everyone will be able to switch to a different CS. Impact? Zero.

Now, if the embargo would extend to all benefits of a CS, then yes, it might make sense to make the resolution only impact one CS.

 

[Glassmage]

oooo I like that make the cs useless to be friend and ally with.

 

[Yig]

I figured it was done like that to prevent you from fully embargoing one person without a 2nd thought. At least this way the CS embargo will directly affect you and everyone else and cause a bigger diplo hit than usual. If you really want to lock someone out completely it takes more sacrifices.

 

[sonicandfffan]

City state trade routes are nearly always inferior to civ trade routes for gold, the only reason to use them is if you're embargoed, to complete a quest or if can't reach another civ with a trade route.

Embargoing city states shouldn't affect you too much, but it should massively cripple an embargoed civ. Embargoing a civ by itself is a setback, but it's not a complete disaster for a civ until city states are embargoed as well. It can also force more civs to trade with you, since they can no longer connect up to city states, which can improve your GPT. Basically embargoing city states is actually quite useful.

 

[Pythakoreas]

Maria Theresa has been suggesting to Embargo CS in my games and I didn't know why. I was the tech lead and hit Ideologies before everyone, had tons of influence through Treaty Organisation.... aha!

I think the AI knows how to counter TO.

 

[VainoValkea]

I don't get that resolution. Why don't you get to pick which cs you want to ban? Why ban all of them? That doesn't even happen in real life and I can't think of a good strategy in the game to use that.

Banning a single City-State wouldn't really do anything meaningful. Banning them all, on the other hand, makes perfect sense. Trading with other civs makes a lot of gold, and is usually vital for one's economy. However, the benefit is mutual - the other civ also receives gold, and possibly even science. Trading with City-States is thus a selfish option, and other nations have a good incentive to ban it - this way, they get more trade routes and more gold.

Further still, with Treaty Organization a player may dominate all City-States fairly easily unless CS trading is banned, making the ban even more useful.

 

[tomplum68]

Its situational. If one civ is disliked by enough other civs and they are making money trading with CS...

Most cases though its probably not worth bothering with.

 

[Resipsa]

You can stop freedom loving civs from benefiting from the increase in influence from trade routes to CS.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

It can force the science leader to leech more beakers to other civs.

 

[ahawk]

Others have listed the main reasons, but I'd add:

It would probably become very, very mundane and boring to have to investigate which CSes are allied to whom, then determine which ones to embargo, then go back to the World Congress main screen and individually click each choice to add to the embargo.

 

[Autoclave]

Treaty organization is an extremely powerful tenet, and you really want to embargo city states if you happen to have a diplomacy focused freedom civ in your game.

 

[OmniPotent42]

You can also do it to keep other civs from fulfilling trade route quests, so they'll have much less possibilities to raise their influence.

 

[Blitz Spearman]

But... internal trade routes are SO STRONG, why would I want to force the AI to use them, when they are dumbly skipping them? I never used an external trade route myself after Medieval Era (before that, the beakers really make a difference). I am always very afraid that an AI will start to get crazy growth and get unbeatable when another AI tries to embargo them.

 

[Chiatroll]

The AI is really really really bad at picking a policy for the world congress.

I've seen korea vote for Artist funding multiple times and I just think "dude had you noticed your UA?"

Except for a few specific rules they almost all vote the same way like how if they lack a lux they try to ban it. They also don't take diplomacy into account when they ban something and gain useless amounts of hate.

So they ban city state trades even when they are in freedom and actually get a use out of city state trades for diplomacy because... the AI needs better patterns for the congress.