Nerf AI conquering City States?
- Thread starter MaximusPlatypus
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Ferocitus
Deity
My biggest issue with the city states being captured is that the liberation casus belli doesn't work with them. I.e. in a recent game, my ally attacked buenos aires (right after I'd liberated it from India!) who I was suzerain of. I couldn't declare a protectorate war because we were allied. Once the alliance ended, I denounced them - but there was no liberation casus belli. I had to declare a formal war to do so.
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I guess you cannot Casus for something thats not alive anymore. I really do not see the issue, declaring wor on them formally at most will give -24 WM points so 48 turns later they are gone. Any good ally should survive a -48, especially as you get +5 once you liberate it.
I played GOTM 33 yesterday, It was a SV. The only 2 SV on the board were on the coast, both taken early and I just "released" them formally with frigates, simples.
I feel you, I like that it creates situations like where you need to decide whether to make a Protectorate War to help a city-state.
sanchopanda
Chieftain
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Depends on the civilization. It may strengthen some, but weaken other. That's why I think not every civilization should go this route.
In most of my games 2/3 of the city states are gone before I even met them. At first I thought it was a notification bug when I read that a city state was conquered every few turns...
Aggressive civilizations should conquer city states, civilizations that don't have advantages from city states should sometimes conquer them, but not every time. And civilizations that can highly benefit from city states should not conquer, but protect them. Sometimes having a city state as an ally is much more valuable than saving some turns to build a settler.
Yes, as I commented, I figured as much. Some are giving the AI the benefit of the doubt that attacking the CS is a good tactic in the first place.
Below, Lataro is attacking Yerevan. Well, at least he's declared war on it. Not sure if walking a lone artillery up to be blasted to pieces should be credited as an attack. If he were to actually conquer it in the immediate future, he'd lose nine envoys just to spite Genghis' single-envoy lead. He'd kill of my seven as well, but not sure if he considers that another perk (again, giving the AI credit is very much rose-colored optimism). And then in short order, loyalty pressure would almost certainly hand it over to me. Given that it's a crap city with nothing but farmland, I'd happily liberate it, but that's not an option from loyalty flips (despite what some folks here claimed throughout the thread). Let me also toss in that Genghis has a military strength of 1569 to Lataro's 392, which seems to act as no deterrent.
All in all, this will do nothing to advance the Mapuche civilization as far I can tell. I would have to say this is an example of the AI being very dumb in its belligerence.
Not necessarily.
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That something you might be missing has been covered throughout the thread. We're not talking about an occasional situation that is addressed via the fait accompli of liberation. it's rampant, undeterred behavior, and if non-stop protectorate wars and liberations becomes a never-ending loop or the player, how does this constitute "pretty balanced"?
It's either a tedious resource dump for a player who has better things to do to fend off, or it's an exploit that can be harvested ad nauseum for cash and prizes. That's generally how it is with any relentless, reckless, degenerate AI behavior that doesn't seem to advance its own strategy/agenda/personality, and even constitutes biting one's nose off to spite one's face. See my previous example.
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Some of this issue has made me curious as to what the state of the AI is in regards to taking warmonger penalties on a level comparable to the player. If AI civ's are going nuts attacking CS's, shouldn't they all be hating each other?
Tomyris goes ape-poo attacking not only city-states, but DOW'ing Gitarja multiple times and has taken most of her cities throughout the game. Yet, she has maintained friendships, including with Bruce, who's agenda she flagrantly violates. Now, I've just taken a CS, and I have a -51 warmonger penalty for my troubles.
Tomyris goes ape-poo attacking not only city-states, but DOW'ing Gitarja multiple times and has taken most of her cities throughout the game. Yet, she has maintained friendships, including with Bruce, who's agenda she flagrantly violates. Now, I've just taken a CS, and I have a -51 warmonger penalty for my troubles.
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No but you can at least do this... and its only the Renaissance, I'm sure there are better cities around but the point I am trying to make is V is a very different and duller game to VI... or IV
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Doesn't it depend on which Civs you roll. Some civs won't take over city states, while others will.
Still others will attack a city state, specifically to antagonize you because they lost the envoy race and don't want the player to get the suzerain benefits.
I assume this is also true with other AI civs winning the envoy rasce and that most late game city state take overs are because of this, because you'll have a city state and a civ chugging along fine for centuries then bam, artillery barrage, walls down, tank army moves in for the kill in a quick 2-3 turn war.
The AI's ability to take down city states in the late game really surprised me. Usual limitations apply, hilly terrain and choke-points make it difficult, but trying to defend a city state appendage that's not contiguous to my empire is a fool's errand. If an AI wants to take it, they will take it.
Still others will attack a city state, specifically to antagonize you because they lost the envoy race and don't want the player to get the suzerain benefits.
I assume this is also true with other AI civs winning the envoy rasce and that most late game city state take overs are because of this, because you'll have a city state and a civ chugging along fine for centuries then bam, artillery barrage, walls down, tank army moves in for the kill in a quick 2-3 turn war.
The AI's ability to take down city states in the late game really surprised me. Usual limitations apply, hilly terrain and choke-points make it difficult, but trying to defend a city state appendage that's not contiguous to my empire is a fool's errand. If an AI wants to take it, they will take it.
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Pietato
Platonic Perfection
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Pietato
Platonic Perfection
I actually like having city-states in the game, so having them all conquered by turn 50 is pretty lame. Not very fun meeting Gilgamesh with his cities Auckland, Kandy and Babylon turn 25 like in my latest game.
A major issue we've discussed here is that it doesn't really depend on which civ's you roll. Already provided an example of a civ pointlessly attacking a CS it had invested nine envoys in because, ostensibly, another civ had a lead of a single envoy.
Lataro's at it again below. I already liberated Palanque, and got myself up to six envoys. Note how many civ's are now at war with it. When it was taken, I was only at war with Tomyris.
In the example here, Palanque should have fallen a long time ago. It hasn't occurred to the AI to do more than pillage and bombard.
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Tacgnol
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Didn't read the whole thread but I read the first and last page so here's my thoughts:
The issue is ancient/classical era, half the civs being conquered in the early turns.
Acting like it's the player's fault is and telling people to 'turn down the difficulty' so the entire game can be complete cheese just to address this one issue is outright insulting. There is literally no amount of skill that is going to allow me to prevent a civ I haven't even met 100 tiles away on another continent from conquering a CS on turn 36. It becomes, effectively, a condition imposed on the player from the start that many or most city-states will be conquered by civs by the time you meet them. This, in the opinion of me and many other players, is a bad thing because the city-state mechanic works pretty well and adds to the game overall, and it's just less fun when half the city-states don't even exist.
The issue is not, AI invading/conquering city-states, in general, that does happen a lot, but in my opinion that's fine, it's an easy way for the AI to use the units it builds to expand, and by the mid-game, if they start invading one of your allies you can do something about it. IMO, I'd like to see more protectorate wars, the AI being willing to defend ally city-states they've invested a lot of envoys into, I would REALLY like to see some sort of "Liberation" CB for a conquered CS that you were Suzerain of, maybe with a time limit after they're conquered. As far as historical perspective, that's a huge part of history - larger civs (Great Powers) going to war over the fate of smaller nations represented by city-states, it really did happen all the time!
Asking for a 'nerf' is kinda dumb, it seems like it'd be a pretty easy thing to fix - just give city-states more units to start out with on higher difficulty levels, maybe with free maintenance. Or as someone mentioned, free walls. That makes it harder for a player to conquer city-states, too - but that's something that can actually be addressed by turning down the difficulty level.
The issue is ancient/classical era, half the civs being conquered in the early turns.
Acting like it's the player's fault is and telling people to 'turn down the difficulty' so the entire game can be complete cheese just to address this one issue is outright insulting. There is literally no amount of skill that is going to allow me to prevent a civ I haven't even met 100 tiles away on another continent from conquering a CS on turn 36. It becomes, effectively, a condition imposed on the player from the start that many or most city-states will be conquered by civs by the time you meet them. This, in the opinion of me and many other players, is a bad thing because the city-state mechanic works pretty well and adds to the game overall, and it's just less fun when half the city-states don't even exist.
The issue is not, AI invading/conquering city-states, in general, that does happen a lot, but in my opinion that's fine, it's an easy way for the AI to use the units it builds to expand, and by the mid-game, if they start invading one of your allies you can do something about it. IMO, I'd like to see more protectorate wars, the AI being willing to defend ally city-states they've invested a lot of envoys into, I would REALLY like to see some sort of "Liberation" CB for a conquered CS that you were Suzerain of, maybe with a time limit after they're conquered. As far as historical perspective, that's a huge part of history - larger civs (Great Powers) going to war over the fate of smaller nations represented by city-states, it really did happen all the time!
Asking for a 'nerf' is kinda dumb, it seems like it'd be a pretty easy thing to fix - just give city-states more units to start out with on higher difficulty levels, maybe with free maintenance. Or as someone mentioned, free walls. That makes it harder for a player to conquer city-states, too - but that's something that can actually be addressed by turning down the difficulty level.
That's not too bad to me. I don't mind a few being taken - I probably should take over more of them than I do, so having one city-state taken over by every 2nd civ is kind of expected.
The problem comes when your game should start with, say, 9 city-states on a small map, and you still have 5 of them conquered. I've definitely finished games with only 3-4 city-states left over.
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On Emperor some are always left. deity is supposed to be tough.
Why is the toughness of the difficulty level even a factor? Why is this issue characterized throughout this thread as if the problem is simply that having city-states conquered makes the game harder for the player alone?
City-states aren't simply a player resource. As I've illustrated, this behavior can be very poor (or at least certainly puzzling) strategy for the AI. Are we just so jaded by the AI's limitations at utiliziing what's at hand effectively that we should see its willingness to immolate assets for both itself and the player as the next-best way to provide a challenge?
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Agreed but a player can utilise them better. Removing an option for gameplay at a level where the AI has huge advantages does make things harder. That’s all I am saying.
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