Rampaging City State! (or... conquering without declaring war)

[claffert]

So, in this particular game I was kind of goofing off and I was going for a space race victory on the 3rd difficulty level I believe. Obviously I need to go higher.

Anyway, I was very much in with the City States this game. I was allied with at least half of them, four of which I liberated from the evil Germans and English! The Maritime city state of Ragusa, my ally, had war declared on them by the Persians. I didn't much want to lose my benefits from Ragusa, but at the same time I wasn't really eager for an intercontinental war.

It just so happened that on the turn that Persia declared war on Ragusa, I had gotten the tech to make Infantry. Nobody else in the game had the tech to make such units, and I decided to start gifting Ragusa my infantry to defend him against the Persians.

They held off the Persians, but they were still locked in a permanent war. Then something happened that I never saw before... Ragusa conquered a Persian city.

Realizing that I could really help them push harder, I continued supplying them with infantry as I was able, and made a beeline toward Mechanized Infantry (where I was the first to get those as well), and gifted a couple of them as well.

Before you know it, Ragusa has the most technologically advanced army in the world (thanks to me) and ends up capturing several Persian cities (and razing 2 or 3). They even took the Persian capital!

I obviously could have taken out Persia myself, but I really enjoyed helping a city state conquer a rival through under the table deals, while still being at peace with them. Plus... getting all those free resources from the extra cities was quite nice as well.

Attached is a screenshot, submitted for your approval:


PS. This is my first ever post here... though I have lurked several years since joining... and even lurked several years before joining! I think I did it wrong... low count posters are supposed to hate Civ 5, right? ;-)

 

[milk steak]

Whenever I try this, the city states just waffle the units back and forth doing nothing. In my last game, Ragusa was at war with Siam, but they were separated by a small (literally 2 tiles) amount of water. I gifted Ragusa 4-5 mechanized infantry (Siam was still using Swordsman and Pikemen) and all Ragusa ever did was embark the unit, swim around a few tiles, and do absolutely nothing. Made me very sad.

 

[Abegweit]

This is my first ever post here... though I have lurked several years since joining... and even lurked several years before joining! I think I did it wrong... low count posters are supposed to hate Civ 5, right? ;-)

I would say it's the other way around. It's the old hands who hate Civ5. Whatever. In either case, welcome to CivFanatics.

 

[ShowOfForce]

Nice! I think I'm going to try this tonight. I'm already in the middle of gearing up my war machine, but if I can get the city state blocking the land passage between myself and England to do all the dirty work for me, I'm all over it. Hahahahaha!

 

[claffert]

I would say it's the other way around. It's the old hands who hate Civ5. Whatever. In either case, welcome to CivFanatics.

Thanks for the welcome! I only said that in jesting because I've seen many comments regarding that *many* (though certainly not all) of some of the most negative comments came from people with "low post counts".

I personally think that there are people both new and old that both love and hate Civ 5. I've been a Civ Player since the very first version, installed on 3.5" floppy, with copy protection that consisted of answering questions that involved tech requirements (from the manual... assuming you didn't have them memorized by then).

As a long time Civ Player, I think Civ 5 brought some great things and some annoying things to the table. Overall, it's a positive experience which I hope will only get better in time.

Afterall, the addition of city states made the style of game that I posted about into a possibility.

Each version was better (and worse) at certain styles of gameplay than others. Not often, but once in a while, I even toyed around with CivNet even after Civ 4 had long been out. I'd never begrudge anyone for still enjoying (or even preferring) the earlier classic Civs.

 

[King Jason]

Yea, in one of my games I created the Grand Empire of Brussels, it had over 10 cities.

 

[claffert]

Nice! I think I'm going to try this tonight. I'm already in the middle of gearing up my war machine, but if I can get the city state blocking the land passage between myself and England to do all the dirty work for me, I'm all over it. Hahahahaha!

One word of warning... they *WILL* use at least some of your units stupidly... The first units I gave them were essentially wasted. They did a few really boneheaded things... but I persisted, and as time went on they used them more wisely (or less stupidly).

I have a suspicion that the AI has trouble dealing in cramped spaces. With city states, they tend to be in exactly that. Once they were able to push back and give themselves more breathing room, they seemed to perform far better.

 

[dfn]

Do you know of any conditions that make it more likely for the city state to go offensive? I'm playing a game right now where gifting units would be way quicker (and more fun) than actually annihilating 40+ cities all by myself.

Are they more likely to conquer if they are a Militaristic city state?

 

[ccubed]

I just recently played on a small, Earth map and had some fun with gifted unit hijinks. I was mostly playing in the European and Asian continents, but Persia had taken over most all of Africa. Ironically, a small city-state in the northwest Persian Gulfish area was my ally and was attacked. I giften them a Rifleman and a Cannon (which was probably a full era and a half more advanced than Persia,) and parked a couple blocking units to slow the enemy advance without directly getting involved. It was funny watching all those Swordsmen and Crossbows get torn to shreds without breaking my Research Agreement.

 

[AlienFromBeyond]

I love that you can have Cold War-esque proxy wars in this game.

 

[claffert]

Do you know of any conditions that make it more likely for the city state to go offensive? I'm playing a game right now where gifting units would be way quicker (and more fun) than actually annihilating 40+ cities all by myself.

Are they more likely to conquer if they are a Militaristic city state?

I don't know anything about that, however when I was in the Diplomacy menu for Persia, where I was considering bribing them to make peace with Ragusa, the tooltip showed that the City State had made declared a permanent war against the civilization. I don't know why this happened, as the other City States weren't at war with him (so it wasn't because he attacked too many). Anyway, I was taking advantage of that.

I imagine that this could also be useful when you are up against a Civ that *has* taken out so many City States that all the rest declare a permanent war with them as well.

I might add, that it also only seems to inspire them into making land battles. They made no attempt at all to attack by sea.

 

[King Jason]

I don't know anything about that, however when I was in the Diplomacy menu for Persia, where I was considering bribing them to make peace with Ragusa, the tooltip showed that the City State had made declared a permanent war against the civilization. I don't know why this happened, as the other City States weren't at war with him (so it wasn't because he attacked too many). Anyway, I was taking advantage of that.

I imagine that this could also be useful when you are up against a Civ that *has* taken out so many City States that all the rest declare a permanent war with them as well.

I might add, that it also only seems to inspire them into making land battles. They made no attempt at all to attack by sea.

The permanent war situation always starts with one city-state and will snowball to the others. I believe if you declare war on a CS too many times or stay at war with it for too long, it'll go perma-war against you. In one of my games where I was testing the viability of the XP farming 'exploit' (just out of curiosity, mind you), after being in war with the first and only CS I had attacked in the game for most of the early portion, when I tried to make peace it had apparently reached perma-war status.


That said, I have noticed that the City-states that seem to pursue war more than others are those that have reached the perma war status toward their target. However, this seems to also have a snowball effect of aggression, perhaps. For example in my game where Brussels grew so huge, it was only at Perma-War with Egypt, who got crushed via feeding the beast it's units... however, as I declared war on neighboring civs and even city-states to Brussels, it continued to march it's armies to all of it's nearby targets.

 

[evanbgood]

I only saw this happen once, myself. They seem to only go on the aggressive if the enemy is super-close to them. Otherwise, like the other poster noted, the units are programmed to stay where they are and care only about the city-state's safty. They aren't exactly "allies" in that regard... More "decoys".

 

[SerriaFox]

The empire of Belgrade just eliminated Songhai, no help from me, playing legions mod right now which seems to help the AI take cities

 

[BarbarianArcher]

Whenever a City-State captured a city in my games, they just razed it. :O

 

[gskyes]

Great story, I have to try this sometime. I have also only seen them raze cities, too. I didn't even think it was possible for them to keep them.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

What you have to watch out for is if the advanced weapons and training you gave them in their war with their neighbor isn't used against you years later when they take an extremist standpoint and set up their own puppet state from which they run a terrorist network.

Thankfully that would never happen... right... right?

 

[qyll]

I had a City State take 5 of my cities on my home continent before I was able to ship my army back and deal with them. They were about 2 turns from taking my capital and winning the game for Germany before I destroyed their 3 mech infantry. I proceeded to then take back my cities and burn Rio de Janeiro to the ground, enslave its population, and execute the ruler of Rio de Janeiro at a public showing in London. Revenge is so so sweet.

 

[goodolarchie]

I gave Afghanistan a few anti-air units in my game and they beat back Catherine without me having to DoW her. I think it was a good move, now I just have to worry about Ghandi building nukes.

 

[filorux]

Whenever a City-State captured a city in my games, they just razed it. :O

That was my experience as well...then I played a game with no city razing and propped a CS up with units. Fun.