Realising the power of city states

[mattavich]

I had not been doing much with city states as i didnt want to spend my gold. But when several of my cities started to starve without food it became apparent how powerful they are.

One maritime city state will provide food to every city on the map. In large games you can see how this knocks off the cost of 250 gold every now and then to have high pop cities.

Not sure how it stacks for smaller games. What strats involving city states have you found?

 

[Arksa]

I played my first game with Greece.

I had 4 allies by medieval age. 3 cultural and 1 maritime city-state. I didn't really need to focus on building cultural buildings that's for sure...
The bonuses increase when you advance to a different era I think. Stockholm gave my capitol 4 food/turn and 2 food/turn in other cities, that's pretty nuts IMO.

 

[shinkicker]

In my current game, Hanoi is providing me with military units every few turns. That's worth the occasional 250g to keep them happy. I'd be spending more than that to build an army.

 

[spoooq]

Military states seem to be pretty useless. Maybe they are better during wartime than the other types. The luxuries available from each state is also a pretty big factor in who to choose, IMO.

Annexing one state on the request of another gets two friends for the price of killing one.

 

[-=Yin=-]

Here's a great start point: http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/193019-CITY-STATES-who-s-your-buddy

The obvious thing is that just dipping your toe in won't help much. But if you really stake out a strategy and maximize it, the results can be big.

 

[spoooq]

In my current game, Hanoi is providing me with military units every few turns. That's worth the occasional 250g to keep them happy. I'd be spending more than that to build an army.

I'll give them a second chance

 

[duxup]

I was recently at war with Japan, and due to my own actions I had upset all the city states and they were at war with me. On the island Japan was on was another city state. I didn't think much of it as Japan was an era behind me. Then out of nowhere came some modern infantry from the city state putting up a good counter attack while I was trying to establish myself on the island. It was fun although I still think they city state thing is a bit wonky.

 

[shinkicker]

I'll give them a second chance

To get Hanoi to do that, I had to attack and subdue Edinburgh with catapults and spearmen. It wasn't easy

 

[Serenya]

I played my first game on Settler so I could focus on learning everything that had changed, so with that caveat -- I started out just keeping the city-state closest to me happy, as they had a resource that my cities kept demanding. They were 'random' so were always asking me to produce a Great Artist or build a wonder or some such rather than beat up another city-state, and they were cultural. As the game wore on I 'rescued' one city-state from China, then kept them happy; I made one city-state my puppet on behalf of a third, and took over another rather than let another Civ get them. By the time the game ended I was getting a significant boost to food and culture (and I was working on a culture win) and 3 different city-states were gifting me units. Since I had access to all their resources, every time one of my cities demanded a new resource I had it. When one of the states asked me to build the UN I did so, which is when I discovered that if you've bribed every city-state in the game into being your ally you'll win on diplomacy....

 

[kozzer]

I played as Greece on Prince following a strategy article on apolyton. Held off all social policy purchases until I bee-lined to the Medieval age, and then completed the Patronage tree before building my 2nd city. I was able to build both Stonehenge and the Great Library by turn 56 (article says to have them both by turn 50) so I did OK. After that, I was able to become allies with every single CS I met, with a maximum of 500 gold per CS (some were "bought" with only 250). You really see everything: food, research, culture, resources, even Great People etc get significantly pumped up, so that you're almost living off the teat of City States - which allows you much more freedom in what you want to do.

In my war against the Egyptians, Belgrade provided the entirety of my siege (4 cats) and some other units. I rolled Egypt, and in the process let Belgrade get conquered so that I could Liberate them, and now they love me sooo much. Plus, it was really cool when I declared on Egypt - in the same turn about 6 CS's also declared on Egypt, 3 of which were on their borders. Right now, at about 300 AD, I control the northern half of my continent, I've got about a 15 unit army consisting of one Great General, those 4 cats, and the rest a mixture of Longswordsmen and Knights positioned along my southern border watching those untrustworthy Arabs.

It's a neat strategy. For point of reference, after getting the Patronage tree completed, my CS relations only degraded 0.37 per turn (instead of the usual 1).

 

[SRG]

Here's a thought... can't test it since I am stuck at work for another 6.5 hours.

If you have a military city-state ally, and he gives you a craptastic unit... can't you just gift it to him or another city-state for the paltry bonus, thus not paying the upkeep and yet still gaining a benefit of the unit?

In my experience I have gotten very useful units from my military buddies, but I expect to get a warrior in the modern era sometime in the near future.

 

[duxup]

Here's a thought... can't test it since I am stuck at work for another 6.5 hours.

If you have a military city-state ally, and he gives you a craptastic unit... can't you just gift it to him or another city-state for the paltry bonus, thus not paying the upkeep and yet still gaining a benefit of the unit?

In my experience I have gotten very useful units from my military buddies, but I expect to get a warrior in the modern era sometime in the near future.

When you disband units you get gold so maybe you could also go that route.

 

[spoooq]

Here's a thought... can't test it since I am stuck at work for another 6.5 hours.

If you have a military city-state ally, and he gives you a craptastic unit... can't you just gift it to him or another city-state for the paltry bonus, thus not paying the upkeep and yet still gaining a benefit of the unit?

In my experience I have gotten very useful units from my military buddies, but I expect to get a warrior in the modern era sometime in the near future.

When I tried gifting (just the once), I got a very low amount of friendship from it. It didn't seem worthwhile, but then, I suppose if the next step is disbanding it, then anything is better than nothing.

 

[kozzer]

If you have a military city-state ally, and he gives you a craptastic unit... can't you just gift it to him or another city-state for the paltry bonus, thus not paying the upkeep and yet still gaining a benefit of the unit?

Indeed! And I've done that quite a few times when I'm using knights and longswordsmen and they gift me an archer.

 

[rah]

but there's the other side, when they give you a tank and you haven't built one yet since your best production city would take 20 turns to crank one out.

Yes, CityStates are your friends.

 

[Serenya]

Also, also if you go down the patronage tree, Educated Elite results in the occasional gift of Great People. So in addition to the usual assortment of military units (including artillery and a tank!) I've now received my 2nd Great Artist and today's game is no where near done. curious to see how this plays out.

 

[mattavich]

What i want to know is, when the militaristic CS gifts you a unit. Do you pay maint? or is it free?

 

[Thormodr]

Military states seem to be pretty useless. Maybe they are better during wartime than the other types. The luxuries available from each state is also a pretty big factor in who to choose, IMO.

Annexing one state on the request of another gets two friends for the price of killing one.

Ummm...I think they are far from useless.

I played as Siam and befriended a couple of militaristic city states.

I spend my time building up and the city states provided me with a strong military. I

think they provided over 50% of my military.

Late in the game, I was getting free artillery and infantry.

All for a low, low price of some measly gold.

I am not sure about this but maybe the AI also takes into consideration if you're allied

with them and is more wary to attack you as well. Napoleon and Askia were on the

same continent as me and they never declared war on me once.

Militaristic city states are a builders best friend.

 

[Wulf38]

It's kind of broken right now because the AI don't seem to realize that the returns from allying with city states are far more than the returns from conquering and puppeting them. They let the player just farm enough gold to get a monopoly on city states and reap all the benefits, without making a serious effort to outbid you for influence.

 

[pagh80]

I gotten the same feeling. City states are far more valuable as allies than if you conquered them.
All the bonuses alone far outweigh the cost in getting them to allied status.

For now i like the implementation of city states as they give a new tactical aspect to the game that havent been seen before. Whether or not the bonuses are too powerful i have yet to determine. More games is needed.