[R&F] Suzerainity or How AIs kill themselves

So on my latest playthrough I share a continent with Dutch to the north and Aztec to the south. Close to Dutch is Hattusa, and close to Aztec is Carthage. Aztec has no chance to develop a sizable empire since they settled to close and their city flipped, they declared war, and I stole the next settler they came out with. They had to settle on the other side of the continent, with Carthage cut them in the middle.

Somehow, stupidly, Aztec and Dutch declared war on me sometimes on medieval age, when I am the suzerain of both Carthage and Hattusa.

I took Aztec capital, and kinda forgot that I am still at war with them. I remember seeing one time that Aztec had three stunted cities on tundra dominated part of the continent. On the next era, I decided to look at them again and there is only one city left. Carthage razed their cities.

I took pity and decided to end Aztec's suffering by removing them from play.

On dutch side, they had strangely settled one city far south near the pole, settling adjacent to The Pantanal (it was located on tundra area). That city was razed by carthage too.

Hattussa on the other hand, up north, harassing dutch over and over since dutch, with their infinite wisdom, decided to declared war on me over and over. I took two of their cities and decided to be peaceful since I am trying to colonize the continent next door.

Which has Indonesia and Macedonia.

I managed to settle one city there.

Two eras later, Indonesia and Macedonia declared war on me at the same time. Now Macedonia is being harassed by my vassal city state (I forgot, the commercial one), and Indonesia is being harassed by Nan Madol.

I suppose the end of Indonesia and Macedonia is also near, since I am planning to deliver the wraths of my Field Canons and Musketmen Armies on them, with help of that city state that already has bombards

 

In my games city states are still being slaughtered.

 

I remember this was a big thing in civ 5, city states were capable of doing some damage to civs. Haven't really experienced this in civ 6 because most of the city states are wiped out, played a game on deity yesterday where there were 0 city states still alive at the end of the game, mind you I did contribute to their demise by killing one and taking one from persia but still. I don't really understand how the city states somehow can become more competent than a whole AI with multiple cities capable of producing units.

 

In a recent game on King I captured Egypt's capital with a scout after it was reduced to 0 defense by a city state allied with Spain, who was at war with Egypt. Spain itself had almost no army, the city state though (one of the military ones, can't recall now which one exactly) zerged Egypt with several catapults and swordsmen. It was somewhat ridiculous.

Still, most of the time it's the city states that get massacred by AI civs, even when the AI would benefit more from suzerainty, given the CS's bonus (conquering Zanzibar? Really?).

 

Maybe I'll screen capture Catharge army. It's sizable. It's even larger than my army

 

Yes. Really. If you can't be the suzerain, get rid of a dangerous bonus.

 

Agreed. Sometimes you just know you can't produce enough envoys to catch up to another civ to steal suzerainty of a certain CS. Depending on geography and alliances, removing the CS can be the best option.

 

Mine too. It seems really bad on Deity. I'd say maybe a third of them survive the game, if that. The fix clearly didn't solve the problem.

 

They need to be one level above the AI is my rule of thumb. When I set it this way, it creates an average of 1\3 early kills, two third survives until renaissance. End of the game 50\50.
Of course, it can not work in deity by definition.
In order to reach this I set up a medium sized MP game when I'm playing as the only human. AI's are set to immortal. I choose deity. This last settings has only one effect, it gives 'deity' level to city states. Those CS gets a slight but decisive advantage when facing immortal AI's.

 

In my first couple of R&F games, I lost a couple of walled cities to City States. In the vanilla game I didn't pay much/any attention to who a civ was suzerain of when they attacked me, as the City States seemed to be quite passive. No longer. They build a military early and they'll use it offensively when their suzerain drags them into a war.

Plus they immediately raze your city when they take it, so no chance to counter attack it back.

As with much of the game, this is only a threat early on, but I appreciate that the AI can sometimes force you to defend on multiple fronts in the early game.