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trade with city states?
- Thread starter err76
- Start date
Keeping a city state as an ally is too difficult and expensive. You pay 1000 gold constantly to keep them happy if there are no quests available. The stupid "destroy city state x" mission is annoying to because you have to puppet or annex the crap city state... why can't I just raze it???
Really isn't hard at all with trading post spam and some markets/banks. Get policies in patronage and your gold goes even further and relationships deteriorate slower. 1000 gold later in the game tends to be a drop in the bucket when you're bringing in hundreds of gold a turn.
Thats true, I did that as china in one of my games, but as I decided to build military I lost gpt and couldn't afford to pay off the city state... Therefore I lost resources and happiness 
I'm just complaining that there isnt more ways to make city states happy, maybe give them 5 iron per turn or something else they could demand and that I have in surplus. My pledge to protect should count for something too, but seems like they don't care..
I'm just complaining that there isnt more ways to make city states happy, maybe give them 5 iron per turn or something else they could demand and that I have in surplus. My pledge to protect should count for something too, but seems like they don't care..nightspydk
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2010
- Messages
- 15
Yep they need to do some work on those city states.
They are not worth the effort.
Nice idea tho and really like the new shared happy face systen.
They are not worth the effort.
Nice idea tho and really like the new shared happy face systen.
Yep they need to do some work on those city states.
They are not worth the effort.
Nice idea tho and really like the new shared happy face systen.
Not worth the effort? Maritime city states can basically feed your entire civ by themselves, and then some. They're overpowered right now. Cultural/Militaristic maybe less worth it (though Maritime is so strong it sort of makes them look worthless no matter what) but still, money isn't really hard to accumulate in this game. You might not be able to afford City States right away, but later on it doesn't cost that much to maintain relations with them.
Ok, How do I get them to give me money? Just maintain them as an ally?
Yzman
Deity
Maritime gives you food, not money.
So different types of city states help in different ways as long as you are allies?
Iron Weasel
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2007
- Messages
- 48
Each of the three types provide you with different bonuses.
Maritime - Food
Cultural - Culture
Militaristic - Military Units
Maritime and Cultural city-states bonuses stack.
I've had many games where I have 0 farms and still manage to have a 15+ food surplus in my cities if I ally with every Maritime C/S on the map. It's a little slow starting out because you're building nothing but Trading Posts unless you need a specific improvement for a luxury or strategic resource, but after you get the Medieval area and start getting some Social Policies in the Patronage tree and then start dumping 500 gold into each Maritime C/S, your population skyrockets.
Cultural city-states provide a small, but useful bonus and they are cumulative just like Maritime. They provide around 10 Culture per ally most of the time, so having a few in your pocket helps if you're going for a Cultural victory.
Militaristic city-states don't "stack", but each one will gift you a random unit every 15 - 20 turns, so if you want to grab a few of those, separate them by 5 turns or so and you'll get a unit from each one every half dozen turns or so if you're allied with 4 Militaristic city-states. The only gripe I have with these guys is the fact that they can sometimes give you severely outdated units. In my last game, I was running around with Rifleman around 1750 (Babylon going for Technological / Space Race Victory) and a Militaristic C/S gave me a friggin' Crossbowman.
They'll give you some benefits even if you only achieve "friend" status with them.
There are a couple of civs you can play as (Greece and Siam) that have special bonuses with City States. Having said that, Greece is often played for a quick domination victory and their city state bonuses are often then ignored. By contrast, Siam is a nice one for a cultural victory when allying with city states can often give you a third of your culture points every turn.
Lots of good advice in this thread (plus some stuff I'd ignore!). In short, I'd alliances with City States are good unless you're going for a quick domination win. Buy your alliances with them and don't accept quests from one to wipe out another; city states are always more use to you alive than dead, and they never hold it against you if you're allied with an enemy city state.
The AI has up to now been fairly weak in handling city states, though it seems to be getting better. If you really want to upset a full civ, buy a city state's alliance immediately after that civ has payed cash to ally themselves! The bigger money always wins and city states can't hold two alliances. It's so nice to see civs waste their money.
