-3 to Hellenic League: Apologies to those who actually like this UA, but I can't understand how this made it into the top 10. It would be in my bottom 10. This UA just seems so pointless, especially when compared to Father Governs Children, which actually gives you a bonus for having City States. Could someone please explain to me what is so great about this UA. Seriously, I'd like to know, but only if the answer comes from someone who can manage to make a civilized, intelligent response, rather than someone who thinks it's OK to flame other people just because they think differently.
City-states give you things - food/luxuries/resources/an ally in war/friendly territory to pass through/heal in/units(sometimes UU's), faith, happiness, culture. I think you knew this already though, so while I'm sure you'd agree that having any of these benefits is generally a positive thing, wouldn't you also agree that having a UA that allows you to effectively have double as many citystates on your side is an even better thing? Double the amount of citystates on your side, or conversely (father governs children) 50% culture/faith/food (with no effect upon mercantile/militaristic cs's). You may be playing on a low difficulty level making city state influence very easy, with no competition from other civs, in which case of course this would appear a lacklustre UA. On higher difficulty levels however there is a *lot* of competition for citystates from other civs, so having a 50% decrease on influence can be enormous, either saving you loads of gold or doubling the amount of citystates you have allied to you. In fact, the only times I have managed to win on Deity (that wasn't a prefabricated duel type cheesey win) involved using a diplomatic civ and going heavy into city states - ignoring citystates on Deity or even Immortal is often suicide as you will wind up with little pockets on multiple sides of your empire with massive armies which when the appropriate civ declares on you will all swarm into your territory, forcing you to fight on multiple fronts. Conversely, if you have those citystates on your side, it's an enormous benefit to have them do the exact same thing to your enemy, watching the AI attempt to fight off citystates invasions on multiple fronts, allowing you to walk in with a small force of siege and one melee and take any city you want.
E: I should also emphasize just how devastating citystate invasions can be on Deity especially. Judging from peoples opinion of Mongol Terror's citystate combat bonus I think a lot of people scoff at the idea that a citystate could mount a serious offensive against you. In my first Deity game I didn't bother too much about citystates, thinking the same thing "oh, whatever, they aren't going to be any threat to me", until I had the runaway buy off all of the citystates around me before declaring war. I had a city state to the northwest, south west, east and south, invading me, each bringing on minimum 15 units (for a total of at least 60 units! - all contemporary units, no outdated stuff), this outside of the invasion which came from the runaway civ by sea (I was on another continent). I was able to fight off the runaway civ, by focusing my forces on his invasion, but this left my second largest city weakly defended against as well as my other cities. Compare this to my recent game as Sweden, playing an earth map where I focused heavy on citystates, got them all on my side, which freed me up to focus on rome, without worry about strong ethiopia in my rear ( surrounded by my citystates), I took out rome then turned on ethiopia, who had to fight off 6 citystates at once, making my artillery/carolean invasion very easy even against his spirit of adwa/defender of the faith/mehal safari/that wonder that gives 15% combat bonus in friendly territory units.
