What controls city state strength?

[tibbles]

I've been watching a chummy few city states in my games and realized I have no idea what controls their power level.

My last game on prince I was working my 2 new and only Riflemen over to the first AI to attack and I scrolled the map up a bit to notice my allied maritime city state had not 1, not 2, but 3 riflemen! Remember this is in 350ad and the best any of the AI had was 1 lone spearman. So obviously it's tech scaled instantly to mine. Then it promoted for free

Did it scale to mine because I was it's ally? Or do all city states scale to the highest civ?

I assume their defenses scale with tech level too? Again to whose? I've never attacked one myself, but I watch the AI units bounce off until catapults. Not sure if it took catapults+ because I was an era ahead of the AI and they scaled or because they're naturally that tough.

What controls military gifts? Does allied vs friendly up your chance of a better unit or frequency or both? I know the max gift level is scaled, but the gift is still random. I was in a gunpowder war in the 1600s once and they gave me a scout...

 

[Show]

I'm pretty sure everything is scales on whoever has the best tech level,in some of my games barbarians had destroyers before I even did (was going trough the upper part of the tech tree)

 

[Vordeo]

Also, might've been just me, but the CS strength (of the actual cities) always seems to be significantly higher than normal cities.

 

[effexop]

This is insane. CS have always the most modern troops, while some ais are still very backwards. In one game I was the only to have infantry, one ai had rifleman, and the others had ancient armies. Yet CS get infantry too. Now, CS should have at least some defense, but being at top level seems too much. I think the small ais, that had much of their empires decimated, or simply could not tech, should receive bonus to research so they aren't really pwned by CS.

REgarding barbs, they always seem to match the one with LOWEST tech, at least in my games.

 

[King of Spades]

REgarding barbs, they always seem to match the one with LOWEST tech, at least in my games.

I doubt this, as I sometimes find Barbarians with more advanced units than myself (that is Archers before I get Archery, Spearman before I get Bronze Working, and some naval units before I get the required tech).

 

[aimlessgun]

Am I playing a different game? The CS in my game have always had outdated units, 100% of the time, for the past 800 turns. The barbarians have also had outdated units 100% of the time, for the past 800 turns.

 

[Psycedilla]

people are maybe playing on diffrent difficulity levels?

anyway i think it is either about on par with techleader, or its something above the avreage.

would also like to know this

 

[r_rolo1]

The devs said that barbs could get the same units that the more advanced civ can build... probably to avoid that they marched in line against CS , they did the same with them . Must confirm that , though ...

If it is like that, it is bad , really bad.

 

[generalwar]

I noticed that AI's can't conquer city states, except those without defending units(maritime, I think)
and the only AI that know anything is Wu Zetian and Alexander( but Alex has obsolete units too). I'm playing on prince.

 

[Lacerda]

City States are constantly on a defensive mood.

I want to think that they are bugged because there are so many issues with them; Gifting a unit
* the influence that you gain is so ridiculous, that makes this offer completely and utterly useless.
* constant bugs when gifting a unit while this city state is at war, the gifted, if not in their territory already, they'll just disappear, even if they have titles to spawn.
* Unbalanced buff from a Maritime city state and a Military one, +Massive food vs Sporadically outdated unit.

 

[Necro-]

i think its so cs won't get steamrolled by the first aggressive empire they run into.

 

[Hernite]

Unless I send them a bunch of crossbows they get consumed by China on the TSL -Earth map.

 

[Samus_au]

I noticed that AI's can't conquer city states, except those without defending units(maritime, I think)
and the only AI that know anything is Wu Zetian and Alexander( but Alex has obsolete units too). I'm playing on prince.

In my last game (prince) Washington captured Hanoi. He even marched a fair sized army over to their land to deal with them. It was almost impressive. Or would have been if he hadn't fallen apart when I attacked Hanoi in order to liberate it and have a friend for life.

 

[tibbles]

I've noticed the AI often gives up after about 10 turns if it fails to take the city state.

Yet another AI fix tangentially related to this is, the AI seems to almost always ignore or conquer city states, rarely do they ally (and then probably only by accidentally completing quests). Given the AI cash bonuses, they shouldn't be as donation happy as a player, but give them a little interest. You shouldn't hit the teens and still have city states not even friendly with any one.

 

[Show]

I'd like to see a barbarian camp spawn a GDR.

 

[badbonez]

In the current game I tried to get the Ottomans to declare peace with VIenna and the roll over said "This civilization is permanently at war" or something like that. But the Ottomans were not attacking. Of course, I had a large army near by to help my Ally if they needed it so maybe they were being wise. But what's the conditions for a CS to be permanently at war?

I realize this is off the subject of the OP...

 

[WTBCzero]

Barbs can certainly get the techs that the tech leader has. In my last game, i was trailing behind Japan in techs. He gets infantry before I do, and the city states and the barbarians get them just after. In the meantime, I had to take out barbanian camps guarded by infantry with the help of cannons because otherwise my riflemen would have lost.

Is their any limit to what units barbs can get? I think having barbarian modern armours or something would be ridiculous. There needs to be a limit on what units barbarians can use like there was in Civ 4 (they couldn't advance beyond riflemen).

 

[ashmizen]

I believe they said there is no limitation (think of them as a terrorist who hijacked a tank...).

CS's seem to follow the tech leader pretty quickly, while barbarians take forever to catch up.

 

[Vordeo]

* constant bugs when gifting a unit while this city state is at war, the gifted, if not in their territory already, they'll just disappear, even if they have titles to spawn.

Read somewhere that if a unit that isn't in their territory already is gifted to them, it'll take 3 turns to appear within their borders. Not sure about that though.

Yet another AI fix tangentially related to this is, the AI seems to almost always ignore or conquer city states, rarely do they ally (and then probably only by accidentally completing quests). Given the AI cash bonuses, they shouldn't be as donation happy as a player, but give them a little interest. You shouldn't hit the teens and still have city states not even friendly with any one.

In the game I'm playing now Alexander was allied with 3 city-states, and though some of those may have been quest achievements, I doubt they all were.

 

[Syiss_]

I've noticed the AI often gives up after about 10 turns if it fails to take the city state.

Yet another AI fix tangentially related to this is, the AI seems to almost always ignore or conquer city states, rarely do they ally (and then probably only by accidentally completing quests). Given the AI cash bonuses, they shouldn't be as donation happy as a player, but give them a little interest. You shouldn't hit the teens and still have city states not even friendly with any one.

I get pop ups all game long about this civ and that civ becoming allies or becoming not allies. I've also gotten warning for gifting gold to a city state that another civ was allied with.

That said, some AI's do seem to be pretty aggressive towards city states at times, just rolling over them one after the other. This only seems to happen when they are on a path for domination victory though.

In my latest game, Egypt declared war on city states so many times that finally they decided to band together against him. One turn he decides to declare war on Warsaw, and all the sudden my screen is spammed with war declarations - 4 other city states all declared war on Egypt! From that point on they were permanently at war with Egypt, I wasn't even given the option to bribe him to make peace with them. I was even allied with two of the city states he was at war with, yet I remained at peace with Egypt. He was surrounded on 3 sides by them, and with a few well timed gifted units, I managed to keep them all alive. One of the city states even conquered one of his cities (almost took his capital too), and KEPT IT! Funny enough, one of the city states on our continent did not declare on Egypt with the rest (Almaty I think), and eventually Egypt managed to ally him, so all of the city states declared war on Almaty, and I got to watch as Almaty duked it out with Singapore for 30 turns, well away from the rest of the fighting (I considered gifting Singapore, my ally, some units so he could conquer Almaty just to see what would happen, but I was stretched too thin).