“Civilization 5” Hints and Tips: City States

City-States in Civilization 5

In previous Civilization titles, while exploring you would come across “ villages. ” these villages often gave you money, engineering, or units. refinement 5 has expanded the idea and has separated villages into two discrete entities. The first base is ruins that tend to give you technical advances, maps, or money. The moment and more interesting divide is the City-State.

What Are City-States?

City-States are self-governed states that will protect themselves but do not expand their refinement. Depending on the type of city state ( cultured, nautical, militaristic ) you will get different rewards. The city-states will seek protection from other major civilizations ( or city-states ), aid with local barbarians, or request certain luxury items. Depending on your dealings with them they can be friendly, allied, or even at war with you. hera are the city-states that can be found in-game :

• Militaristic: Almaty, Belgrade, Budapest, Dublin, Edinburgh, Genoa, Hanoi, Ragusa, Sidon, Tyre
• Cultured: Bucharest, Brussels, Florence, Geneva, Lhasa, Monaco, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, Vienna, Warsaw
• Maritime: Cape Town, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Oslo, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, Stockholm, Venice

Strategy for City-States

• While in the long run, it’s more beneficial to perhaps attack and capture city-states in the early part of a game they can provide resources without the need for you to maintain a city—it helps you focus more on building a strategic position without having to super-expand.
• City-states will form friendships with many civilizations but will only ally with one, so it’s often important to gain a decent relationship with them before any other civilization can, otherwise they can become a thorn in your side. While you can continue to maintain a relationship with city-states by giving gifts this is expensive and maintaining the influence with favors such as clearing out barbarians can be a lot easier and less costly, although be careful this doesn’t divert you from your overall strategies.
• One problem that I noticed immediately was that I had to be careful not to have too many city-state friends. Often one city-state will ask you to attack another city-state thus negating any influence you may have gained—so be careful when you choose to focus on a city-state.
• Interestingly enough a city-state can actually capture enemy cities, although this seems to be infrequent, it is something to bear in mind as you plan your eventual “capture” of them.
• While you can simply ignore city-states if you want, I find them to be a very important part of the initial empire building and strategy and can really make a difference especially when you are weak. I tend to focus on Militaristic city-states as this gives me quick access to units allowing me to focus on improvements in my cities while creating a defensive force.
• Some City-States have an attitude problem! This can range from being friendly, hostile, erratic, or simply neutral—while this can have an effect on your dealings I find that these attitudes don’t really change much when dealing with them.

What Is Influence?

As you progress through the game you can influence city-states. This can be in a positive or negative way. Giving gifts will increase your influence, while just moving through their district can make a city state angry. This influence besides decreases over meter, so you need to continue to assist them or ply them with gifts .
Quick Tip:
You have to be careful when you set units on auto-explore as they will frequently stray into city state district and make them angry, losing you Influence .

What Are the Benefits of Higher Influence?

As you become more influential with the city-states and they become friends, they will often give you gifts :

• Cultured: A bonus for your culture.
• Maritime: A gift of food.
• Militaristic: A supply of military units.

Note: You can set the city state not to give you military units. finally, if you continue to build your influence they will become your ally ; they continue to provide the bonuses above, but besides let you access their resources. They besides will join you in a war if you are attacked, and will help in any UN elections. Gabriel on July 24, 2012 : In my game, happened a strange matter, that I never thought would be possible : the culture became negative, and a bunch ( around 500 negative ), after I ‘ve conquered all an enemy empire ( on immortal level ). Does anyone know how to turns it incontrovertible again ? ( nowadays it ‘s around 380 negative … ). I was playing with a few mods, possibly that ‘s the problem. Crazyjoeeod on May 08, 2012 : While the conversation on the miss of certain cities is valid I feel a larger luff could be made. The presence or absence of one location specificly may have been made merely based on its “ foot print ” over the scope of history as a hale. many actual city states ( or equivilant ) have come and gone and changed names, rulers, political views ect … I feel the game manufacturer plainly chose a few that had universal joint recognition to get the point across. Lateralis on January 08, 2012 : @ Alpha That may be true of the Hague, Amsterdam and Rotterdam today, but not in years past. Amsterdam was once *the* deal city and most cosmopolitan city in Europe. People from all over Europe flocked to the city in search of and ultimately find oneself permissiveness and presperity. Alpha on December 10, 2011 : Skippy : Amsterdam shares a like position in the Netherlands as Rotterdam and The Hague, the three cities being very roughly of the same importance, and each being important adequate to be considered a “ city state ”, besides which a dutch expansion may be planned. On the other handwriting, Brussels is likely included since it is the urban focus on of a relatively rural country ( Belgium ). What up on July 11, 2011 : They should create a real world simulator with all the countries in the earth. 1 city per country so it is fairly easy to conquer.

Skippy on February 18, 2011 : Why no amsterdam ! ! ! Shahid Bukhari from My Awareness in Being. on December 07, 2010 : An interest psychoanalysis … and its postdate up. But suggest you read Arnold. J Toynbee ‘s History of Civilizations … to get an theme of what the others have to say in the matter. Genghis Khan Temüjin Borjigin on November 21, 2010 : I forget to add this tribe name to my list Chinookan – an american tribe Genghis Khan Temüjin Borjigin on November 21, 2010 : I love City-States. immediately let ‘s have them add tribes to the game. They start with a settler, can merely found one city, but are mobile, so they can unfound their city and move their settler to found it again in a different set. Proposed tribes african : Kongo, Ghana american : olmec, Toltec, Moche, Arapaho, Cherokee, Eskimo, Navajo, Apache, Zapotec Civs They Should Add ; 1. Zulu – african 2. Inca – american 3. Maya – american english 4. Ethiopia – african 5. Sioux – american 6. Comanche – american Simon Cook (author) from NJ, USA on October 15, 2010 : usws – the strenght of a city ( or a city country ) will not go down. weapon units can merely do ‘ranged ‘ attacks sol can not take over a city – however once you have the city down to a identical low ‘damage ‘ you should be able to use battle troops to finish the job pretty cursorily ! usws on October 15, 2010 : Can you capture city-states by lone bombarding them with catapults etc. ? I had two catapults attacking in a turn but the damage meter does n’t seem to drop below 1mm. I was trying not to waste my melee troops as their ( the city-states ) strength is so much higher compared to my low-tech troops even when damaged ( or does damage actually drop their lastingness eventhough it is n’t indicated ). Simon Cook (author) from NJ, USA on October 14, 2010 : Heyhou : in the lapp way as before – your units attack the city, fighting the units in the city beginning and ultimately reducing the cities lastingness total – once you bombard and attack and reduce this to zero you get the option to raze it, make it a creature city ( where it will produce but you can not change ) or Annex – it will add ‘negative ‘ happiness until you build a courthouse ….

Heyhou on October 14, 2010 : merely one question : how do you CAPTURE a city ?