How To Take a City-State?!?!?!

[arclight]

Okay, I've been playing Civ since Civ2 and I'm pretty lost here on my first Civ5 game.

Am I right in saying that I can range attack a city-state all day and night and it will never, ever, ever go below a certain threshold of strength? I have been repeatedly pounding a city-state via ranged attacks for, well, two hours...and in previous editions of the game, a city would be pretty quickly weakened so that you can just walk right in. However, no matter how much I pound it, it always is able to destroy my incoming melee units.

What am I missing? How do you actually take one of these?

Thanks!

[enael]

city-state have a better defense than others cities (maybe x2).
u need more units and some melee units. i attack some city-state in each game and i have no problem with that (i use 4-5 units and i loose half of them ).

[cristic]

Okay, I've been playing Civ since Civ2 and I'm pretty lost here on my first Civ5 game.

Am I right in saying that I can range attack a city-state all day and night and it will never, ever, ever go below a certain threshold of strength? I have been repeatedly pounding a city-state via ranged attacks for, well, two hours...and in previous editions of the game, a city would be pretty quickly weakened so that you can just walk right in. However, no matter how much I pound it, it always is able to destroy my incoming melee units.

What am I missing? How do you actually take one of these?

Thanks!

There's a few things to keep in mind. All cities heal 1 hit point per turn. If you range attack with a weak unit (like an archer or a trireme) you might actually do just 1 or 0 damage. There is indeed a threshold you cannot range attack under, i think it's 1 hit point. So you cannot destroy the city by range attacking it, you will need a melee unit to take over.
Another thing that you should keep in mind is that even if the city is down to the last hit point, if it has a high defense value (it's written right above the city name) you might not be able to take it with a warrior (i never tested this so i might be wrong).
I've had no problem taking city states, they seem to be to behave like any other cities you take, except maybe that they seem to build walls and castles pretty early on.

[Masher8559]

When you bombard the city down to 1hp, move a cavalry unit in... you should take the city with ease.

[arclight]

Okay, thanks for your help everyone. Yes, I was trying to take one out pretty early because a rival city-state had a sub-quest to do so. It took awhile but I was able to bombard through two melee units (with one dying) while ranging from three others.

[Zenicetus]

Just a word of advice... you don't have to take out a city state just because another one asks you to. I get those requests all the time, and I never do those missions. City states are too valuable as allies (or potential allies) in the current game design.

Once you get a good economy going with lots of gold flow, you can buy their alliance easily. They give you luxuries to keep your civ's happiness up, and the maritime city states let you focus less on food production. They also tech up pretty fast to strong cities, so they can be a nice defensive wall if if you share a continent.

The only time I actually conquered a city state in my last two games, was because it was sitting on the ONLY source of aluminum in the entire world, and I couldn't risk someone else taking it. I actually felt bad doing it, and it got me a little bit of lowered reputation with all the other city states (another reason not to conquer too many of them).

[cristic]

Just a word of advice... you don't have to take out a city state just because another one asks you to. I get those requests all the time, and I never do those missions. City states are too valuable as allies (or potential allies) in the current game design.

Once you get a good economy going with lots of gold flow, you can buy their alliance easily. They give you luxuries to keep your civ's happiness up, and the maritime city states let you focus less on food production. They also tech up pretty fast to strong cities, so they can be a nice defensive wall if if you share a continent.

The only time I actually conquered a city state in my last two games, was because it was sitting on the ONLY source of aluminum in the entire world, and I couldn't risk someone else taking it. I actually felt bad doing it, and it got me a little bit of lowered reputation with all the other city states (another reason not to conquer too many of them).

Yah I pretty much prize them too, if you get 2-3 friend/allied maritime cities your population will boom. The once you reach your happiness limit don't make them happy any more and wait for theatres to be unlocked or whatever your next hapiness boom will be and the pay the marimitimes again to boost you. If you're playing for a cultural win, you absolutely must be friends with all the cultural city states and defend them at all costs. Military's ok but pretty weak compared to maritime and cultural, those are the ones i conquer sometimes for happiness resources.

[Ash_F]

Yeah at first I was having a hard time getting my games going until learned to take advantage of the city states. They are a cool new mechanic. And when you go to war, they all go to war with you.

Has anyone been befriending the militaristic states? Are they a cost effective way to get units? Also do they give units randomly or is it on a timer? I have only been allying to the food and cultural states.

[Zenicetus]

I've been avoiding alliances with the militaristic states unless it's a cultural victory, because the timing for their donation of military units can't be predicted (AFAIK), and it's usually not the exact unit I need anyway. Murphey's Law... if I'm low on archers, I'll get a spearman from a militaristic CS.

It might be useful if you're going for an early steamroller conquest of your neighbors in the early game, where one unit can make a difference. Later on, you should be running a civ where random military donations don't matter.

Something I noticed in my current game... I briefly got alliance status with a militaristic CS as a result of doing something I was going to do anyway (wipe out a barbarian camp). I didn't bother gifting gold to keep the alliance up, so the CS degraded to friend status and then neutral. But a few turns after it went neutral, they gave me a new unit anyway. Apparently, once they start a gift unit in production, it stays in production and you get it, regardless of your current status. That should probably be considered a bug, since it would be easy to exploit.

[arclight]

Okay, very interesting. In the future, I'll just buy them all off or do the simpler quests for them (i.e. killing barbarians and creating roads.)

Basically I befriended one militaristic city-state who asked me to take another one out, and that was the one I was originally complaining about in this thread. Afterwards, the city-state who asked me to do that then started giving me a new unit every so often and it was usually pretty good timing (though purely coincidental.) It also seemed like my reputation with them was so good that they've pretty much been a permanent ally since (though I do see the rep score ever so slightly decreasing over a large period of time.)

I decided to start taking another city-state out because it was right next door (though unaligned) with a large civilization and made it a puppet. Has anyone spent much time using a conquered city-state as a puppet? What benefit, if any, do you feel you got from it? It seems like all I'm getting is not having to worry about what that city is building since it's all automated, and I use the territory otherwise as my own.

[barbalatte]

I'm just discovering the game too, but recently I have taken a City State and installed it as a Protectorate.
It took me quite a while and about 5-6 units (Archers, Warriors and a Ship helps!). Maybe 10 turns but I took it.

I don't mind the game so far. Who said it was simple?

[Satoru]

Okay, very interesting. In the future, I'll just buy them all off or do the simpler quests for them (i.e. killing barbarians and creating roads.)

Basically I befriended one militaristic city-state who asked me to take another one out, and that was the one I was originally complaining about in this thread. Afterwards, the city-state who asked me to do that then started giving me a new unit every so often and it was usually pretty good timing (though purely coincidental.) It also seemed like my reputation with them was so good that they've pretty much been a permanent ally since (though I do see the rep score ever so slightly decreasing over a large period of time.)

I decided to start taking another city-state out because it was right next door (though unaligned) with a large civilization and made it a puppet. Has anyone spent much time using a conquered city-state as a puppet? What benefit, if any, do you feel you got from it? It seems like all I'm getting is not having to worry about what that city is building since it's all automated, and I use the territory otherwise as my own.

Conquering city states really doesn't provide much benefit unless they're really hostile to you and will send units in when another civ declares war. Even then they usually don't have many units so you can usually just beat them back easily.

The only time it makes sense is if you don't want to spend the money to make them happy, but they have some strategic or luxury resources you want. If a militaristic state has some luxury resource I need, I'll usually just puppet the state then annex it later.

You really want to invest the time in becoming allies with maritime states. The cumulative food bonuses to your empire are HUGE. They're better than being forced to put in granaries and other food production buildings in all your cities. The gifted units sometimes are ok but I certainly don't go out of my way to make them happy unless I have tons of gold and all the maritime city states are happy already. Even then, I'd rather just buy a unit or upgrade an existing on. This is especially good if you go with the Civics tree that gives you bonuses to city state relationships so the money you invest lasts longer.

[IONDragonX]

city-state have a better defense than others cities (maybe x2).

not necessarily true. I've seen that CS almost always built city walls first. most intelligent thing for them to do, actually.

[andyfunk]

I have found the militaristic city-states to be useful in certain situations.

In an empire where I have puppeted most conquered cities, the military production from the city-state frees up my own production and gold for other things. The units have been top-notch (I'm playing King difficulty, ymmv).

Basically, I think it can be better to spend 500 gold getting the city-state to make a couple of units (the tooltip says one unit produced every 15-20 turns) and ALSO get any strat/luxury resources from the city state. Compare that to spending +/- 500g on one unit immediately, where you need it, with no long-term benefits.

It's a tradeoff, but if you have the time I think the city-state is a better investment.

And another reason why city-states are cool.

[Oddible]

Also, if you're going for a culture win or something where you're smaller or don't want to maintain a large military, having the military city states are just that many more cities who will fight with you if you get attacked.

BTW, remember that some units are considered siege units and get bonuses to attacking cities (for instance catapults). You'll find that you can quickly get a city down to 2hp with them.

[AlexFury]

That City-States are a GREAT way to level-up your artillery or naval guys WAAAY past what barbarians will allow (only 2 lvls total). this way you can just bombard the hell out of a city and their units, never take it.. and prep for later if you plan to do anything militarily.

this is particularly effective if you take the left path of the Honor route.. which doubles xp gained. Esp since ranged attacks only give 2xp per hit... 4xp per hit is a nice boost

[Oddible]

That City-States are a GREAT way to level-up your artillery or naval guys WAAAY past what barbarians will allow (only 2 lvls total). this way you can just bombard the hell out of a city and their units, never take it.. and prep for later if you plan to do anything militarily.

this is particularly effective if you take the left path of the Honor route.. which doubles xp gained. Esp since ranged attacks only give 2xp per hit... 4xp per hit is a nice boost

Brilliant... I use barbs for farming xp but this is a fantastic idea.

[Zenicetus]

Also, if you're going for a culture win or something where you're smaller or don't want to maintain a large military, having the military city states are just that many more cities who will fight with you if you get attacked.

I haven't found that aspect very useful, but maybe it's just the layout of the games I've played. City state armies stick to their own territory. Unless an enemy happens to pass close enough, they won't attack.

The only time I found it helpful, was when a neighboring civ wasn't strong enough to attack me directly, and decided to attack one of my protected city states instead (really dumb move, but I did get that cool "see now, while I attack your little friend" message). I positioned my units nearby, and watched while the CS pounded on the attacking units for a couple of turns, softening them up. Then I declared war, moved my units in from behind, and easily took out the enemy army.