City-States

This is another place where changes have been made since Civilization V. City-States made their first appearance in Civilization V, and played an important part there, including as a key to winning a Diplomatic Victory, which we demonstrated in a sample game. As before, City-States occupy a single city, but they have surrounding territory and can improve their tiles to gain additional resources. They can research Technologies, and build Units. But they can never build Settlers and can never add any additional city to their territory. You can trade with them, and City-States can be conquered by the other players.

Your relations with City-States are different from what they were in Civ V. Instead of an Influence meter where your influence declines each turn, you gain influence by sending Envoys to the City-States. You earn Envoys on an Empire-wide basis; you can decide which City-State to send them to, but only among the ones you have actually met in the game. As in all Civ games, exploration is a key imperative for a variety of reasons, but certainly among them is that you want to meet all of the City-States. You earn Envoys throughout the game from a variety of souces. First is your Government type. When you start at Chiefdom, you earn one Influence point per turn, but move up to a Level 1 Government like Oligarchy or Autocracy it jumps to 3 points per turn. At Level 2 such as Monarchy or Merchant Republic it jumps again to 5. Certain policy cards can give you additional points per turn, and the Diplomatic Quarter district has some buildings that give more. Fulfilling a quest from a City-State is good for another Envoy, and the Governor Amani can increase your envoys.

The point of this is to gain benefits from your relationship with the City-State, and the more Envoys you have, the better the benefits. The general pattern is that 1 Envoy will confer a +2 bonus in the Capital, and the nature of the bonus depends in the City-State. For example, a Cultural City-State will give a bonus of +2 Culture in the Capital, and a Religious City-State will grant a bonus of +2 Faith in the Capital. The next level comes when you have 3 Envoys in the City-State. In general, this gives additional bonuses based on specific Districts. For the Cultural City-State, this will be +2 Culture in each Theater District, and for the Religious City-State (to stay with our examples) it would be plus 2 Faith in every Holy Site District. And if you have multiple districts of the right kind, they all get the bonus, so you can see how this can mount up. And when you get to 6 Envoys, you get an additional bonus of +2 per district on top what you got previously. The one exception to the +2 bonus rule is Trade City-States, which give a bonus of +4 Gold.

Adding additional envoys beyond 6 does not add any more bonuses, so it might make sense to spread your Envoys around to different City-States if you start getting a lot of them. But there is one added level of relationship you can achive, which is to be the Suzerain of the City-State. To be the Suzerain you have to have at least 3 Envoys, and more than any other player. This means that the Suzerain status can change hands multiple times per game, so you might get a message that you are no longer the Suzerain of a particular City-State. This happens when another player has just sent in some Envoys and now has more than you. You can of course fight back by putting in more Envoys of your own, or by using the Governor Amani. There are reasons why being a Suzerain is worth fighting for:

• Unique Bonus – For example, Geneva provides a Suzerain bonus of +15% Science to each of your cities as long as you are not at war with any other player.
• Visibility – You have a full view of the City-State and up to three hexes outside its borders.
• Friendly Territory – Your units can enter the City-State territory, and will heal as if they were on your own territory.
• Diplomatic Allegiance – If you go to war with another player, the City-State will join in the war. But note that if anyone else, including the player you are at war with manages to get some Envoys in there and take away your Suzerain status, the City-State will immediately make peace. There is some clever strategy available here.
• Diplomatic Repercussions -If anyone attacks the City-State, you immediately gain a Casus Belli called Protectorate War that lets you declare war with fewer Diplomatic Repercussions from other players.
• Resource Sharing – All of the City-State’s resourcers are automatically exported to the Suzerain, and the Suzerain can increase these resources by building Tile Improvements using Builder units.
• Levying Units – The Suzerain can pay an amount of gold to levy military units from the City-State for 30 turns. This can make the difference for a short war. Matthias Corvinus is a leader that can particularly benefit from Levying.
• Other Benefits – Pericles gains a 5% Culture bonus for each City-State he is Suzerain of.

So as you can see there are a lot of benefits to be gained from your relationships with the various City-States in the game. Generally your Envoys are permanent, but you can lose them in two ways. First, if you declare war on the City-State you will lose all of your Envoys. But note that this does not happen if you go to war with the Suzerain of the City-State and you are therefor drawn into war with the City-State. And if the City-State is conquered by another player, your Envoys all disappear.

Types of City-States

The game has 48 City-States it can choose from, but you won’t see all of them in games. And different expansions of the game have added and removed certain City-States. The number of City-States is based on Map size as follows:

• Tiny – 6-10
• Small – 9-14
• Standard – 12-18
• Large – 15-22
• Huge – 18-24

So as you can see the maximum number you will see is 24 if you are playing on a Huge map, but even on a Huge map you will often have fewer. These City-States come in 6 types, and each type has 8 possible choices. The types are color-coded in the game.

• Cultural (Purple) – Antananarivo, Ayunthaya, Caguana, Kumasi, Mohenjo-Daro, Nan Madol, Rapa Nui, Vilnius
• Industrial (Orange) – Aukland, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Cardiff, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, Mexico City, Singapore, Toronto
• Militaristic (Red) – Akkad, Carthage, Granada, Kabul, Lahore, Ngazargamu, Preslav, Valleta, Wolin
• Religious (White) – Armagh, Chinguetti, Jerusalem, Kandy, La Venta, Nazca, Vatican City, Yerevan
• Scientific (Blue) – Anshan, Babylon, Bologna, Fez, Geneva, Hattusa, Mitla, Nalanda, Palenque, Seoul, Stockholm, Taruga
• Trade (Yellow) – Amsterdam, Antioch, Bandar Brunei, Cahokia, Hunza, Jakarta, Lisbon, Mogadishu, Muscat, Samarkand, Venice, Zanzibar

Keeping Track

There are two places on the screen where you can keep track of where you are with the City-States and Envoys. On the Upper Right of the screen there is a button that looks like a dome on a building, and if you mouse-over it it will say “City-States”. You can click on it and see the status of every state you have met. I have a saved game right now where I am at turn 340, in 110 BC. I can see that I have met 5 City-States, I am the Suzerain of 3 of them, another player is the suzerain of 1, and another City-State has no Suzerain yet. There are players I have not yet met, and City-States I have not yet met, and no doubt when I do meet them they will have a Suzerain, perhaps one of the players I have not yet met. One City-State I am suzerain of is Bandar Brunei, a Trade City-State where I have 4 Envoys. I can see that I am getting my bonuses from my first Envoy, and from having at least 3 Envoys. And I can see what I would get if I make it to 6 Envoys, and what I get as a Suzerain bonus. So you don’t need to memorize all of the benefits, it is presented for you right on screen.

Then in the Upper Left there is a small icon that looks like the Dome icon only smaller, and it tells me how I am doing at getting Envoys. When I mouse-over it, I see that I will get1 Envoy when I accumulate 300 Influence points, that I currently have 11 points, and I am earning them at 3 per turn. It also says that the main sources of Influence Points are Governments and Policies. My government right now is Classical Republic, and as a Level 1 government it is supposed to give me 3 per turn, so that accounts for it. As for Policies, I have taken the Diplomatic League policy card, which says that the first Envoy you send to a City-State counts as 2.

Strategic Considerations

You should be selective about where you place your Envoys to get the best result. Note that the Types of City-States match up with types of Victories you can pursue. So if you are aiming for a Culture Victory your first choice should be Culture City-States that can aid your victory. Of course not all City-States match up this way. Trade and Industrial City-States can help with any kind of victory since Gold and Production are always useful. And if you haven’t met any of the type of City-State you want to make friends with, you can always close the screen without assigning any Envoys. And note that you can be in competition with other players to become Suzerain, and your efforts here may have repercussions regarding your relations with the other players. Which may mean you need to keep up your military. Actually, you always need to keep up your military in this game.