Suzerain - If someone attacks one of my states, shouldn't I automatically declare war?

[nikolaanne]

Scythia (my ally) has just attacked a City-State where I'm Suzerain, but I've not automatically declared war on Scythia? I'm puzzled...

What's the mechanism here? Do I now have Casus Belli? Or do I have to put up with it and let the City-state defend itself ?

[Corgisaurus]

Unfortunately there is nothing you can do diplomatically to defend that city state. The AI doesn't even consider who the Suzerain of the city state is before attacking, which means the devs had no intention for players to protect city states without declaring war. I would go as far as to say that the devs are doing this to encourage war.

[firestar587]

it may be because your allys do to the fact that you can't declare war on allys

[VeronicaCardican]

If you have the Diplomatic Service Renaissance Civic you can declare a protectorate war which will generate no warmonger penalty from liberation of your city state. You will probably have to wait for your alliance to expire and Scythia must annex the city state first.

[tdclark]

I think the Suzerain should carry more weight. I think I should be notified when some one attacks my city-state(s) and be able to defend them. Being Suzerain should mean more, or perhaps have an additional catagory if you have 10+ envoys, or have been Suzerain for 30+ turns, that makes you their protectorat. Attacking my city-state is equivalent to declaring war on me as well.... just my 2 cents.

[wildmick]

don't ally. full stop. ally system is broken. no point to it unless you want a defensive alliance treaty, which is nigh on impossible to obtain. declared friend is better. declared friends won't dow you. ally = them sending units to your lands blocking your lands, can't tell them to leave if alliance fails and your left with them in your lands without anyway to remove them, without dowing them back. ai only gets alliances for the civic they need for civil service to half the production time.

[Lemurian1972]

Originally posted by tdclark:

I think the Suzerain should carry more weight. I think I should be notified when some one attacks my city-state(s) and be able to defend them. Being Suzerain should mean more, or perhaps have an additional catagory if you have 10+ envoys, or have been Suzerain for 30+ turns, that makes you their protectorat. Attacking my city-state is equivalent to declaring war on me as well.... just my 2 cents.

Additionally, NOT being the suzerain should carry more weight too. I just finished a game as Barbarossa and it seems like the new warmonger rules didn't take into account City States. I decided to play the civ as designed, and took two important CSs on my continent to deny their bonuses to the other civs, while I focused my Envoys elsewhere. The warmonger penalties were just as bad as prior to the patch, taking 2 CSs meant something like -80+ with all the other civs, and took over 2 centuries to work off. Whereas later I declared a post-victory 'fun war' to make use of my tech advantage, and wiped Phillip II off the map (capped his 4 cities) and took 5 cities from China before my Warmonger penalty got to the same point.

My point being, I think unless a civ has a specific carebear agenda where they love all CSs, the only folks who should care about your attack should be the ones with envoys there. At least for the early game, when the world was more violent.

[Chrisuu]

I've also allied with Scythia, and they've also attacked a city state I'm the suzerain of, Kumasi.

Seems like a very strange thing for an ally to do. I feel like this is an oversight on the game designer's part.

[Dray Prescot]

There is a very easy way to handle attacks on City States that you want to keep alive (that you are suzerain of): surround it's only City with your units so the attacker can not attack the City. There are two ways to do this, if the City State is really close to you, you can use your own units, which is generally not a good idea since it it ties up your units. The best way to defend the City State is to hire it's military units, and then locate those units, which are now your units, around the City. You can NOT leave a single tile next to the city unoccupied, since the attacker will use ranged units to attack the city from two tiles away, and that single tile for a melee unit to conquer the City. If that Civ still wants to attack that City State, he will have to go through your units, i.e. declare WAR on YOU, and if he is your Ally or Friend, hopefully he will not do that. If he is your enemy, now or in the near future, those City State units in your control, can make the difference in the war between you, but make sure you do not lose control of that City since that will kill those units (that you hired) as well.

You can even upgrade the City State units which will make the City State a lot harder to attack after the 30 turns hire period are up.