Gathering Storm, Capturing City States. War? Influence?

[ShadowLL]

So, I have a question.
In vanilla game AI liked to declare a war without any reason and then if I dare to take one of their cities during war - I immediately called as militarist with diplomatic penalties

Same goes if I try to capture city state

Now in Gathering Storm we have some new system which allows us to declare war to someone, who do a lot of bad things to us and reject promises without diplomatic penalties

That being said, is there a way to capture city state without being called as militarist?
I have a little island with not much free space and this CS gives bonuses I don't need.
But for now I don't want any trouble from AI for capturing that? (well, I will go to world war but not yet, hehe)

Or maybe by this new system with influence? I just dont get it. I have 3 cities near this CS, its still totally loyal to itself

[Kissaku]

Well I think they will always think you're a warmonger if you start to take innocent city states. But if you are their friend already, it's harder to make them hate you even if you take a few city states.

[gimmethegepgun]

City states get an enormous loyalty bonus that makes it extremely difficult to flip them by loyalty.
It's not impossible though, but I think only Eleanor might be able to pull it off.

[leandrombraz]

You gonna get grievances with every Civ if you capture a CS, iirc. I don't remember the exact value but it isn't a lot, at least not in early game where it fades faster (grievances fades by 10 in the ancient era, then one less for each era). You might get denounced by a Civ or two but the penalty will be gone by the time the denouncement period ends. Try to declare as much friendships as you can before you capture it. Friends can't denounce nor declare war, so your relationship with them won't be affected into the friendship expires, and even then the AI have a tendency to renew friendships, if you don't forget to do it on the same turn it ends.

When you get to the medieval era, the world congress will be available, which mean civilizations that sent at least one envoy to the city-state before you conquered it will be able to put for vote an emergency against you, which will trigger a special session in the congress. If the emergency vote passes, each Civ that voted in favor of it will declare war on you and won't accept peace into the emergency is over. They will try to take the city-state back, so get ready.

City-states get a +20 loyalty bonus, to be specific, to prevent it from revolting too easily. It can happen but it takes a lot of loyalty pressure.


So if you gonna do it, do it fast, preferably in the ancient or classical era. After that it will be harder to get away with it without much consequences.

[plaguepenguin]

This is a game of trade-offs. You have to give up on being thought of as some sort of pacifist humanitarian by other civs if you want to go around conquering cities -- no matter how great your need. You can win the game with every other civ hating your guts, and you usually have to settle for that downside if you want to enjoy the many upsides of conquest. The game gives you ways to offset the the downsides of everyone hating your guts, but not all the perfumes of Araby will wash away all the blood from your hands.

[Shahadem]

Originally posted by gtomkins1:

This is a game of trade-offs. You have to give up on being thought of as some sort of pacifist humanitarian by other civs if you want to go around conquering cities -- no matter how great your need. You can win the game with every other civ hating your guts, and you usually have to settle for that downside if you want to enjoy the many upsides of conquest. The game gives you ways to offset the the downsides of everyone hating your guts, but not all the perfumes of Araby will wash away all the blood from your hands.

Where is the downside? The AI civs are a bunch of donkeys anyways.