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Episode: 4590
Title: Playing Civilization V, Part 9
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4590/hpr4590.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:14:37 (official HPR transcript)
---
This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4590, for 2026-03-06
Today's show is entitled, "Playing Civilization V, Part 9"
The host is Ahuka and the duration is 00:14:17
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "We continue our look at the game mechanics of Civilization V."
Hello, this is a hookah welcome you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode in our ongoing series on computer strategy gaming
And we're continuing our look at civilization five and
Why don't we want to talk about today primarily is city states now city states
Was a newly introduced feature in civilization five and they play an important role in the game
They represent the small countries that are not running the world
They do not produce settlers
So they do not expand beyond the one city
Though that city can and will expand its borders in a similar way to how your cities can grow
They do not start with a military unit, but they can produce military units and defend themselves
They can also build buildings in the city, but not wonders
They do have a single vote each in the world Congress or later
United nations making them a key to a diplomatic victory
Now city states start out neutral with regards to the actual players
But your interactions with them can affect how they feel about you
For example, if you send units through their territory, they will get hostile
But if you give them gifts that makes them friendly
So
If you wish to go to war with them
You can and you can take them over
This will affect your diplomatic relations with other players and other city states
But if you have decided on a war of conquest as your victory type that won't matter to you, right?
As mentioned if you want to go for a diplomatic victory
You want to be allied with as many of them as possible to get their votes in the world Congress or the United Nations
But even if you don't need their votes, there are other benefits from friendly relations
There are two levels to friendly relations, friendly and allied and the benefits get better as relations improve
Now there are five types of city states
There's the militaristic
The maritime, the cultured, the mercantile and the religious
Now there's benefits to having relationships with each of these kinds of cities
If it's a militaristic city state and your friends with them, they will periodically give you a unit
Which will appear in your city which is closest to the city state
If you're allies, they'll give you units more often
Maritime
A maritime city state if your friends, they will add two food to your capital city
If your allies, they will add one more food to every city you have
This can be a great way of growing large cities
Cultured city states share their culture with you
At one rate if you are friends and at double the rate if you are allies
So if you are going for a
Culture victory which is one of the victory types
Obviously you want to make sure you are allied with this many of the cultured city states is possible
Now mercantile city states give you and added three happiness if your friends
If your allies you get the three happiness but in addition get access to a luxury resource
That cannot be obtained any other way and that also adds happiness
And you know managing your happiness as we've seen is one of the key things in in safe
So five religious city states give you a one-time bonus of faith when you first meet them and provide added faith
perturne
Now note that cultured and religious city states increase the amount of culture or faith they provide with each new era
So the earlier you develop your relations with them the better the benefit
Yeah, how do you manage your relations
There is a mechanism in the game which keeps track of points to define your relations with the city states
On this numerical scale neutral has a value of zero
Friendly is a value of 30 year above and allied is 60 year above
In the other direction once you go into negative numbers they become angry
If you go negative enough it becomes war
Now a city state can only ever have one ally if only one player has more than 60 influence points
That player will become the patron of the city state and they will ally to that player
Now if two or more players have more than 60 influence points
Then the ally will be whichever one has the most
Now as the game goes on you may get a message that a city state you had as an ally has suddenly decided to ally to someone else
This is frequently the result of the other player gaining influence points in some way often by gifts
You can also gain influence points by promising to protect a city state
But do this with your eyes open if you do not follow through and your promise it will enraged the city state
And you will lose a lot of influence with them
Now your influence with the city state has a natural resting point at zero or neutral
That means that barring other factors a positive number will fall over time and a negative number will rise over time
So for example, let's say you sent one of your units through their territory
Now that'll put you into negative numbers. They'll be angry for a period
But if nothing else happens they will return to neutral
On the other side
Even if you ally with the city state you don't stay allied forever unless you find ways to keep adding influence points
As a variety of ways of doing that one way is to eliminate barbarian camps near the city state
In fact, this is one exception to the rule about sending units through their territory
If you are doing it to attack the barbarians you were seen as a protector not an invader and there is no penalty
Another way to gain influence is by completing a quest from a city state
Each city state you are in contact with will periodically give you a quest and if you fulfill it you will gain influence points
That can include killing a barbarian camp or killing nearby barbarian units, but you can do that at any time. You don't need a quest
Others might include acquiring a great person of a certain kind
Building a world wonder
Bullying another city state
Finding a natural wonder and so on
Now just because they've given you a quest you don't need to do it. You don't need to fulfill the quest
For example if you're strategy calls for ally with other city states
Like you're going for a diplomatic victory ultimately you might want to pass on bullying another city state
There's no penalty for not fulfilling a quest just a bonus when you do fulfill one
Now personally in my games I never bully city states
But just not my style of play and I win a lot of games
Okay another way to gain influences with gifts the most effective is gold and
One large sum is more effective than several small ones
Now for a diplomatic victory strategy you should plan on having a large treasury as you approach the endgame
So that you can buy allies in time for the crucial vote
You can also gain a small amount of influence points by gifting units
I make it a practice to do this whenever I have units that I don't want any longer
These could be obsolete units that have no upgrade path for instance
I don't want to pay maintenance on them as that's a drain on my treasury
And I could just delete them but gifting them to a city state gives me a small amount of influence
Another way to get a big jump
In your influence with a city state is to capture and then return one of their workers
Okay, now I don't mean capture their worker when it's still their worker, but for instance
Very often a barbarian will capture a city state worker
And then that city state worker will have the red color of the barbarian and then you capture it
And when you do that you have the option of keeping the worker for yourself and in the early game
I would probably do that because the worker is so valuable
But at a certain point I have enough workers and getting the 45 influence points for returning the worker is a more effective use
Remember that you have to keep earning influence points to keep up your relations
So even if you get an ally of a city state for a few turns
It will naturally decay back to neutral
By around the middle of the game if you're playing well you can start to invest the resources needed to maintain your relationships
And in particular if you are going for a diplomatic victory
Which relies on having a lot of allied city states
The best way to go for that is to have a strategy focused on getting as much gold as possible
And so that's something to keep in mind when you're deciding which empire you want to play as and things like that
City states get involved in wars if you're allied with a city state and you get into a war with another player
The city state that is allied with you will join in the war
Now of course the same is true for the other player so the war between the two players could also involve three to four city states trading as allies
Now you cannot make peace with a city state while it is allied to a player your war with
You first have to make peace with that player or wipe them out if that suits you
However, if you can get more influence with that city state and supplant the other player
You can get that city state to ally with you and then you can turn around and attack your enemy
Generally a large cash gift can do this once again showing the utility of a fat treasury
Now final note about exploration
And which is a very important thing you you always need to be
Focusing on you cannot have diplomatic relations with the city state you haven't met
So this reinforces the idea that you have to explore the map as soon as possible
Of course you have to balance this with other priorities such as expanding your cities and defending them, but
You know finding the right balance is what all the civilization games are about
Now in most maps this means you should be giving some attention to developing your naval power and technologies
There seems to be a bias to city states being coastal and in many cases they are in small islands
Of course there are a number of motivations for exploring the map
First of all you need intelligence of what you're up against with other players
And unless you're on a very large land mass you'll what to find added lands for settlement
Finding natural wonders adds to happiness in your empire, so finding them all is important
And last the unexplored sections of the map have a strong tendency to spawn barbarian units against you
Early on you cannot traverse ocean tiles and need to stick to coastal tiles
The unit at this part of the game early on is the tri-ream which you can build once you discover sailing
Now I usually build one or two tri-reams in a coastal city to go around the coast of the land mass
I'm on and scout out the situation
If another land mass or island is sufficiently close and you can usually see clues to that
on the map
I can cross to it without entering with ocean tile and extend my exploration
But to really explore the whole map you need to get to caravels
This renaissance area unit becomes available when you discover astronomy and is essentially a naval scouting unit
It can enter ocean tiles
So
You know one of the things I will focus on
You know I'm looking at my research
Is
Yeah, I will say okay, I need to get to astronomy and one of the tricks you can open up the technology tree
And if I click on astronomy it will automatically fill in any of the predecessors that have to be
Researched first to get there so if I say astronomy is my ultimate
Objective here my number one priority and so okay you got to research these other three things first
It will automatically take me through that so that's just a little tip
So this is a hookah for hacker public radio signing off and as always encouraging you to support free software
Bye bye
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