City-states are small political entities introduced in Civilization V. In essence they are single-city civilizations that do not compete against you or for the victory. However, they can help you win the game, you can just choose to ignore them, or you can conquer them.

There are three types of city-states: cultured, maritime and militaristic. Cultured city-states will give you culture, maritime city-states will give you food, and militaristic city-states will provide units to your army.

Two new types of city-states, religious and mercantile, are added in the Gods and Kings expansion. Religious city-states will give you faith, while mercantile city-states will give you happiness and unique resources, such as porcelain and jewellery, which cannot be obtained from other sources. Militaristic city-states have also been updated, giving them ability to gift you unique units from other Civs (for example, the Cho-Ko-Nu from China).

To communicate with city-states you just click on them. This gives you a simple menu which shows you their attributes and resources as well as your influence with them.

All of the short musical themes for the city-states were composed by Roland Rizzo and some are adapted from preexisting music.

Influence pointsEdit

The amount of influence points determines your influence level with the city-state. There are five different influence levels. You start with neutral, which is exactly what it says. Gaining influence will first make you friends with the city-state, which causes the state to give you gifts based on their type, and eventually allies, which gets you larger gifts plus access to the city-state's luxury and strategic resources. On the other end of the influence level scale are war and permanent war. You can declare war against a city-state just like you can against another civilization and the effects are pretty much the same. Once you irritate, harass and bully city-states enough, they will all join their forces and declare permanent war against you, which they will never end — unless you conquer them, of course.

There are various ways to increase the influence points you have with a city-state, The more basic ones are gifting gold (having in mind that there are benefits in making a large payment instead of some little ones), or gifting units (although the amount of influence points you get is very low), Also city-states can give you a tiny amount of influence points if you pledge to protect them.

City-states occasionally contact you with a mission, which will also give you influence points. The missions are of one of the following kinds:

• Acquire a great person of a certain kind
• Find a natural wonder
• Construct a world wonder
• Connect them with a certain resource
• Destroy a nearby Barbarian camp
• Destroy some other city-state
• Help in a war against another civilization
• Find a civilization
• Build a road to their city

Additionally, befriended or allied city-states may request a road to your capital city. Completing a mission will earn you influence points with that city-state. A way to earn lots of influence points is liberating a city-state: if another player has conquered the city-state and you take it from them, you can choose to annex, raze, or liberate it. Liberating a city makes it almost eternally grateful to you (meaning a lot of influence points), and the city is returned to the game as an individual city-state. Although the allied status will decrease over time, that liberated city-state will always vote for the liberator in the United Nations vote.

City-states and diplomatic victoryEdit

City-states play a major role in diplomatic victories. When the United Nations wonder is built, a UN vote is scheduled every once in a while to vote for a world leader. Every city-state in play will vote for its allies or abstain. It is crucial to get city states to back you, for they are the tie breakers. It is relatively simple to obtain votes from city states if quests they have issued have been completed. It is also possible to gain influence by bribery, and maxing out the influence possible by completing "investment projects" will give the best bang for the buck. Depending on how the game is configured (number of civilizations and city-states), the city states are necessary for having the majority vote.

Known bugsEdit

There is a post-patch bug which makes a request of connecting capital city with city-state impossible to finish. Simply nothing happens after connecting cities (Automated workers will still construct roads).

A city-state can conquer another city. The conquered city will be razed (except capital city). If you click on the razing city, it will bring you to the city state screen.

List of city-statesEdit

The following are comprehensive lists of the city-states that can be found in the game. Mercantile and Religious city-states were added in the Gods and Kings expansion.

Former city-statesEdit

Sydney replaced Copenhagen as a city-state a day after the DLC pack Denmark/Vikings was released. Quebec City replaced Oslo as a city-state as well.

Kathmandu replaced Seoul as a city-state when Korea DLC was released, the same day the August patch was released.

Gods and Kings ExpansionEdit

Dublin, Edinburgh, Helsinki, Stockholm and Vienna were removed as City-States and became on individual cities in various new civilizations. Geneva and Lhasa have been changed into a religious city-states. Genoa, Singapore and Tyre have been changed into mercantile city-states.

Brave New World ExpansionEdit

Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, Warsaw, Jakarta, and Marrakech will be removed in Brave New World as it will be adding them as the capitals of Portugal, Brazil, Poland, Indonesia, and Morocco respectively. Screenshots of Brave New World have also confirmed it will be adding city-states of Ur, Dubai, Riga, and Panama City, possibly just as replacements for city-states being removed.