I’m talking your top 3, perfect situation.
Mine are obvious top tiers but I’m sure other people have different preferences. Curious what combos people love
- Kumasi
- Your Trade Routes to any city-state provide +2 Culture and +1 Gold for every specialty district in the origin city.
- Arguably the most broken city state in the game. Can almost ignore culture completely if you want to
- Chinguetti
- International and domestic Trade Routes receive +1 Faith for every follower in this city, of your founded or majority religion.
- You can either spread religion yourself, or, if the city state is relatively close to you, the AI will do it for you. You can get so much faith from having Chinguetti as vassal that it's worth the enovy investment even if you don't have a single holy site. Extremly powerful for rock bands and national parks spam
I focus heavy on economy early. First two districts are usually holy site then comm hub/harbor.
- Valletta
- City Center buildings and Encampment district buildings can be bought with Faith. Cost of purchasing Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Walls is reduced, but they can only be bought with Faith.
- The ability to instantly buy walls at a discounted price can be useful for deterring an imminent attack from the AI, since it includes wall strength into the calculation for choosing war target. Faith purchasing monuments and granaries also helps a lot in getting newly settled cities started, but it does compete with settlers and builders that you want to be pumping out with golden age Monumentality. That said, there's no policy card for city center buildings and faith is more efficient than gold in the early game due to how districts and buildings give the same amount of each resource despite their exchange rate to production being different. All in all, a highly desirable city state if you have sufficient amount of faith generation. Which is why faith based economy paired with this is great for that super boom expansion.