Sanction to Remove City State Suzerain

[dire fossil]

I was thinking back to previous iterations of the series and you would always have a way to change suzerain of a city state, but in Civ 7, there is still no way to accomplish this.
I think the most straight forward way to do this is by using Influence on a Sanction specifically for removing the suzerain of a city state.
The details of how this would implemented would be up to the devs, but I have some basic thoughts on how I think it could be implemented:

• If the sanction is successful, then the city state becomes available again and the previous suzerain is not notified who completed the sanction
• If the sanction fails, then the city state remains unchanged, the Suzerain is notified and given some influence, relationship decreases

[royal palm]

If such an idea was to be added, and I think being able to steal city states would add to the strategy of the game, then there should be a counter to it, rather than just a sanction with a % chance. Say the sanction causes a relationship decay with the IP where if it reaches 0 the city-state becomes available again, but where the suzerain can spend their own influence to negate that too and keep the city-state - prioritising that over using their influence for other diplomatic actions.

[dire fossil]

Good point, I did not put a lot of thought into the how to implement, but rather focus on the concept being added. To follow up to your point, the santion can be rejected by a player because that is how sanctions work in the game. What I stated is not stealing it, but rather removing the current Suzerain. After that, the city state resets and players compete for it again with Influence.

[royal palm]

True, I agree with the premise of adding a way to compete for city states that have a suzerain. It would definitely add to the game. I was kind of picturing some kind of tug of war mechanic but just utilising the sanctions mechanics could work too. It's a good idea. 🙂