I want my setting to mostly be made up of city states rather than large nations...

I want my setting to mostly be made up of city states rather than large nations. What changes could I make to the world to encourage city states to form and to have them stick around instead of consolidating into bigger states?

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Dangerous wilderness full of terrible monsters that can destroy entire armies

Only small groups of daring individuals can hope to cross the gulfs between civilizations

Just spitballing ideas, I don't claim to be an expert.
I'd imagine that a ton of defensible terrain, good fortification tech, and a healthy trade economy should do. Mountains and walls make it a pain to consolidate since sieges suck. Healthy trade makes exploring, colonizing, and just sitting back on money making and letting mercs fight a more tempting option. Why conquer the little farming town next door that has a giant hill fort when you can have a trade war with another big city? The little guys can't hurt the big guys, and the big guys have no reason to waste the effort on the little guys. if one big city state eats another one, they get smashed by a coalition war and cut down to two different city states (with changed administration allied to the invaders of course).
Hilly terrain, tons of islands, jagged coastlines, fjords, deep water ports, channels, areas for overland portage between harbors, and a lack of major rivers should all be good.l

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Every city has a supply of nuclear weapons. They can be maintained easily and used either in scorched earth or if the city is going to bebovertaken from within. You pretty much end up with fine then though.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 did this to excellence.

*with dune

Why not just play in the setting’s history of city states? Eventually they’re going to form into larger states or be conquered but it’s not like the PCs would see that in their life time

How so? I've been avoided the game since it seems really anime in a bad way

Most everyone lives on the backs of giant creature/pseudo islands and everything else is just sea. Plenty of trade but each titan is pretty separate.

Differences in language, race, species, or faith.
Hostile land that is dangerous to cross. I mean its tabletop so thats somewhat easy.
And, like the greeks, they can all agree on "Fuck you guys, but double fuck those foreigners!" and basically be a confederacy.

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> "Fuck you guys, but double fuck those foreigners!"
Also "Fuck Athens/Sparta/whoever is doing too well right now." Coalition wars to curb rising powers are always great.

What if every city state has a local god that keeps people from conquering it?

Agreed, gotta have the teams ups to take down the lads getting to big for their breeches.

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Instead of gods, what if they were cute giant girls

As much as I like monster girls and such, giant girls aren't my fetish. Plus I'm taking the setting semi-seriously

This, interestingly, is basically how religion worked in the classical era. God's were all very much local and tied to a certain space. So there could be multiple gods of the same thing or w/e. The Greeks and the Roman's streamlined this via Syncretism - one god of war, but different names and forms all over

>Beaver posting
You, I like.

Thank you.
You would be surprised at how useful it can be for world-building.

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Your city looks like pizza.

I wasted my time thinking that would be informative but Beaver user is embarrassingly opinionated for someone with such simplistic opinions.

And you found it necessary to bump a thread several pages down simply to express that?

I made monsters and need to make cities fortified, you must live close of your food and protect it, or monster destroy it, the cities can expand with new wall sections, but the point remains, its not a freely accesible city, the walls are what hold the monsters away, not individuals, think of the chinese city walls, they dwarf anything the americans made simply because of a higher populace, but here is different, humans are not on the top of the food chain and by adding walls you can avoid being eaten.

Strong cultural differences and the martial means to fight each other off as well as a mutual enemy.

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Beocians best league.

Sufficiently low population that people don't need a lot of space to produce food with sufficiently high tech (at least primitive agrarian) and sufficiently high culture (which is probably present with an agrarian society) that living in close proximity is not a problem. Some degree of xenophobia or otherness sufficient to make one city believe their way is the best way or that prevents leaders of states from grouping to form more miltarily or culturally dominant bodies.

Sufficiently small living space so that population cannot spread widely, possibly with limited means or desire to communicate with other regions. Please use a dictionary if you think communicate is limited to "talk" or "write" etc.

These can be seen to some degree in the region called the Cradle of Civilization where large populations were confined to living near rivers.

Sufficient new living spaces such that when once space reaches capacity it is possible to found a new colony. While this colony may acknowledge, especially for some generations after its founding since blood relatives are likely to be present across both mother and daughter cities, its ties to its mother, it is possible for it to be self governing.

Notably, Greece's mountains and islands lead to a degree of geographical isolation between major population centres, they were ones who founded cities around the Mediterranean.

Ciites can became wealthy enough through trade that merchants can declare themselves independent of kings. A loose confederation of these states can then oppose empires. This was in part seen in Italy, fuelled by a dispute between religion and crown (where the crown said it had the right to appoint church officials). While they fought each other they could also unite against common rivals like the Ottomans.

This wasn't seen in Northern Europe because culturally they were not as diverse as the Mediterranean region and the rulers suppressed commerce.

Each city is controlled by incredibly insular paranoid leaders/vested interests that want to maintain barriers between the populations because it makes them easier to control and exploit. Add a paranoid weapon obsessed population, a belief that only their own city matters, a fear of different religions, cultures or people who look slightly different.

What's wrong with the thread? For once it's not a shitpost or bait

A culture that promotes stubbornness and independence, so any time a power had threatened to conquer them, they all band together to throw them off.

You could also do it HRE style, techinically the cities are already integrated into a kingdom or empire, but it’s so decentralized that they are still effectively independent.

Also have the citystates in question make lots of money so they can afford an army that hits above its weight level.

Powerful individuals who all want to lead but no one is so powerful they can unify the disparate states

IRL city-states are always born from peculiar circumstances, such as

1) Being a "minority" system in the region (singapore, Hong Kong, but to an extent also the free cities of the late medieval pre-nation states and Germany) with a particular history-
2) Loving commerce. In the middle ages also some pre-industrial manufactory, but mostly commerce.
3) This is perhaps more interesting: they generally thrive when there is a greater landfilling nation next to them, but it's somehow less "modern". Think china and hong kong in the late 1900s, but also norhtern italy and germany in the 1200-1500.
4) Little cultural differences if they're in a cluster. Hell, possibly less than in the Empire, being more dynamic and prone to exchanges and people journeying.
5) They generally do have more representation of the people, but it's not that simple. Venice is an interesting case, being an aristocratic republic that dissed the popular representation but had some sort of welfare system that you didn't have in, say, the french countryside - also there is the matter of their vassal cities.
6) They can have a countryside and generally will, but it will not be administered via feudalistic means (feudalism is of course anathema to them, unless perhaps in far-flung colonies).
7) The army is composed by every citizen, inasmuch they're trained to that and registered for it (think of switzerland). Again, Venice at its peak had something like 50.000 men ready to fight, which is pretty mind-boggingly high for such a small population. In actuality the citizen army was summoned when there were critical conflicts, and not every guy got to march - the usage of professional mercenaries was far more common (as in, they were the main standing force in Brescia. To be fair Venice is kinda cheating in this regard, 'cause the true force was obviously the navy which was differen still, but again, interesting because the system worked)

They didn't EVER cover the whole world or continents.

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In general defensibile terrain isn't that much of a thing with city-states. Look at southern italy for classical/ellenist greece. "Original" Greece is kinda of an exception and even then, you'd be surprised how small the terrain obstacles tend to be (consider that these guys had navies, as well).
Syracuse managed to have basically all Sicily under itself, for example, not having much barriers.


Now, there's no reason to change it in a fantasy setting, of course, but still.

So, a normal adventuring setting.