The Importance of Having a Centralized State

A state is a stable status quo that controls and organizes a piece of land. That's going to require like quite large swaths of land, quite large amounts of people. And if you don't have one, well, then the big brother next door who has a centralized state will organize an army and go and take it from you. The actual seizing of cities and establishing city states is definitely possible. You could have ancient Venice or Belgium or ancient Greek and Athens and all this but it's just a bit more intangible.