I love to cherry pick city sites, and was absolutely thrilled at the way Firaxis attacked Rex in cIV, but I'm still facing an AI that's determined to build cities in the most squalid wastelands simply because I haven't claimed the territory, leaving me with porous borders or disconnected civs. In civ 3, I had to play settler pump... for a while at least... to prevent this kind of enemy in-fill But that's getting difficult in cIV. So, my question to the masses: How do you mark your territory? What do you do about that neighbor who insists that three tiles of desert right smack between your capital and your next biggest city is prime real estate for Yet Another City? I know if *I* built a city there, I could *never* make it profitable under cIV rules.

I've taken to not opening my borders until every tile near my perceptual territory is culturally controlled, but closed borders breeds war, it's bitten me once already and I'm eager to avoid a repeat.

I think at least part, if not all, of my problem is my horrible, horrible aversion to overlapping city radii. It torques me off all out of proportion to the actual effect it has on my development, and the AI seems to think nothing of overlapping 3, 6, 10 or more tiles just to make sure someone's culture colors every square. I should prolly talk to a shrink, but I'll ask anyways: Any advice for overcoming this mental defect?

Build culture. After 2-3 border expansions there is no room for overlap.

Or build an army and raze the city. And the civ. And the rest of the continent. Problem solved. :D

On this issue I usually disagree with the average poster. There seems to be an obsession with science slider. I still pump out settlers. Not to the maximum of my ability, but evidently more than cautious "economy" minded folks. Yes, it costs me, but the pays off later. I play on Monarch.

I do this principally to avoid wars of unification later, where you have other civs infinging on your island or interloping in your territory.

I have an aversion to overlapping as well. But a wise man once pointed out that your cities don't make use of every square until very late in the game. So if you follow optimal-city-placement you will have about 50% of your territory going unused for 75% of the game. So then, overlap on valuable land is worthwhile, and the mental solution to the diriness of overlap is merely to pretend a city radius is only the 8 squares it touches, and the additional 12 squares from the fat cross are just squares that happen to be workable by the city if it happens to become huge. But they aren't part of the city. It's just some new annex or whatever, a bonus from having a city grow so large.

Don't post questions in the article forum.

Yeah, I *just* saw that... I didn't realize I was in the article forum, I thought I was still browsing strategy & tips. Not sure when I crossed over.

Looking desperately for a way to move it now.

Like Chambers here, I like to build a few more settlers than are absolutely needed. I find that while it does hurt my economy in the short turn, once I get the cities all set up and running smoothly I tend to have a far larger and more powerful empire than I would otherwise, and can usually catch up easily enough.

The other solution is to go crazy and wipe out all your neighbors, then settle the empty spots at your leisure. You really need a decent UU to pull this off, which limits it to Rome, Egypt, and Persia. The Mongols might work too; I haven't tried them. Inca is possible, but hard to do and very odd to play.

I have the same problem as the starter. AI still seems to settle every barren arctic rock left outside my border.

A city needs a population of 20+ to work every single tile around it, and that won't be happening until very late, and that is without having any specialists. It is exceptionally unlikely in any remotely standard game that all of your cities will reach that state before the game is over or near over.

Therefore, I do not concern my self with EVERY city being perfect. I prefer nicely spaced, minimal/no overlap, resource hogs of cities but I'm not beyond settling a marginal city in a less than optimal location IF it can get to size 6+ or so, which is often easily done even in crappy terrain if there's even one food resource.

When it comes to tundra/desert/ice sometimes you can build a city that's half on crap land and half on good land so that it can easily get to size 12+ but will never be a powerhouse 20+ city. I won't settle the craptastic junkers the AI will create, that will never grow at all, but I'm not above settling a mediorce city if it'll cover a strategic location, get me a critical resource, or fill out the borders of my perceived empire. Sometimes nice resources like oil or aluminum pop up later in these less than ideal terrains too.

I don't exactly like that eventually ever tile on the board, no matter how crappy, gets settled eventually (ala Civ 3), but it's not exactly terrible when the AIs settle the north pole because it means they're losing money (because it takes the AI forever to grow those junkers in any ways (culture, pop, commerce) and wasting units defending them.

It sorta seems like an AI flaw to me for the AIs to continue settling for the entire game and to settle ice flows and other horrible locations. I can somewhat understand it if there's at least one food resource and something to gain by it but I often see AIs settle ice cities or desert cities nowhere near their core empire and those cities either never grow or take forever to grow. The AIs just don't know when to stop. :/

War would seem to be the solution, especially early in the game when neither civ will posses the military units necessary to win a decisive victory. I've been in early wars like this while sqaubbling for territory early in the game. It never seems to affect end game relations as long as you do a good job making friends with the AI once the war is over. Or you could be unlucky and get creamed.

The formula I usually follow is build two defensive units in a city, then pump out two or three settlers with that city, then go on building improvements or military units. If you build two defensive units first, your city should have a population of three when it begins to produce settlers, making your run of settler production quicker, and safer beceause of the presence of the defensive units. This also allows you to cascade your settler production instead of producing settlers in all your cities, effectively stopping your economic improvement.

Say you have six cities in your empire. Your three most recently founded cities will be producing settlers, while the first three you founded have finished settler production. They're building the most powerful units available, which you can send to harass other civs, and to help fortify the new cities you will be founding with the settlers produced from the last three cities. Once you have the desired number of cities, instead of building settlers after your run of defensive units, focus on building workers to get your economy really rolling after the expansion phase.

As for cities the AI plops right in the middle of your empire. Put cultural pressure on those cities by building a library, obielisk, theater and other cheap culture producing improvements early to flip that city. You might have to wait for the return, but this would help you have continuity in your empire.

sounds like you play as a peaceful/builder (at least in the beginning), then you should have no problem getting enough culture to flip that city, since if the squares are so bad, the AI will have a hard time accruing culture. if you don't want the city, then just raze it by force.

What if you're playing on emperor with Rome on your border and they plop their city 3 tiles away from your own city. Then they get pissed off when your culture pushes against the city they put right next to yours and send an army of praetorians to destroy you. What are you supposed to do? It's not like you can stop your city from putting cultural pressure on theirs when they were the ones to put it 3 squares away. Even if you can manage to stave off their praetorians getting them to make peace without giving up cities is nearly impossible. Damn overpowered praetorians...

Has anyone tried demanding the offending cities in the middle of your empire from the AI?

What about starting a war, razing/taking the city, and then asking for a peace treaty?

I've only played at low levels, so it's easy enough to just take them by culture, but I'm worried when I move to higher levels and can't build so many culture buildings. The few turns of war works for me so far, and I've also just posted military units when I have small gaps the AI is aiming for - sometimes it takes 6 or more, but I usually have an offensive and defensive unit in each city, so as long as I see 'em coming I can send out my offensive units. It's also interesting how simply having an impressive army (check your stats) will scare off the AI from declaring war on you.

It sorta seems like an AI flaw to me for the AIs to continue settling for the entire game and to settle ice flows and other horrible locations.
Sometimes nice resources like oil or aluminum pop up later in these less than ideal terrains too.

I guess this answers the question. Oil seems to really like appearing in the middle of the Sahara-like desert or ANWR-sized tundra, where I'd never put a city in a million years. The AI unfortunately does and so I've lost out on some good resources. :(