How to stop Ai spamming the map?

I think the problem here isn't that AI's don't use specialists correctly; it's that wide is just a much better strategy for the AI. I'm a 4-city Tradition player myself, but when happiness is no object (as with high-difficulty AI's), wide will beat tall almost every time. Better specialist use would definitely help the AI in some cases, but since AI's can support specialists even when going wide, tall empires would still get left in the dust (just slightly less),.

Exactly. If you have no happiness issue and a substantial culture discount, settling anywhere any everywhere makes perfect sense.
 
What is the point of a comment like this? You're really saying I'm playing incorrectly because my cities occasionally are more than 8 tiles apart? What if I conquer an AI city that's more than 8 tiles away, or have to push a little farther to get a lux ....

That is exactly what I am saying, you play incorrectly if there are 8 tiles distance between your cities. You know what happens in multiplayer games when a player becomes too greedy in land grab? He usually gets killed. In single player, AI is not that good yet to kill you but still it can bring some pain.
 
To be fair, if i had infinite happiness like the AI, I would be spamming cities all over the place too. The AI is just abusing his cheats more effectively now.
 
"Oh, but the AI is so much better than when the game first came out. The latest patch is a huge improvement..." :sad:

Heh, yeah- it abuses its cheats more efficiently and extensively, which makes the "I want it harder" crowd happy, I guess. To me, it just makes every aspect of what the AI does look and feel far more ridiculous than it was before. And that's going some.
 
That is exactly what I am saying, you play incorrectly if there are 8 tiles distance between your cities. You know what happens in multiplayer games when a player becomes too greedy in land grab? He usually gets killed. In single player, AI is not that good yet to kill you but still it can bring some pain.

Sorry, but that's a ridiculous opinion to have. To say that if, at any point, you need to settle a cities more than eight tiles away from each other is "playing incorrectly" is just nonsense. Especially considering six tiles is the minimum distance to not overlap tiles, and ten to not overlap borders. You can't move the cities you capture either; are you suggesting I build another, useless city just to bridge the gap?

Regardless, I'm not complaining about the added difficulty. I'm complaining that it's completely nonsensical behavior. If the goal of designing an AI is to get it as close and possible to the intelligence of a human player, this is an element that pushes it farther away. The AI spams cities in such ridiculous locations solely because it has unlimited happiness, not because the location will yield a prosperous city. It's behavior that actively makes the AI dumber because it does things that no human player would ever do.
 
Sorry, but that's a ridiculous opinion to have. To say that if, at any point, you need to settle a cities more than eight tiles away from each other is "playing incorrectly" is just nonsense. Especially considering six tiles is the minimum distance to not overlap tiles, and ten to not overlap borders. You can't move the cities you capture either; are you suggesting I build another, useless city just to bridge the gap?

Regardless, I'm not complaining about the added difficulty. I'm complaining that it's completely nonsensical behavior. If the goal of designing an AI is to get it as close and possible to the intelligence of a human player, this is an element that pushes it farther away. The AI spams cities in such ridiculous locations solely because it has unlimited happiness, not because the location will yield a prosperous city. It's behavior that actively makes the AI dumber because it does things that no human player would ever do.

What level r u playing? I don't think having cities 8 tiles apart is an option in immortal level. There is a high chance that u loose the city in AI's early rush. Any way, u call my opinion ridiculous or what nut. I bet you are in the camp of players who think their city tiles should not overlap. And that is ridiculous.
 
To add to my previous post, there are few things that AI does perfectly, and one them is placing cities 3 tiles apart.
 
Sorry, but that's a ridiculous opinion to have. To say that if, at any point, you need to settle a cities more than eight tiles away from each other is "playing incorrectly" is just nonsense. Especially considering six tiles is the minimum distance to not overlap tiles, and ten to not overlap borders. You can't move the cities you capture either; are you suggesting I build another, useless city just to bridge the gap?

Regardless, I'm not complaining about the added difficulty. I'm complaining that it's completely nonsensical behavior. If the goal of designing an AI is to get it as close and possible to the intelligence of a human player, this is an element that pushes it farther away. The AI spams cities in such ridiculous locations solely because it has unlimited happiness, not because the location will yield a prosperous city. It's behavior that actively makes the AI dumber because it does things that no human player would ever do.

Spamming small cities (ICS) is a very powerful human strategy and that includes planting small cities close together, even on "stupid" places. The cities are meant to be small and not grow up to become "proper" cities, so you can (and frequently should) settle in bad locations. With ceremonial burial, asceticism, order and liberty trade route happiness you're well on your way to manage happiness hit pr city. The Mayas are lethal with ICS. AI gets happiness bonuses because it cannot manage happiness as well as a human player - balancing happiness between -6 and -8 while spamming cities require more attention than the AI is close to do. The AI strategy is based on a sound human strategy, and "because it does things that no human player would ever do" is wrong. The AI could definitely be better though.

As for putting cities 8 tiles apart - it could possibly work if you're at the corner of a map or shielded by a mountain range, but in general you will be eaten alive. To manage units during early rushes you need short distances between cities because you have few or no roads at that point. (*) The cost of roads if you have distances of 8 will also limit your economy and keep your workers busy with the wrong things during the first 120 turns.

(*) Incas, Hiawatha and Jaguars can manage distances well though, and road costs are smaller.
 
In a recent game Greece tried to split my cities by plonking a settler in a gap (I had 2 cities and just finished NC). So I settled cities 3 & 4 around it, so it was cut off. Greece declared war and I burned it to the ground.

I then chased Alexander all the way home and took one of his cities too.

I think you have to act quickly, but if they run away on another continent you have a game on your hands....
 
Spamming small cities (ICS) is a very powerful human strategy and that includes planting small cities close together, even on "stupid" places. The cities are meant to be small and not grow up to become "proper" cities, so you can (and frequently should) settle in bad locations. With ceremonial burial, asceticism, order and liberty trade route happiness you're well on your way to manage happiness hit pr city. The Mayas are lethal with ICS. AI gets happiness bonuses because it cannot manage happiness as well as a human player - balancing happiness between -6 and -8 while spamming cities require more attention than the AI is close to do.
So, what is the point of having these rubbish cities? Abandoning positive happiness means being saddled with low populations, so it's not a good way to milk science.

Seems like a good way to go broke, actually, since yoou'd be indiscriminately picking land that isn't yielding gold.

As for putting cities 8 tiles apart - it could possibly work if you're at the corner of a map or shielded by a mountain range, but in general you will be eaten alive.
Yep, the game is lousy with early rushes from which the AI will not be dissuaded. In all fairness though, nonstop slap-fights over land is a pretty good representation of the ancient era, so I can kind of accept this as intentional design. However, without command points or some similar regular concept to cap unit spam, the AI's gold and production advantages will allow to amass a larger army faster than the player.

Eight spaces is very, very far apart. Should definitely have a stepping-stone city somewhere in between.
 
3 to 4 tiles apart is the perfect distance between cities. With smart management of tiles, Their population can grow above 15 or more which can provide good amount of production and science ( with smart management of specialists).
 
which makes the "I want it harder" crowd happy, I guess.

I am part of that crowd and it doesnt make me happy :-/

I want better AI not more abusive one. Instead of working on improving the AI, they work on making it better at using his cheats and unfair advantages lol, ridiculous
 
This. Yeah, I know, some people were crying for harder AI gameplay (I sure as heck wasn't one of them), but when the result is the kind of ridiculous crap which you describe here, this kind of utterly stupid AI behavior, it just wasn't even worth it, IMO. The stupidity of it hugely takes away from the 'suspension of disbelief' factor. Before, you could manage to rationalize most AI behaviors- but all the spam-settling on raw desert/snow/etc... in every unbelievable nook and cranny across the world that they can barely manage to squeeze a settler onto, completely regardless of where it is in regards to their civ or other civs surrounding it, and completely regardless of available resources or any logic that ever existed in the history of the universe... yeah. That's just wrong in every way, sorry.

Yes...this describes it pretty well.... I realize it's a tough "juggling act" for the developers....after all the AI could never compete with a human player on a level playing field....but it seems once you get too far behind in techs the game becomes either tedious or futile.... I suppose the ideal is a nice, tight game where the human player...at least a sufficiently experienced human player... feels engaged and does not feel the situation is hopeless. A tough assignment for the developers, but I do find at the Emperor level from time to time I get one of those games...and I don't even mind losing one of those if it has been fun....

But I think the AI infinite city spamming has to be reigned in somehow.....I find it rather tiresome, I guess is the best word...when before you even have Caravels, some AI has taken over some other continent, and there was nothing you could have done about it.

Since the last patch, as one of the posters above said, war is more important than ever for any kind of victory. I will now go to war with the AI with little hestitation, if they are close...though often you don't have to wait long for them to DOW anyway...so I'm always prepared....though occasionally it comes quicker than I expected.... And an AI sending a settler into lands I had earmarked for cities is always a "casus belli" ...far easier to get rid of a settler than even a size one city...;)

But sometimes they slip in in the fog and you can't get to them fast enough....
 
Without taking into consideration whether or not it is a good system, the higher up in difficulty you go, the more city spam there is. It's something you have to learn to deal with if/until Firaxis changes it. If you can't/won't, then you might be playing at a difficulty above your head.
 
So, what is the point of having these rubbish cities? Abandoning positive happiness means being saddled with low populations, so it's not a good way to milk science.

Seems like a good way to go broke, actually, since yoou'd be indiscriminately picking land that isn't yielding gold.

ICS is mostly about production/hammers and lends itself well to warmongering. Grabbing and selling luxuries and resources keeps the economy afloat. Science is a challenge, but one should be able to keep not too far behind until industrial/modern. Mayas will of course have no problems keeping up with science with the pyramid.

Of interest: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=473168
 
Spamming small cities (ICS) is a very powerful human strategy and that includes planting small cities close together, even on "stupid" places. The cities are meant to be small and not grow up to become "proper" cities, so you can (and frequently should) settle in bad locations. With ceremonial burial, asceticism, order and liberty trade route happiness you're well on your way to manage happiness hit pr city. The Mayas are lethal with ICS. AI gets happiness bonuses because it cannot manage happiness as well as a human player - balancing happiness between -6 and -8 while spamming cities require more attention than the AI is close to do. The AI strategy is based on a sound human strategy, and "because it does things that no human player would ever do" is wrong. The AI could definitely be better though.

The point is it's not a very good strategy on every map nor is it a good idea with a lot of civs(there's a very tiny handful I would try to ICS with). In single player there's a number of VERY significant drawbacks to ICSing that the AI can ignore with because of its bonuses. The problem is AI tends to ICS on every map as almost every civ with a few exceptions(namely when low expansion civs like Ethiopia roll 0 to -2 on the randomization). I used to see a lot more intelligent expansion at the start of G&K, now it's gone back to the vanilla "plant a city everywhere" thing.
 
Without taking into consideration whether or not it is a good system, the higher up in difficulty you go, the more city spam there is. It's something you have to learn to deal with if/until Firaxis changes it. If you can't/won't, then you might be playing at a difficulty above your head.

True enough...though I do find I'm winning more regularly at the Emperor level... and part of it is a change in my style of play...which is also fine with me... I do not hestitate to attack anyone close by even if I would rather play peacefully to build up my cities.

But I still haven't figured out how to react to the AI city spam that goes on before I even have the techs to do anything about it. It seems it is a matter of luck whether or not AI will get the technology jump on some other continent....it seems to depend on the size of the continent and maybe, probably to a lesser degree, their AI competition.

But I'm open to suggestions....maybe playing as Kamehameha is one strategy....but maybe a different way of thinking about it... My primary objective is to have interesting games... Not tedious slugfests, nor an easy romp through the tech tree, nor that tech scramble towards the end when the AI can't seem to prioritize their space program to finish off their last booster, and you still have three or four space parts to build....yet you manage to eke out a Science Victory...not a very satisfying game I would say....
 
The point is it's not a very good strategy on every map nor is it a good idea with a lot of civs(there's a very tiny handful I would try to ICS with). In single player there's a number of VERY significant drawbacks to ICSing that the AI can ignore with because of its bonuses. The problem is AI tends to ICS on every map as almost every civ with a few exceptions(namely when low expansion civs like Ethiopia roll 0 to -2 on the randomization). I used to see a lot more intelligent expansion at the start of G&K, now it's gone back to the vanilla "plant a city everywhere" thing.

I don't disagree with you at all. I reacted to an assumption that somehow ICS/city-spamming was less like a human player: "If the goal of designing an AI is to get it as close and possible to the intelligence of a human player, this is an element that pushes it farther away." ICS is one of several strategies that should be in a human player's repertoire along with tall, semi-wide, wide, OCC, turtling, .. Not all strategies are suitable for all civs, all maps and all starts.

In the same way ICS is a valid strategy for humans in some cases, it is obviously a viable strategy for the AI, but I think we all want the AIs to have a bigger repertoire than this single strategy. It gets tiresome when we see the same strategy every time for many/most AIs in every game. That some AI civs favour ICS I am ok with, and I frequently I see that AI ICS upsets other AI players causing long-lasting wars.
 
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