Who are the worst city-spammers?

Sherlock

Just one more turn...
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Apr 12, 2009
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Shosone, at least in my current game. America is pretty bad too. They've sent settlers my way two at a time.

I already wiped out most Shosone cities in an early war, now their cities are all over the map again.

Do you ignore city-spammers or take out some of their cities?
 
The AI Iroquois have one of the highest expansion flavors.

Taking useless cities in Civ V doesn't do anything to help speed victory, and so unless I get involved in a war with one of those for some other reasons, I'll just ignore it.
Should a war occur, I'd keep a lower percentage of a city spammers cities.
 
I will share this simple edit that has increased my enjoyment of the game by about 400%.

With a text editor, in the GlobalDefines.xml file find the lines:
Code:
<Row Name="MIN_CITY_RANGE">
<Value>3</Value>
And change the &#8220;3&#8221; to a &#8220;4&#8221;. Even having Iroquois in the game no longer bothers me.

There is mod that enables this setting to be chosen during game set up. But &#8220;3&#8221; is almost always too small and &#8220;5&#8221; means some CS will not plant. So &#8220;4&#8221; is ideal. I wish they play tested this more.
 
Japan and the Iroquois are definite city spammers. America, if they aren't killed off early, can spam quite a bit as well.
 
It's a trick question right?! Is this an episode of QI, where if I say 'Hiawatha' the buzzers will go off and Stephen Fry will gloat annoyingly?
 
In my experience Hiawatha.

According to civdata.com the worst expansionist is Shaka

11 Shaka
9 Hiawatha
8 Augustus Caesar
8 Napoleon
8 Kamehameha
8 Alexander
8 Catherine
8 Suleiman
8 Nobunaga
8 Montezuma
8 Pocatello
8 Khan
8 Gajah Mada
 
though that's true I find the warmonger guys to get distracted by fighting early, so the worst "expansionists" from the standpoint of the OP are the more peaceful guys on that list. Yes, I've seen shaka go crazy with settling when he wasn't fighting though!
 
though that's true I find the warmonger guys to get distracted by fighting early, so the worst "expansionists" from the standpoint of the OP are the more peaceful guys on that list. Yes, I've seen shaka go crazy with settling when he wasn't fighting though!


Shaka keeps spamming cities even though he conquered a lot.. I've seen shaka askin for open borders just to spam cities behind me really wierd. While he was at war with indonesia and conquered cities.

But i still thinx Hiawatha is the most annoying one he is peacefull and will just spam cities like there is no tomorow.


Most dangerous Ai i thinx are augustus because he spams cities and develops them well so you will have a big runaway AI.
 
After capturing 2 settlers, I had to build a wall of spearmen to keep Alex's 3 (admittedly fantastic) cities locked behind some mountains. In my current Venice game.
 
After capturing 2 settlers, I had to build a wall of spearmen to keep Alex's 3 (admittedly fantastic) cities locked behind some mountains. In my current Venice game.

I once had venice complain that i was settling land he thought was his.. BUT YOU CANT BUILT SETTLERS .
 
Whoa. Did you have a plan for dealing with an invasion?
Haha, none at all. This was one of the hardest Deity Challenges, a Terra-type map full of psychos. This was my second attempt where I sailed my starting Settler (Polynesia) to an empty island, then settled as much of the second continent before the AI could fill it.

I'm not sure I even bribed Oda once to war - he was happy to just keep attacking his nearest neighbors. We had good relations all game.
 
This was one of the hardest Deity Challenges, a Terra-type map full of psychos. This was my second attempt where I sailed my starting Settler (Polynesia) to an empty island, then settled as much of the second continent before the AI could fill it.
You have made me want to play that map again!
 
Based on my experiences, Hiawatha in general, but depending on the game, Augustus and Oda will spam cities like there's no tomorrow. In my most recent game where I was playing as the Byzantines because I don't like fun, he was plopping down cities literally surrounded by snow, with the closest resources being in the third ring of said city... within my borders already. I didn't mind for a bit because it helped me maintain religious pressure and I had snagged Tithe, but it got extremely annoying to just see useless city after city pop up. I was glad to raze them. Oda was doing the same thing on his continent, settling even one-tile islands with just one fish resource (Admittedly, he got an isolated start with only five city spots.)

The thing about the list above, with the Expansionism bias, is that the warmongers react slightly differently. Shaka loves having a lot of cities, but he prefers to take them from others as opposed to founding them. Oda is more about founding a bunch of new ones, but he also likes taking them from others.

Hiawatha stands out because, as his bias suggests, he is the second-most-spam focused Civ in the game and his peaceful bias means that he will place cities everywhere he can reach. It works out fantastic for the Deity AI, which is barely punished at all and hugely rewarded for going wide, which is why he's so commonly a powerhouse if he gets past the middle ages.

Ashurbanipal will spam cities early but then slow down a bit from what I've seen. Casimir is bizarre. I've seen him be almost as bad as Hiawatha, and I've seen him with only four (admittedly monstrously well developed) cities in the Industrial era. Something about his AI makes him very responsive to all kinds of factors I guess. Dido is infuriatingly stupid about her spam, seeing to for some reason AVOID coastal spots in all my games. Kamehameha is pretty spammy, but not ridiculously so, except he will try to snag juicy coastal spots from you.
 
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