AI coastal cleverness

Gravesend

Chieftain
Joined
Dec 27, 2013
Messages
1
Hello!

Long time unregistered lurker, first time poster! 500 h into Civ V, played all of them quite a lot, except Civ 1.

With regards to AI city placement: I see quite often how the AI will place a city one hex from the ocean, making the city a non-coastal city. Now, that is (almost) never a good idea, but why does this happen so often? Seems like an issue that should have been ironed out a long time ago. Any thoughts on this?
 
No idea. Guessing cuz of 4 hex limit space between each city.
 
I don't think it's intentional most of the time, but sometimes it is a good move to put your city one tile away from the ocean. If there's no available sea resources to use, no useful trade route connections, no need for a harbor city connection, and the location makes your city vulnerable to an aggressive civ's navy, then it's not really worth placing it on the water. A further inland city will also have more tiles to work in the future, as opposed to potentially useless 2-food coast tiles.
 
Maybe someone occupied the spot on the cost. :p Sounds silly but happens to the AI more often than you would think. It seems that the AI when planning city locations has a timeframe of 1 turn in consideration, which means that it will consider at any moment which tile is - at that very moment - most opportune to settle. If that is the tile it occupies, it places a city - without regard for potentially better locations coming up when unit location changes.

I have more than once tried to prevent the AI from settling a particularly good location I wanted by placing a scout on the spot if I see the AI moving a settler towards that area. What then normally happens is the AI will settle a crap city as closed to the desired spot instead. :mad: Might seem like crappy AI coding, but to the developers defense, I will say that in this particularly case, it does prevent a pretty easy AI abuse.

However, if this was the case in your situation I don't know. More likely the optimization for regular city distance kicked in as mentioned above.
 
AI can see resources before it has the tech. Reach atomic era and you'll find those stupid cities were all next to aluminium and uranium.
 
I think the AI just goes to the closest or most resourceful city settling recommendation, they don't really think "Ooh a costal city is a great idea, let's do it!". But if the coast has some good resources, then they will probably settle there. Normally on my games there are a good number of coastal cities.
 
I also find it annoying when there is a possible canal either into a lake or a shortcut between some ocean areas, and the AI settles the tile just next to it. Its really annoying. sometimes the CS are placed there too, and then u cant even do anything about it
 
My impression is that the AI doesn't prioritize coastal cities and will just pick the best overall. If it can get more resources or better tiles inland, it'll probably do that even though a human player would know that a coastal city would be better in the long run.

On the other hand, this makes the AI less vulnerable to sea attacks, so that's a plus.
 
For the most part, AI (and the city recommendation the human sees) favor locations with the most special tiles in the first ring.
 
My impression is that the AI doesn't prioritize coastal cities and will just pick the best overall. If it can get more resources or better tiles inland, it'll probably do that even though a human player would know that a coastal city would be better in the long run.

On the other hand, this makes the AI less vulnerable to sea attacks, so that's a plus.

This.

AI has a special way of valuing cities, which is how the advisor city placement markers pop up. If the computer deems that there's more to have 1 tile inland, that's where the city will be.
 
This could be clever because this prevents aggressive naval civilizations from occupying the city. It could also settle off the coast because of the lack of resources.
 
I think it's fair to say that not all coastal cities are better than inland cities. I also think that humans plan for multiple cities all at once and, if their plan doesn't work out, that coastal city will be far less valuable.
 
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