How to Deal with Settelr Spamming AI?

Every few games on Emperor+ I run across an AI that spams out as many as 10 Cities by Turn 150. In my last game it was the Zulu, and I was luckily their lifelong pal. However, it was still scary to be surrounded by so many Impis. Was there a way to put a check on Settler Spam short of a DoW on Shaka to kill his Settlers? Should I have aimed to beat him in the Settler Spam Race? What do other people do in this situation?

Bribe him to DOw your neighbor instead of spamming so many cities hell put more production into units

There are a few ai with expancion flavor, zulu and Poland come to mind. If they are near you one way to deal with that is to steal there workers early on and then contain to one city.

This means war ! - only definitive solution

Before that - blocking settlers with units (provided you have the units to spare) , bribing them into war with other AI (divert some resources into war - still deity AIs spits settlers out in 1 turn from cities settled in the middle of the snow (slight exageration ..maybe) ) ..

Most important part about bribing AIs into wars is that they start hating each other cuts down on the amount of research agreements they sign between themselves - slows down their tech rate - gives you more time to win ...

And obviously - spam your settlers fast enough to grab a few choice spots and then let them spam snow/tundra/desert to their heart's content ...

DarkestOnion said:

Every few games on Emperor+ I run across an AI that spams out as many as 10 Cities by Turn 150. In my last game it was the Zulu, and I was luckily their lifelong pal. However, it was still scary to be surrounded by so many Impis. Was there a way to put a check on Settler Spam short of a DoW on Shaka to kill his Settlers? Should I have aimed to beat him in the Settler Spam Race? What do other people do in this situation?

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Play as Attila and raze those useless spam cities to the ground.

You can ask them to not settle close to your borders. Most often does not work but some times it does and you get more space to grow for your self. I doubt the Zulu despite being friendly would accept it? I think it also depends on how powerful your army/armada is. If you have weak army then why would any one listen to you?

Edit: I once played as the Inca and had an island all to my self... for a while, until Washington showed up. I spotted his settler and asked him to not settle near me. He refused and settled on my island anyway. So I burnt that city to the ground only for some turns later when we had made peace see him settle at the same spot again. And I could not kill his settler since we had a peace treaty.
Well I burnt that city to when the deal was off but he managed to settle a 3rd city at the same spot who I also razed before he got the message (or my borders had probably grown so much that the luxury he was after was inside my borders).

But some do understand that you dont want them near you. I have found that sometimes if you surround another civs settler with some army units and make it difficult for them to advance they can sooner or later just give up and go in another direction.

Ah, the troubles of the peaceniks. I declare war and the settler spam is a blessing to me. Now if only all those razed towns would turn into future archaeological sites.

DarkestOnion said:

Every few games on Emperor+ I run across an AI that spams out as many as 10 Cities by Turn 150. In my last game it was the Zulu, and I was luckily their lifelong pal. However, it was still scary to be surrounded by so many Impis. Was there a way to put a check on Settler Spam short of a DoW on Shaka to kill his Settlers? Should I have aimed to beat him in the Settler Spam Race? What do other people do in this situation?

Click to expand...

The AIs with the high expansion flavors usually have really low flavors for more important things (such as science buildings to keep their army up to date) and are actually no real threat to win the game even if you ignore them.

In fact, if that is a standard map size, chances are that AIs 9th & 10th cities actually slowed down their science rate since they didn't even build libraries and so did not cover the increased science cost per city.

As usual, if you end up at war with them, keep their best cities but raze or gift the others and let them keep one or more of their useless cities after you've taken their capital instead of knocking them out. War monger in BNW is based on number of cities they have left so if that 10 city AI only had 3 cities that were any good you can take all 3 with very little penalty if you bypassed their other 7 (as opposed to if that AI only had 4 cities you'd incur quite severe penalties doing that)

I'm finding that sometimes it's convenient to knock the city down to black and then let someone else at war with them take it. When it's their last city you kind of have to do that, but when it's one of these rinky-dink ICS cities it can still be convenient about 50% of the time. The other guy will either raze it or it will be liberatable for you later.

Thanks for all the advice folks.

I was playing a Deity Challenge Map with Shaka as my closest neighbor. The start location had only Trapping/Sailing Resources and a Tundra Start with only 3-4 River Tiles. This made it difficult to Settle as it would be a Forward Settle if I founded a Second, or worse a Third City.

This resulted in two basic choices: provoke Shaka into an early DoW by Forward Settling him or turtle up and manipulate Shaka from the Tall Land of Two Cities. Frustratingly, when I sicced Shaka on other AI's he took two of them out and tripled the size of his Empire. I continued to set him on other AI's and nobody seemed able to beat his Unit Spam as their Cities either fell of just barely fended him off.

Eventually I rolled into Artillery , but by then he had me surrounded with 10+ Great War Bombers and Great War Infantry. With 5 Artillery I was able to take a single City in 4 turns with the loss of half of my Army, but by then he Spammed/Moved a Carpet of Doom into my lands. Fighting from a Puppeted City and my Capitol with 0 Defense, with half of my Army destroyed and facing a Carpet of Doom stopped being an exciting and fun challenge very quickly.

If it's land that is of no consequence to you, and you're indifferent as to if you it's occupied or empty, I think it's pretty dastardly, but effective to take the city and sell it off to somebody else. That way inevitably the two cities won't be happy with that living arrangement and will punch each other out.