City State Tile Expansion

The tweaks to border expansion seemed to create a lot of 4th and 5th tile grabs that screw up good settling spots. You notice it most with CS, and I’m guessing it’s because they are usually isolated for a while and don’t settle additional cities. I’ve noticed several city states in every game I’ve played since the patch with multiple luxuries and/or strategic resources. It's not exactly the biggest problem with the patch and I’m glad they fixed the reluctance to pick up sea resources, but shouldn’t unworkable tiles in the 4th and 5th rings have very low priority?

Examples from my last game:

I have seen this a few times playing vanilla and it puts a very different perspective on our future relationships with the CSs. I used to like to stay under the radar and own the CS luxury that should have been theirs whilst keeping friendly but not Allied to the said CS.
I often wonder how the AI are programmed, lets just say Sydney has incense nearby and it is not available elsewhere, but I own the incense and yet Sydney seems to be a very sought after CS for all the AI players.
This strategy is no longer viable.

Does seem like a problem - makes no sense they'd unlock those tiles when they haven't opened tiles they can actually use.

Then again it kind of made that Patronage policy stronger, since you'd get an additional +2 happiness now if you ally them.

TractorBoy said:

I have seen this a few times playing vanilla and it puts a very different perspective on our future relationships with the CSs. I used to like to stay under the radar and own the CS luxury that should have been theirs whilst keeping friendly but not Allied to the said CS.
I often wonder how the AI are programmed, lets just say Sydney has incense nearby and it is not available elsewhere, but I own the incense and yet Sydney seems to be a very sought after CS for all the AI players.
This strategy is no longer viable.

Click to expand...

True, their borders do get to their primary luxury a lot faster than before. I just don't like them grabbing 2nd and third luxuries/strategics like some kind of cultural OCC. At least this gives my Great Generals something to do when they retire.

Looking on the good side, if the CS's do this then it should also be the case for the AI in general which means they may be more aggressive in acquiring resources and making competition for them more intense.

Usually if me and an AI border a resource i often will allow my borders to acquire it naturally if i think my cities culture is likely to grow first. If the AI is being more aggressive in purchasing tiles i will be more proactive in purchasing them first.