How to stop Ai spamming the map?

A

AlextheGr8

Warlord
Joined
Jan 2, 2012
Messages
180
I hate how the Ai always has a dozen cities so few turns into a game. How best to stop this expansion? I like playing on large maps but with a few less civs than the map allows. So the largest map possible but with only 8-10 civs instead of 12. I just wish the AI stopped sending settlers all over so early on. Is the only way to stop this to set raging barbarians?
 
You could also tone down the difficulty, the amount of expansion is pretty much dependant on the difficulty level as well.
 
War and there you have the major problem of civ 5 from the release which still isn't fixed

war is the only option to play the game and to win if you don't you lose the game
 
apocalypse105 said:
War and there you have the major problem of civ 5 from the release which still isn't fixed

war is the only option to play the game and to win if you don't you lose the game
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You can win even on Immortal without conquering any cities if you like; AI doesn't know how to properly choose Information Era techs to win a spaceship victory.
Now, it's extremely likely that there will be war at some point at that level.
 
I play on normal difficulty, first time tried raging barbarians and that certainly helped. I like to build a core area with 6-8 cities but the AI loves to expand expand expand. Of course it's immune from problems like negative gold because it fields such huge armies, and negative happiness because of the expansion. Oh well I guess I don't expect a perfect game. But it's just annoying to see the AI always expand to 3x the size of my area.

Because of those problems they always pick fights with me, even though I can win because I have better defensive positions than their pathetic offensive attacks in wars. But they always are so far ahead of me in tech because of all those cities and so much happiness.
 
AlextheGr8 said:
I hate how the Ai always has a dozen cities so few turns into a game. How best to stop this expansion? I like playing on large maps but with a few less civs than the map allows. So the largest map possible but with only 8-10 civs instead of 12. I just wish the AI stopped sending settlers all over so early on. Is the only way to stop this to set raging barbarians?
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One way to stop their expansion is to have settled the locations already. The first fifty to eighty turns of the game is (maybe too) important for the rest of the game as those turns basically define whether you're (going to be) the runaway or if you're desperately trying to catch up in a hostile environment.

Two good guides are the 4 city tradition start and the maya/arab ICS guides for two very different starts (tall vs wide/ics). Naturally every game is different and you adapt, but generally you need to decide from the start if you're going one city, tall, semi-wide, wide or ics.

If you know that the neighbour who sent a settler is going to be trouble anyway that settler can become your helpful worker. Genghis, Alex, Attila, etc will attack you soon anyway so getting rid of a settler will reduce their capabilities.

And yes, raging barbarians is nice[*] for the xp/promos and to keep enemy scouts and units occupied for the first 50-100 turns. Also gives influence with city states when you kill barb units near them.

[*] Exceptions are Germany and Songhai. Germany need to clean camps for freebie units, and more barbs makes that process slower. .
 
AlextheGr8 said:
Because of those problems they always pick fights with me, even though I can win because I have better defensive positions than their pathetic offensive attacks in wars. But they always are so far ahead of me in tech because of all those cities and so much happiness.
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If they attack you, counter their attack and take out their cities (either puppet or annex) so they produce gold/science for you. If someone is becoming a runaway, attack them before they become too powerful to handle.


Not sure on normal/prince difficulty, but on emperor+ it is a good idea to be among top-three in military (demographics screen) as that will deter many/most attackers. In previous civ games I used to be a peaceful builder, but with Civ5 I feel wars and handling wars is more important than ever.


Basically - carry the biggest stick you can afford and don't be afraid to use it.


Tip: The Info Addict mod is also your best friend for good info that you "normally" will have if you have an embassy, but it also gives you more insight into how the AI plays (expansion speed, military balance, land grab, ...). Combine with the unofficial patch (UI improvements + great trading screen) and the game will play a lot better.
 
No good answer here. It just shows how flawed the AI is in this game. I'll admit that I play at a lower difficulty level than I am capable of, because of the huge AI bonuses. Unfortunately, it makes the end game easier, but at least the early game isn't as frustrating and annoying.
 
I hate when the map is getting full and the AI start to spam cities all around the map even in snow and desert
 
rschissler said:
No good answer here. It just shows how flawed the AI is in this game. I'll admit that I play at a lower difficulty level than I am capable of, because of the huge AI bonuses. Unfortunately, it makes the end game easier, but at least the early game isn't as frustrating and annoying.
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Meh. I constantly have AI settling in the area between my cities, especially versus Alex or Napoleon or other big-time city spammers. It's really obnoxious; the "don't settle cities near me" option rarely works, and doesn't seem to do anything even when they agree. There really should be a diplomatic or cultural way to prevent them from literally encircling you with cities.

And yea, their limitless happiness means they drop useless cities on snow, desert and tundra with no resources whatsoever, then buy 4 defensive buildings just to make it a huge pain in the ass to get rid of them.
 
Xahz said:
Meh. I constantly have AI settling in the area between my cities, especially versus Alex or Napoleon or other big-time city spammers. It's really obnoxious; the "don't settle cities near me" option rarely works, and doesn't seem to do anything even when they agree. There really should be a diplomatic or cultural way to prevent them from literally encircling you with cities.

And yea, their limitless happiness means they drop useless cities on snow, desert and tundra with no resources whatsoever, then buy 4 defensive buildings just to make it a huge pain in the ass to get rid of them.
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U r not playing right if the distance between your cities so big that other scan spam cities in the middle of them.
 
fufie said:
If they attack you, counter their attack and take out their cities (either puppet or annex) so they produce gold/science for you. If someone is becoming a runaway, attack them before they become too powerful to handle.


Not sure on normal/prince difficulty, but on emperor+ it is a good idea to be among top-three in military (demographics screen) as that will deter many/most attackers. In previous civ games I used to be a peaceful builder, but with Civ5 I feel wars and handling wars is more important than ever.


Basically - carry the biggest stick you can afford and don't be afraid to use it.


Tip: The Info Addict mod is also your best friend for good info that you "normally" will have if you have an embassy, but it also gives you more insight into how the AI plays (expansion speed, military balance, land grab, ...). Combine with the unofficial patch (UI improvements + great trading screen) and the game will play a lot better.
Click to expand...

Problem is, to keep my gold cost down, I don't have such a large army. I can hunker down and beat back any invading army, but I don't have the strength to rush to their cities and defeat them.
 
Xahz said:
Meh. I constantly have AI settling in the area between my cities...
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Civking5 said:
U r not playing right if the distance between your cities so big that other scan spam cities in the middle of them.
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This! At least you accepted this danger while settling so spread-out.

Did you ever play a game of Go? Splitting the opponent's territory is a common and valid strategy.
If you settle too spacious, don't blame the AI to take advantage of your mistake. (It is a mistake, if it hampers your path to victory. Of course you can prove your strategy as correct simply by winning the game.)

Anyway, I am a bit surprised about all the complaints regarding enhanced AI city settlement. After all, CiV was blamed to be too easy, not long ago. Yes, many (not all) civs tend to expand - and due to their expension, they grow in strength (science and military). It is the player's task to deal with it; this is what defines difficulty levels! (In a perfect world, the AI would be able to use more advanced military strategies at higher levels. But we all know the world is far from perfect...)

Conclusion: There is a runaway civ - and it is not you? Well, you didn't play good enough! Try again, try harder or - there is no abasement in it - try a lower difficulty level.
 
I'd much rather they program the AI to better utilize great people slots (especially scientists) than ICS spam. It would be easy to code and greatly improve base difficulty of the AI. Tradition/small AI tend to get left behind ~Renaissance because they are not utilizing a tall/small empire's greatest tool in keeping pace: Great People.

Game on higher difficulties breaks down into you vs. the one Iroquois/America/Russia/France/Germany runaway that managed to keep up, and everyone else stuck back in the stone-age because they can't figure out how to generate a great scientist.

Although I will give Sejong some credit. He is the only one who seems to be able to play a small/tall game and not completely suck.
 
Matthew. said:
I'd much rather they program the AI to better utilize great people slots (especially scientists) than ICS spam. It would be easy to code and greatly improve base difficulty of the AI. Tradition/small AI tend to get left behind ~Renaissance because they are not utilizing a tall/small empire's greatest tool in keeping pace: Great People.

Game on higher difficulties breaks down into you vs. the one Iroquois/America/Russia/France/Germany runaway that managed to keep up, and everyone else stuck back in the stone-age because they can't figure out how to generate a great scientist.

Although I will give Sejong some credit. He is the only one who seems to be able to play a small/tall game and not completely suck.
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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),.
 
Eh, I dunno. I assume the AI relies on the same auto-managing the human player does, in which case I think it is quite likely the AI's are not using specialists correctly. A simple experiment would show the difference: Run two 4-city tall games. One with automatic city management, the other manually working the slots. Not only would the second game produce more great people over the course of the game, but there would be a much better ratio of scientists vs. other types.

Just watching the AI trying to play Babylon is enough to know they are not even close to efficiently utilizing scientists. And again, it wouldn't be a difficult change to code; it is merely changing up auto city management a bit and adding a few lines of code for GP placement.

But no doubt the stupid number of bonuses allows wider games to naturally be stronger for the AI--hence why the only competition are the heavy expansionist Civs like Hiawatha. It'd be a nice change of pace to see that power equalized a bit though.
 
Civking5 said:
U r not playing right if the distance between your cities so big that other scan spam cities in the middle of them.
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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 or natural wonder?

The AI should be intelligent. I have no problem with them getting boosts to resources, but using infinite happiness to just spam worthless cities on snow and desert is not good design. Especially when there is no way to stop them other than killing the cities off one by one. Giving them infinite resources actively removes intelligence from the AI, because it promotes them to make decisions that a player would never do. It's not good gameplay.
 
Xahz said:
The AI should be intelligent. I have no problem with them getting boosts to resources, but using infinite happiness to just spam worthless cities on snow and desert is not good design. Especially when there is no way to stop them other than killing the cities off one by one. Giving them infinite resources actively removes intelligence from the AI, because it promotes them to make decisions that a player would never do. It's not good gameplay.
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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.
 
Smokeybear said:
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.
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"Oh, but the AI is so much better than when the game first came out. The latest patch is a huge improvement..." :sad:
 
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