Finally got invaded on a new island... but...

Was playing a game on the PerfectWorld3 mapscript on Immortal. By the Industrial Age, most of the world was settled, except for an amazing, resource-rich island sitting right between Austria Island and Rome continent. None had settled it, even though Austria was connected to it by coast water.

In any case, I let out a sigh and think to myself, "Yet again, the AI fails to colonize another gorgeous island for no reason other than the programmers forgot to make it a priority." So I create two cities on the island, thinking these cities would be ignored as usual. About 50 turns later (on Marathon) I get DOWed by Rome who sends in a pretty impressive invasion force. 3 turns later, I lost my size 2 city, but thought, "Whoa... that was pretty cool." It took me several turns to get a defense force there from my home island, but it made reconquering that city the most engaging part of the game.

So, my whole peeve is that the AI is still pretty worthless when it comes to overseas expansion, and the only reason Rome set foot on this island (only 4 or 5 tiles away from it's capital) is because I had a city there. WHy didn't the AI settle hundreds of turns before? Why does the AI seem to have taken a setback from Civ 4, where overseas expansion (especially on terra) was a priority?

Have any of you witnessed any awesome, D-Day type invasions?

No D-Day type invasions for me, but last night one of my spies informed me that Russia was planning a naval assault against my capital (I'm playing the Mongols). About 20 turns later, Catherine showed up with six frigates and a few riflemen. My frigates bombarded their frigates, and my privateers boarded and took them. So my navy gained six more frigates. Her riflemen took off as soon as the naval battle began.

In fact, I had to "friend" a city-state for iron to support the additions to my navy.

El Caballerion said:

Have any of you witnessed any awesome, D-Day type invasions?

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The AI will spam colonies when it wants to match your score or get close to a potential target.

Other than that, it doesn't like to do it much nowadays, yeah.

The AI will eventually settle remote areas, but it only seems to do so relatively late in the game.

AriochIV said:

The AI will eventually settle remote areas, but it only seems to do so relatively late in the game.

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I can second that, in one of my games, the rome eventually expanded to remote 1 hex islands in late game xD

El Caballerion said:

Was playing a game on the PerfectWorld3 mapscript on Immortal. By the Industrial Age, most of the world was settled, except for an amazing, resource-rich island sitting right between Austria Island and Rome continent. None had settled it, even though Austria was connected to it by coast water.

In any case, I let out a sigh and think to myself, "Yet again, the AI fails to colonize another gorgeous island for no reason other than the programmers forgot to make it a priority."

Click to expand...

There was a great, empty island right next to Maya territory in my game, with one site having nice hills, wine, sheep, and Cerro de Potosi within one or two hexes. I kept my eye on the site all game since I found it, and eventually settled it (it was well outside my territory, and in any case I was enjoying the Ethiopian bonus vs. larger civs in my war with Korea). I've rarely found a site like that left untouched for so long.

So, my whole peeve is that the AI is still pretty worthless when it comes to overseas expansion, and the only reason Rome set foot on this island (only 4 or 5 tiles away from it's capital) is because I had a city there. WHy didn't the AI settle hundreds of turns before? Why does the AI seem to have taken a setback from Civ 4, where overseas expansion (especially on terra) was a priority?

Click to expand...

I haven't often seen tempting empty sites ignored. I did manage to grab one juicy site before the Ottomans did, but that was still early in the game and they did settle next to my city on the island (before invading mine). I suspect they had planned to invade.

I don't think the problem is with settlement, it's with exploration on sea maps. I routinely find ruins in the late Renaissance on maps with empty continents/islands (including on that one with the Cerro de Potosi site). If the AI finds the islands and explores the land (rather than just sending ships out), it will probably colonise them, but it doesn't prioritise exploration. I won't often run into AI scouts as I'm exploring the world - the AI would rather produce one or two and have them meander around rivals' territories keeping an eye on them (which is fair enough, but not in place of exploration).

Have any of you witnessed any awesome, D-Day type invasions?

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Several. My favourite remains in vanilla, when Suleiman brought a giant late-game force to my apparently secure island and took two of my cities in short order. In that more recent game I mentioned against him, he kept landing trebuchets behind his surviving melee units, a continual stream of reinforcements that eventually finished me.