AI settling past your borders?

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WelshGandalf

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OK let's say you've blocked off some empty land for yourself. Will the AI ever send its settlers through your borders to setle that land, or are you fine to just open borders with them?

I had a quick google and all I could find was this...
I know I've written that here, beege, and I'm standing by it. The AI will slip settlers and their escorts through the smallest gap in your borders, but I've played a lot of Civ IV and never seen a settler go through my borders to settle empty land that I had blocked off. They will send military units to capture barb cities in land you've blocked off, though.
Click to expand...
Given that's from another website though, I thought I'd ask it here instead :)
 
They will not send settlers through your border via land, but the will send them through your borders by galley, so be wary of that.

edit: also note that if you have culture from 2 cities touching each other at a "point" with 2 neutral tiles on each side, the AIs will pass over that with their settler. i usually never settle such that borders pop like that anyway and usually overlap cities for other reasons, which negates that possibility.
 
Most commonly what they'll do to me is send a mini-stack through my land, locate a barb city before I do, take that barb city, and then massively city-spam from there to choke out land I thought I had blocked off. I'll re-close borders when I see a barb city now, and AI units heading toward them. If they wanna fight they'll have to fight me, and they better pack a lunch.
 
Thanks for the responses guys, very useful.

Considering how bad AI are at amphibious invasions, I find it funny that they will send galleys with settlers in them past you :lol:
 
The most annoying thing in multiple continent games is that sometimes the AI will randomly settle on some garbage ice/tundra land you didn't take. So... just take note of that; it shouldn't be a big deal but very annoying.

The AI has no qualms with making crappy cities because it can.
 
I've definitely seen settlers within my borders later in the game (and in Warlords so it isn't just a Better AI thing). And tundra cities have appeared, although I've never actually tracked a settler through my borders and seen him settle.

OTOH, they don't seem to enter my borders early in the game, so I believe the strategy of building cities to block off land despite OB agreements is sound (with all the privisos already mentioned in this thread).

There must be some trigger or condition that allows them to enter your borders to settle. No room to expand without doing so seems plausible, and I couldn't refute that. I wonder what happens if someone gets boxed in really early - can they then enter your borders to settle early after all?
 
psparky said:
I've definitely seen settlers within my borders later in the game (and in Warlords so it isn't just a Better AI thing). And tundra cities have appeared, although I've never actually tracked a settler through my borders and seen him settle.

OTOH, they don't seem to enter my borders early in the game, so I believe the strategy of building cities to block off land despite OB agreements is sound (with all the privisos already mentioned in this thread).

There must be some trigger or condition that allows them to enter your borders to settle. No room to expand without doing so seems plausible, and I couldn't refute that. I wonder what happens if someone gets boxed in really early - can they then enter your borders to settle early after all?
Click to expand...

I think prior to Astronomy, the trigger is, they have to already have 1 city on the other side of your borders to send more settlers to spam cities there. That happens when they take a barb city, then WHOOSH, watch the flood of settlers zooming through your land if you don't close borders right away. After Astronomy they have a green light to settle anywhere any which way they can, so the artificial block against them going behind your land (if they don't already have a city on the other side) is gone.
 
I disagree with the general sentiment here. In fact, I have seen multiple instances of AIs sending protected settlers overland through my country to an open area completely enclosed in my borders. They settled a city in that enclave and tried to flood military units and more settlers into the area, but i shut my borders, thank goodness.
 
^No can't happen in BTS, i don't know what you have seen but Ais don't go through your borders with protected settles to settle behind your land. Can happen with galleys containing settlers or settlers spawning from a conquered barb city as others have mentioned here but not the way you describe it. No sentiment involved here just cold Ai coding. You probably left a small hole in your borders and then all deals are off, Ais will go through that hole if they run out of land.
 
I am, in warlords Ai settled anywhere it could. Annoying and not realistic. Ai gets nothing out of this settlement pattern besides huge maintenance costs and it obviously hurts the human player no end.

Now i'm all for making the task more difficult for human player but not in this way. BTS was a big improvement over warlords/vanilla in this respect imo.
 
The seal-off has to be fairly complete though. If there is so much as a 1 tile gap between city cultures the AI WILL make a run for it with settlers to desperately try to make it into your back-country before their opportunity closes off. I'm increasingly finding CRE an essential trait on larger sized maps for that reason.
 
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