ai city management

sometimes is so frustrating that i need a mini rant, apologies in advance. things that really bug me

1. when a barb or enemy unit comes onto a city tile and you instantly kill it. even if it is the most valuable resource tile you have, the ai will not automatically start working the tile again after enemy is gone. you have to manually go into the city and push onto the tile to get it started again. i can't tell you how many times i forget only to have the city no growth for x amount of times before i notice.

2. after a city goes into revolt, ai takes all the tiles off of production and after the revolt, leaves it that way. so city will starve quickly if you don't manually go and click all the tiles back on every single workable plot. it's extremely frustrating if you have some cities that are constantly in revolt. it gets to the point that you either move a bunch of units into city, gift city back, or let them starve.

3. the city grows and the ai has a choice which tile to work next. it has choice between 3 food and one gold tiles. one has a cottage on it and the other will never change. it choices the non cottage. or even worse is when there is a two food, two hammer tile but ai choices to work the two food, one hammer tile.

4. i want the city to work a certain specialist but each time the city grows it takes my specialist away and puts ai specialist of choice. so i have to go in a manually change back to my specialist each time it grows.

Nice rant, and thoroughly understandable.. Curious though, you did know that you can tailor your cities governor to prioritize your cities food/com/prod right? which should help with some of your issues there?

Drakarska said:

Nice rant, and thoroughly understandable.. Curious though, you did know that you can tailor your cities governor to prioritize your cities food/com/prod right? which should help with some of your issues there?

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thxs drakarska. yes, i did know about governor and do use it occasionally when a city really is only leaning to certain traits. but i find that it's usually better to do things myself which i usually do after city builds something. this is because while i like certain cities for commerce and growth, i still need some hammers, etc to get things done.

el toro loco said:

2. after a city goes into revolt, ai takes all the tiles off of production and after the revolt, leaves it that way. so city will starve quickly if you don't manually go and click all the tiles back on every single workable plot. it's extremely frustrating if you have some cities that are constantly in revolt. it gets to the point that you either move a bunch of units into city, gift city back, or let them starve.

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don't recall if I've noticed this one
but, did you know that you can click on the center city tile and all workers will be reassigned as AI thinks best? it may not be exactly what you want, but you don't have to click "on every single workable plot"

Read it, the points you complain about are absolutely understandable, because those are really the points where Civ 100% fails. To make you imagine how bad it can get, I once had the idea to beat 3M highscore and only way to do so is to play the so called "Sushi-games" , so games where score comes from pop and pop comes from Sushi, and the more cities, the more pop.

I had 200+ cities in that game and every one of those caused about 100g maintenance because of the 2 corps, so... yes, I had to micromanage every city every turn to assign the specialists. I had to make the govenor work the food manually, because he stops doing so when the city is unhappy.

And I also know about the other points you complain about, so be happy, and better not get the same idea like I had, if you're complaining ranting with less than 200 cities already .

Insanity because of Civ btw. was no fun, though I can smile about it today ;/ .

5. That Da*#&(*&%#* Spy specialist &%#(q&%(*&%

Deckhand said:

don't recall if I've noticed this one
but, did you know that you can click on the center city tile and all workers will be reassigned as AI thinks best? it may not be exactly what you want, but you don't have to click "on every single workable plot"

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nice tip. it seems like i used to do this but had forgotten.

Seraiel said:

Read it, the points you complain about are absolutely understandable, because those are really the points where Civ 100% fails. To make you imagine how bad it can get, I once had the idea to beat 3M highscore and only way to do so is to play the so called "Sushi-games" , so games where score comes from pop and pop comes from Sushi, and the more cities, the more pop.

I had 200+ cities in that game and every one of those caused about 100g maintenance because of the 2 corps, so... yes, I had to micromanage every city every turn to assign the specialists. I had to make the govenor work the food manually, because he stops doing so when the city is unhappy.

And I also know about the other points you complain about, so be happy, and better not get the same idea like I had, if you're complaining ranting with less than 200 cities already .

Insanity because of Civ btw. was no fun, though I can smile about it today ;/ .

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that does sound like insanity . i can't even imagine having 200 cities but then having to manage them every turn. gives me a little perspective which is always good. kind of reminds me of being mad about something and then a day later getting a cold. all the things that you were mad about seem so trivial. being sick sucks...

el toro loco said:

that does sound like insanity . i can't even imagine having 200 cities but then having to manage them every turn. gives me a little perspective which is always good. kind of reminds me of being mad about something and then a day later getting a cold. all the things that you were mad about seem so trivial. being sick sucks...

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Wow. Yes, it was ment to give you perspective, not to show of.

Basically, all you're mad about is, that you have to do things, that are holding you back on your way forward, but it's the way that counts, once you've finished a game, it's over anyhow, and it's things you remember like "AAAAAH. That sucked so bad, but I made it still! ROAR!" that'll make you remember the round itself. The things you mentioned really are flaws in the game design on Civ, but what does it matter. Important is that you were able to get through.

All the best,

Seraiel

Thanks for starting this thread. You don't know how many times I've considered starting one called "I want to kill my city governors!" I can't believe there was never a patch for this stuff, unofficial or otherwise.

el toro loco said:

4. i want the city to work a certain specialist but each time the city grows it takes my specialist away and puts ai specialist of choice. so i have to go in a manually change back to my specialist each time it grows.

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I agree with all your points completely, but #4 surely gripes me the most.

Jastrow said:

5. That Da*#&(*&%#* Spy specialist &%#(q&%(*&%

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Exaclty! Thank you, I thought it was just me.



Me: How on earth did we get a great spy here? We need a scientist! (goes off to fight wars and build infrasctrucure.)

Governor: We need a great spy.

Me: What's with the great spy again? We need a scientist! (goes off to fight wars and build infrasctrucure.)

Governor: We need a great spy.

Me: Didn't I just fix this? Or was that some other city. We really need that scientist! (goes off to fight wars and build infrasctrucure.)

Governor: We need a great spy.

Me: Alright, this time I KNOW I just fixed it! (goes off to fight wars and build infrasctrucure.)

Governor: We need a great spy.

Me: @#$%&! (glares at city governor, goes off to fight wars and build infrasctrucure.)

Governor: We need a great spy.

Me: That's it! Exactly who's side are you on anyway? Wait, you ARE an AI, aren't you? You don't want me to build that academy, do you? You're just wearing me down turn by turn knowing eventually I'll neglect to fix your undermining ways somewhere along the way so you and your AI buddies can have a good laugh about how you put one over on the analog human again. Well I'm on to you buddy, and I've got news for you. I'm going to change this to SCIENTIST exactly one last time and so help me if you even think about changing it to great spy I will hunt you down... I don't care if I have to pour through a million lines of code to do it... I will hunt you down and find you and choke the digital life out of you until the only city govenor responsibility you're left with is letting me know exactly when my great scientist will be done. Got it?

(goes off to fight wars and build infrasctrucure.)











Governor: We need a great spy.

ROFL! so very true.

I have been trained by the governors.

I look every turn at my espionage points to make sure it doesn't change.

Not that I feel any better having to track down the rogue spy, but at least I know it's there.

I know this is a general forum, and that you don't like hearing things like that, but you are aware of the fact, that an Espionage Economy is a lot stronger than a Beaker Economy, and that getting a Great Spy is basically the best that can happen? :x

On Deity.

Agreed. On MON diff, gimme the bulb heads and tyvm

On all difficulties, where AI is able to research techs that one can steal from them :> .

Seriously, I will never understand, why one should want to play in a difficulty, where he / she is so far advanced, that a whole mechanic of the game makes no use anymore, because there are various ways in which Spy-Points can be used, may it be the tech-steals that got mentioned, the city-revolts that are just a lot faster (but need better coordination) than attacking with siege is, or other possibilities, like getting Legendary cities through espionage, crippling AIs key-cities by destroying the health-buildings, and and and.

Espionage really is a great mechanic, and what I suspect, is that many players simply don't know how to use it effectively, and what I also think is that minds simply have become way too focussed on what's regarded as "standard play" , so Buro + Academy, and underestimate i. e. the power of Scotland Yard + Buro or also Nationhood in general.

I won't conduct math here, but just fyi: Stealing a tech costs you about 1/3 of what researching that tech would cost, and the whole difference between both is, that to steal a tech, you need to build some spies and set the slider to 100% espionage, and that's it. If you really want to up your difficulty and are struggling with AIs out-teching you, try espionage economy, it's absolutely fascinating to see, that it's perfectly possible to stay in the tech-race, with only having 1/3 or 1/4 of the GNP of the best AI, something that's absolutely impossible if one would use a Beaker-approach.

Not that I'm doubting you Seraiel, but I'd really like to see a numbers break down before I just arbitrarily abandon my bulbing, especially if I'm PHI and running at least 2 cottage cities. Granted, I use spy ops as well, but having to send a spy out(distance = TT's) and then settle him in an opposing city, and then waiting an additional 5 turns for max bonus doesn't seem very efficient to me.

Additionally, I also run a spy specialist city specifically for a variety of spy ops that you mentioned above. But I'm just not seeing how the long term continuous benefits of bulbing are second rate compared to spies, especially since I don't play war monger/ conquests game types.

PHI is no argument, because it counts for both, getting the Great Spy, aswell as getting the GS, leaving bulbing in general.

One cannot do correct math for that for all scenarios, because the bulbing value itself changes with map-size and population, but what I know from my memory is, that the EPs one gets from a Great Spy are usually always greater than the Beakers one gets from a GS (like i. e. 3k Espionage Points compared to 1500 Beakers from a bulb) .

As spying itself though already is 3 times as efficient as researching the tech onesself, the value of the bulb would have to exceed the value of the ep by 3 times, and I'm really sure, that you (and nobody else) will find any scenario, in which a single bulb would exceed the points generated from the infiltration mission by 3 times!

Bulbing has it's value, as it's the only way to seriously cut on the winning-date in a space-race i. e., bulbing helps one to reach a key-tech earlier in times where AIs don't have that tech, but if the option of stealing that tech is available, it'd really require the most unbelievable example, to make stealing it not the better option, because if the infiltration mission always gives more points than the bulb-value of a GS are, than the only thing that could make the bulb in that situation still better would be, if stealing were more expensive than researching. I think it could be possible to create such a scenario, like when i. e. moving the palace as far away from the target one tries to steal from, and when trying to minimize the possible positive multipliers for onesself (like i. e. not spreading religion to that city, not waiting with the spy, closing borders, ... ) .

Plz excuse me if what I write feels wrong for you today, but I cannot make a whole research and breakdown of this issue now and here, and I'm sure that there's already a lot of math on this question. The values that I gave, were values I got through experience from my latest games, and you'll notice that they're quite near reality when trying out espionage economy yourself. All it really takes is producing some spies and moving them into position, and this of course as early as possible, so i. e. already 5 turns before the AI gets that tech, and it requires to simply set the slider towards espionage instead of research. In general, Espionage is simply a badly balanced feature because it was invented in the very end of Civ, and it takes a lot from the player, but also rewards him, and the only real difference is getting the techs after the AI got them, making it not viable for exactly 1 tech (Liberalism) .

Also, don't forget that a great Spy has the ability to build Scotland Yard, which basically is like 2 Academies at once and for espionage, don't forget that Nationhood is the superior war-civic, and that one way to win a spacerace i. e. also would be simply sabotaging the parts that the opponent is building (while building an own spaceship onesself of course) .

Phi is no argument? How does that work? PHI is 100% GPP, and if I'm running specialist cities (which I do, including a spy city), then I'm invariably getting the specific GP I want (including GSpy). If I'm popping GS's like a pez dispenser, and not saving them for GA's, then I'm either using them for tech's or adding them to my SCI cities. I'm also reducing my research time by a significant amount as opposed to having to wait umpteen turns for a spy to get to it's designated target (huge + maps), and then waiting additional turns for the stationary spy bonus.

Do I agree with you that dedicated spy ops are a huge asset? Of course I do. However, I don't agree with you that the strat your stating is the optimum way to go over bulbing. Especially considering I usually have some cottages up and running before alphabet for my GL built by my GE.

I am aware that your a deity level player, and a HOF'er. But your play style is pretty much blitz/conquest to win as fast as you possibly can. I prefer slower games and actually like to build and interact with the AI's over a long term basis as opposed simply smash and grab.

I honestly appreciate your thoughts and input towards this particular area, but I am just not seeing how it's superior over the length of a full game. So it would be interesting on seeing other players thoughts and input concerning this particular area.

You're asking other players, but I have to answer to this:

1. PHI is no argument, because it speeds up the creation of Great Spies as it does with Great Scientists or any other Great Person there is. There is nothing preventing you from simply running Spy-Specialists instead of Scientists, except the slots needed. Those slots come with CoL, Constitution and Democracy, and that's why EE is getting a lot stronger in late game (also, because the multiplier buildings are a lot cheaper than the ones for Beakers are) . A spy-Specialist gives you +4 EPT and +4 BPT with REP, or +4 EPT and +1 BPT, so in both times more, than the scientists would give, and that assuming that EPT and BPT were equal, which they aren't (EPT are cheaper and more powerful) .
2. There is no time-waste, if your coordination of units is good and if you pre-plan, which is what I wrote some posts before when saying "better coordination needed" . Basically all you need as coordination when researching, is selecting the tech, and that's it. When you want to steal it however, you have to choose a city, let it produce a Spy, run that spy towards your target, wait 5 turns, and all of this should be done before the target even gets that tech!
   This is easier than it sounds, because with running an EE, you'll see what somebody is researching, so you'll know "ah, in 10 turns I need 3-4 spies to steal that tech from him" .
3. Cottages have nothing to do with EE or BE (Beaker Economy) , as Cottages produce Commerce, and Commerce can be both, EP or Beakers (via Slider) .

I also didn't say that it's the optimum way, I said it's more efficient, so that you get more with investing less, and this comes from: a) Spy-Specialists have higher GNP b) Multiplier-buildings cost less hammers and c) Espionage itself is badly balanced, because i. e. Scotland Yard = twice as strong as Academy, or holy city + stationary spy = so much discount on the steal itself, that it costs only (guessing) 1/8th of the base-cost...

To your question, what you cannot see:

Espionage-Economy allows you to get more for less. That's it (reasoning see above) . It's not necessarily the best way, because it doesn't allow you to i. e. get a tech-monopoly, but whenever you're in the situation where you're weak and the enemies are strong, this is the way out.

Seraiel said:

You're asking other players, but I have to answer to this:
Espionage-Economy allows you to get more for less. That's it (reasoning see above) . It's not necessarily the best way, because it doesn't allow you to i. e. get a tech-monopoly, but whenever you're in the situation where you're weak and the enemies are strong, this is the way out.

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This statement is what was missing from your first post. By running an EE, you're committing your civilization to be at best second-rate in technology. That's OK if you're in a situation where you're going to be at best second-rate by traditional means (and as you say, can get you to second-rate when you'd otherwise be third- or fourth-rate).