Unbelievable Settling by the AI

[Solutionfinder]

LoL, this is AI`s provocative act, a brainless decision. I agree that you shouldn`t accept any embassy until turn 80-100. If you must for quest, better pay him with iron or horses for theirs.

If you have 2 or 3 untis at your disposal, send them to those tiles to prevent settlers to move there. You can get a picture where AI will settle from your settler`s recommendation. Numerous times I have blocked AI settler from claiming really good spots in the nearby area. Usually his settler will wait couple of turns then move to a better location.

 

[beetle]

This is exactly why you should delay allowing the AI to establish an embassy instead of immediately allowing them.

I usually delay embassy, and it does seem to help reduce forward settling, but I could not understand why. Embassy shows only the cap, not the land around the cap. All I could intuit is that it helps steer AI scouts. (But as often as not, it is their scout running into me, rather than vice versa.)

Also, the AI will only avoid other player's cities if it has a boldness of 3 or less, and because Denmark's boldness is fairly high, it did not care that Seoul was 5 tiles away from that spot... AI leader with boldness 8 or higher will multiply the fertility score of tiles within 5 distance of an opponent's city and within 7 distance of their closest city by 3/2.

Thanks, this connected the dots for me! So, early sell early embassy to AI with low boldness (so they don't accidently forward settle on you). Delay embassies for AI with high boldness.

 

[Delnar_Ersike]

LoL, this is AI`s provocative act, a brainless decision. I agree that you shouldn`t accept any embassy until turn 80-100. If you must for quest, better pay him with iron or horses for theirs.

I usually delay embassy, and it does seem to help reduce forward settling, but I could not understand why. Embassy shows only the cap, not the land around the cap. All I could intuit is that it helps steer AI scouts. (But as often as not, it is their scout running into me, rather than vice versa.)

Thanks, this connected the dots for me! So, early sell early embassy to AI with low boldness (so they don't accidently forward settle on you). Delay embassies for AI with high boldness.

From what I can tell, embassies do not and should not make a difference. The AI's plot settling algorithm ignores tile visibility completely: it does not matter if only 20% of the future city's plots are revealed to the AI, the AI "sees" all plots in a 7-tile radius when determining plot fertility for settling. Yields are considered in a 3-tile radius, resources and luxuries and natural wonders are considered in a 5-tile radius, and closest friendly/enemy city is considered in a 7-tile radius. Even if your capitol is not revealed to the AI, it can still "see" it being 5 tiles away from its settle plot.

 

[joncnunn]

just load back at turn 40 on your autosave and capture his settler as it approaches than you get a free worker.

But if you are playing at Diety you should by that stage of the game you should have your units surveilling the area you want to settle otherwise the AI will grab them.

That kind of depends upon if it came by land or sea. If it came by land it probably had an escort with it.

If it came by sea, it was probably a turn ahead of its escort. This is still risky for Denmark since their UA means all embarked units (including settlers) can land and do something else (such as settle) the same turn.

 

[joncnunn]

I usually delay embassy, and it does seem to help reduce forward settling, but I could not understand why. Embassy shows only the cap, not the land around the cap. All I could intuit is that it helps steer AI scouts. (But as often as not, it is their scout running into me, rather than vice versa.)

Agreed, it does appear in my games to draw a unit into the area if that AI hadn't already bumped into my capital based on me saving games the turn I discover writing to check the difference between founding embassy ASAP and waiting.

 

[poom3619]

Consider that AI doesn't actually use brain as most of animal do. It's literally brainless but effective way to provoke the players.

Actually, consider that you don't settle after a relatively long time compare to AI. You would need some countermeasure if you don't want this to happen a lot.

 

[beetle]

From what I can tell, embassies do not and should not make a difference. The AI's plot settling algorithm ignores tile visibility completely:

Okay, but the plot to run the algorithm on has to be out of the fog, no? So we are back to shared embassies drawing scouts.

So the selling embassy rule of thumb is:

• If it's their scout meeting you near your territory. Go ahead and sell embassy. Bold or not, they are already running the calculations for the plots near you!
• If it's your scout meeting them far from your territory:
  • If they have low boldness, go ahead and sell the embassy. The more they know, the more they will give you space.
  • If they have high boldness, wait on embassy until you have settled expos.

I am not sure about average boldness AI civs! The same rules would apply for shared embassies after writing.

 

[Delnar_Ersike]

AI scouts will always attempt to target unrevealed plots that are located next to revealed plots. This is why selling an embassy to an AI will cause it to move scouts toward your location; one of the more hilarious problems with the AI is that it attempts to do so even when it has no way of getting to you (eg. you're separated by ocean and the AI doesn't have Astronomy), so it will keep switching warrior units (warriors, spearmen, pikemen, musketmen, etc.) over to scout status and have them bunch around on the coast tiles nearest to your continent. Ah, those AI vs. AI games where the AI would just bunch up 15 embarked units on coast were priceless... before it went from funny to annoying and I patched the silly bug.

But yes, a tile must be revealed for the AI to run settle fertility calculations on it. The calculations themselves ignore fog, but they do not ignore resource visibility, so the AI doesn't actually "know" if it's settling near coal or uranium in the medieval era, it will just settle on what it thinks is the best plot given its current techs.
BTW, this also applies to settling recommendations: even if you don't see all the tiles surrounding a spot, the settling plot recommendation does, so if you see its yellow icon on a tile around which you haven't explored much, chances are that there are quite a few resources and/or a natural wonder in the area.

 

[Sayya]

Wouldn't it be impossible to know the boldness of the AI? You'd be rolling a dice.

If the cutoff of forward settling you is a boldness of 3, and it can be 1-5 on the minimum, you're basically rolling a 60-40 dice on whether or not you're promoting forward settling yourself.

 

[beetle]

Use civdata.com and sort by boldness. I am a little surprised by some of the results, but Harald is a 7 and the Marias are both 4. Unfortunately, with the +/- 2, there is overlap in the 5-6 range. As I noted before, I am not sure what to do with average boldness AIs that you meet far away. Yeah, very much rolling the dice. Not sharing embassies until expos are up seems prudent.