unoccupied space late game

[Buccaneer]

I tend to only settle good spots so I leave a lot of lands unsettled between my cities. I've seen the AI do this as well on certain maps as that's good too. I would much rather see poor lands go unsettled than to see them trying to get everything available. Much smarter gameplay that way.

 

[durecellrabbit]

I do notice this a lot sometimes.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I tend to only settle good spots so I leave a lot of lands unsettled between my cities. I've seen the AI do this as well on certain maps as that's good too. I would much rather see poor lands go unsettled than to see them trying to get everything available. Much smarter gameplay that way.

I tend to do this as well, although I've been told that it is a bad strategy for whatever reason.

 

[Pazyryk]

No. Quite the opposite. Although this aspect is vastly improved from Civ4, I'd say that there is still too much occupation of land space. In the real world, vast areas are still undeveloped in 2012: most of South America (the Amazon and Andes), much of Africa (sparsely developed), most of Australia, much if not most of Eurasia and North America (the northern parts). More important that the "realism" aspect though, it is just not fun (for me) when the whole world fills up. (I do like clashing civs and competition for resources, but you can have that without full world occupation.)

 

[CoolLizy]

In my experience, it depends on how the game unfolds. If you have a major warmonger or two, larger portions of the map are more likely to be unclaimed because the defenders aren't given the opportunity to focus on expanding themselves and the attackers are too busy expanding by taking already established cities.

 

[durian]

I have quite the opposite problem. In my experience, the AI tends to fill up all the empty spots with worthless cities. (I'm looking at you, Hiawatha!) Maybe only a few tundra or desert tiles remain unclaimed in my games. Maybe map size is a factor here? I play on Standard sized maps with the normal amount of civs and city-states.

 

[Zaimejs]

durian, I see this too. Certain civs seem to just landgrab garbage. I don't get why Gandhi does it.

Yes, there may be uninhabited places, but there are very few places that aren't within the borders of some nation/state.

 

[Zhahz]

I see this sometimes and it's usually because there just aren't enough civs to fill the void or...

Other factors contribute too. For ex, civs at war usually aren't expanding so much unless they're already big and have the resources to expand while being at war. Some civs lock in on goals that are better suited to smaller empires and just don't expand much at all. They might have other priorities (you, the player, just wiped out all their troops and they need to secure before expanding). Could be lots of reasons.

One solution would be to increase the number of civs on your map and create more of a demand for land.

I suppose the next logical question would be to ask if this actually bothers anyone?

No, since it's just a game and not reality.

I usually encounter variety with this issue. Sometimes the AIs settle every crappy tile and that drives me nuts. Sometimes there are unoccupied islands, even large ones with good resources. Conditions vary for me.

If you ALWAYS have unsettled lands it's probably because of your game/map setup or how you play - something is preventing the normally land greedy AIs from spamming.

 

[Buccaneer]

I believe in Civ5, the standard size maps with the default number of civs and city-states do produce a less dense world. I am often surprised at how much the initial placement gave me to expand. That's probably why I have so much unoccupied land after I claim all of the luxury resources around me. I also do work at preventing other civs from settling within my area of influence. Additionally, some other map scripts produce a vast amount of space for each civ that it becomes unplayable. I am thinking of the Eastern US map where even at Tiny (or Small), the amount of land between each capital is immense.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I generally don't see the AI having too much trouble filling up contiguous landmasses. It's the AI's attempts at colonization that baffle me. I play on continents, and there are usually a number of islands of various sizes. With a bunch of fertile, equatorial islands available to colonize, the AI inevitably settle tiny, one-tile islands in the polar regions with little to no resources.

 

[Duke Maynard]

I am irritated by this and do notice, especially when I am playing tall and there are is a ton of unclaimed areas. Colonies, Villages which expand border, and military bases which expand borders would be much appreciated.

 

[chazzycat]

The problem with leaving empty space is that can cause dipomatic trouble. If civs have borders near you, they are MUCH MUCH MUCH likelier to "covet your lands", which is bad. So leaving open space just invites AI to settle near you, hence turning potential ally to an enemy just due to proximity.

This is especially noticeable on an islands map. If you don't expand past your starting island, generally most of the civs will be friendly towards you. But if you leave an open spot another AI will take it, then soon you'll be at war due to land coveting.

 

[Buccaneer]

The problem with leaving empty space is that can cause dipomatic trouble. If civs have borders near you, they are MUCH MUCH MUCH likelier to "covet your lands", which is bad. So leaving open space just invites AI to settle near you, hence turning potential ally to an enemy just due to proximity.

This is especially noticeable on an islands map. If you don't expand past your starting island, generally most of the civs will be friendly towards you. But if you leave an open spot another AI will take it, then soon you'll be at war due to land coveting.

Since I typically only have 4 cities in a space that most (esp. the AI) would build 10 cities, I do try to prevent AI settlers from coming in by using landings blocking, tile purchases and zone of control. Only late game when I have the game won or winning then I wouldn't care where they settle.

 

[Esckey]

In my games, the AI will take up any and every free space that's between me and them. But they will ignore small islands, and very viable land, small sections between other Civs and City States.

 

[Isetemkheb]

I see this all the time - lots of prime, unclaimed land in the modern era (not just tundra and desert).

I typically play on warlord or prince and on Huge Pangea maps. Perhaps it is related to lower difficulty levels of play.

 

[Xichael]

I usually have this issue on the Terra map. No AI wants to colonize the new world and if they do it's just a city off the coast. I believe the problem is lack of resource incentive; there are rarely new resources on the new world that can't be found in the old world and the same resources are not in large enough amounts to entice settling.

 

[CYZ]

I usually have this issue on the Terra map. No AI wants to colonize the new world and if they do it's just a city off the coast. I believe the problem is lack of resource incentive; there are rarely new resources on the new world that can't be found in the old world and the same resources are not in large enough amounts to entice settling.

I've been paying some more attention lately and it seems the new world has many settling spots with just a (sometimes new) single resource. That's just not worth travelling to the other side of the map for, you'll end up with an at best average city that'll be hard to defend. And it's late in the game.

There's exceptions but nearly not enough. The thing is every civ's starting location gets bonus resources and such. This is not the case for the new world. This should be changed so there's a nice amount of really good spots (2 different or 3 the same luxuries, and several bonus resources) there, and then some decent spots to fill it up a bit more. It will at least create the presence of a few civs there.

Also, there could be a complete different set of luxuries, meaning (almost) every luxury resource is not or barely to be found in the old world.

 

[Olleus]

Increase the number of starting civs by 1-2. I used to do this all the time but something in the last few patches mean that I no longer have this problem. If you still do, this is the easiest way of solving it.

 

[janboruta]

Increase the number of starting civs by 1-2. I used to do this all the time but something in the last few patches mean that I no longer have this problem. If you still do, this is the easiest way of solving it.

This. I usually add 2 more civs to any map size setting, sometimes 3 on Huge. On Terra I only add 1 more civ, as the starting continent is crowded anyway. That way the land is filled with cities by the Renaissance, and the cultural borders take up all the remaining tiles by late Industrial.

However I found that on some DLC maps (like Asia, Mediterranean and Eastern US) it's good to add even more civs. Mediterranean can easily accomodate 18 civs instead of standard 12. Otherwise the map is just too empty.

 

[Olleus]

As a better solution, would it be possible to give City States the capability to build 1-2 extra cities each from the start of the renaissance onwards?

I find the unclaimed land is often in a corner of a map with lots of city states close together, and not quite enough room between them to fully develop a city. Letting city states fill up those gaps might be good.

The new cities would do nothing in terms of providing bonuses and making alliances, they would simply be colonies of the city state producing units/science/buildings and not be new city states in their own right.