Why aren't my AI foes expanding their territory?

[tyrudo]

Hi there, fellow Civ addicts,

I've been playing Civ forever, and finally put down IV for V a few months ago, loved it, then bought the two major expansions/ all other updates that came with the steam total package. I'm a big fan of everything they add, except for one major detraction- all of the sudden, the worlds aren't getting settled. I'll play all the way into the information age, finally reveal the full map, and immediately want to quit when I see that almost all of the (extremely fertile/valuable) land around my AI opponents' civs is wide open. What's going on? Is this supposed to be a fix? In all previous iterations of Civ, the map gets completely filled out, generally pretty early on, which sets the stage for all the conflicts that play out. Now, there's little incentive to go to war with another civ, to trade with them, to interact with them much at all. And it doesn't make sense! It's the year 2040, why are there still barbarian encampments everywhere and unclaimed territory?

I'd really like to hear from you guys on two points:

1: Which expansion or update made this change, and can it be undone without losing features I like? (Does anyone know of a steam workshop mod, for example?)
2: Do you see this as a positive thing? I'm totally flabbergasted as to who would want this. I'd love to hear your take on why it's good.


Thank you!

 

[Sayya]

Which difficulty are you playing on?

 

[tyrudo]

Which difficulty are you playing on?

King, usually. But even on the easiest difficulty settings, the whole map used to get completely filled out

 

[Solutionfinder]

I`ve seen that happen in BNW standalone, not to mention AI not being aggressive enough. I would also recommend getting G&K dlc along with BNW and for a better challange playing at least on Emperor.

Hope this helps...

 

[z284pwr]

BNW seemed to reduce early game aggression quite a bit. GNK you could expect early DOW pretty much every game above King.

If you want to see more AI expansion play on Immortal or Deity. Anything below that is pretty much child's sandbox play. You can basically do whatever you want, spam what you want, and general disregard for Citizen Management and still win. Step up to Immortal or Deity and you'll see the AI expand a lot faster and require much more attention to not get beat up.

 

[joncnunn]

Hi there, fellow Civ addicts,

I've been playing Civ forever, and finally put down IV for V a few months ago, loved it, then bought the two major expansions/ all other updates that came with the steam total package. I'm a big fan of everything they add, except for one major detraction- all of the sudden, the worlds aren't getting settled. I'll play all the way into the information age, finally reveal the full map, and immediately want to quit when I see that almost all of the (extremely fertile/valuable) land around my AI opponents' civs is wide open. What's going on? Is this supposed to be a fix? In all previous iterations of Civ, the map gets completely filled out, generally pretty early on, which sets the stage for all the conflicts that play out. Now, there's little incentive to go to war with another civ, to trade with them, to interact with them much at all. And it doesn't make sense! It's the year 2040, why are there still barbarian encampments everywhere and unclaimed territory?

I'd really like to hear from you guys on two points:

1: Which expansion or update made this change, and can it be undone without losing features I like? (Does anyone know of a steam workshop mod, for example?)
2: Do you see this as a positive thing? I'm totally flabbergasted as to who would want this. I'd love to hear your take on why it's good.


Thank you!

For the part of the question about mod, your best bet is to head over to Creation & Customization, there probably is a thread there where that question has been asked.

As to the rest:
1: G&K Fall patch made AI DOWing a lot more common than before this point. It was an unintended side effect of the change that made the AI more willing to cash buy military units. (It had the side effect of there being little difference between rate of a low agressive AI flavor DOWing the human vs the high ones because humans rely more on fewer but stronger up to date units which isn't valued as much as a high number of weak obsolete units.)

That change was rolled back with BNW release, and along with it the high aggressive AIs DOW the human early and the low aggressive ones don't.

2. Given how bad the AI is at 1UPT war, it's a good thing for the AI.

 

[LordBalkoth]

As others said, you will see that on Immortal and Deity. I (personally) regard Emperor as a difficulty where I can completely screw around, do whatever I want, and still win however I want. So do many of the other better players on this site. Obviously if you're not as good at the game the same won't apply, but King is even easier than Emperor.

So...yeah. If this was a RTS or RPG then Prince would be easy, Emperor normal, and Deity hard. Settler would be "story" mode.

 

[Gen.Washington]

Random thought, wouldn't Chieftain be story mode? Settler is more of a tutorial, someone reading the story to you.

 

[nokmirt]

Adjust the leader flavors for increased expansion.

<GameData>
        <Leader_Flavors>
		<Update>
			<Where LeaderType="LEADER_BISMARCK" FlavorType="FLAVOR_EXPANSION" />
			<Set Flavor="9" />
		</Update>
        </Leader_Flavors>
</GameData>

You could change the flavor for expansion value up to 12.

 

[LordBalkoth]

Random thought, wouldn't Chieftain be story mode? Settler is more of a tutorial, someone reading the story to you.

Have you *seen* how easy "story mode" is in game? It's literally impossible to fail in most cases. It's specifically designed for people who don't care about playing the game at all and just want to see the story and who therefore never want to die or have to think about mechanics or even be slightly challenged.

 

[Callonia]

If it is the information era, the map should be mostly filled out.

But here is the important question, is it only you in the information era? Or is AIs in their information eras too? If you're only one in information era then it is only natural that there is vast tracts of unsettled lands for it means other AIs don't have techs needed to settle those lands yet.

Because in my King difficulty games, the world is usually mostly settled unless the land is really bad then its not usual for it to not get settled until really LATE.

 

[twilson1972]

I frequently see unsettled land (i play 80% immortal, 20% emperor) but it depends on the civs it seems to me?. Hiawatha will expand all that he can it seems, and the maya.

I may be imagining all that of course, and to be honest, i often dont take good land because if i have gone tradition-rationalism etc it is too questionable whether i want that extra city even if the land is decent.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Given the time the investments take to pay off, the game hammers on the incentive to expand past a certain point. That this leaves a lot of unsettled land on most difficulties is an awkward side effect.

Sure, you CAN run commerce + autocracy and blanket the map in cities/conquer everything, and below deity the AI isn't much of a threat to win while you're doing it (eventually your production/gold runs away too). But you'll be hard pressed to get competitive finish dates that way, unless you're going for a domination victory or something similar where everyone dies before tech matters.

Otherwise cutting investment in rationalism to finish commerce and get more policies in autocracy is prohibitive to science rate. When fighting the AI (especially with logistics + range artillery, later backed by fighter interception or bombers if you actually need them) you don't need that much science late-game on most of the difficulties though so you can get away with it.

When I'm screwing around, I hate going rationalism and much prefer commerce + auto. If I'm trying to do a good science game though it's hard to justify that. It's also difficult to get much more than unit training out of early conquest unless your target has built some nice wonders for you...most cities strain happiness too much to conquer until ideologies or at least commerce finisher + lots of luxury if they don't hand you wonders.

 

[HappyBuilder]

I play a lot of Huge, Marathon games and I find there's lots of land right through to the Information Age. I have a detail of units whose jobs are to clear barbarian camps around the world.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I've found that if you ramp up the number of players and city-states in the game, there is less empty space. It seems obvious. The AI also fights more when it has to compete for limited space.

 

[Primacide]

Build and gift the AI a settler. They will plant it five turns later if there is good ground nearby. I do this when I want to dominate and the AI is too slow filling in the territory.

On immortal or above this is not a problem. The AI will fill in one tile ocean squares by the end.

 

[sunbeam]

Build and gift the AI a settler. They will plant it five turns later if there is good ground nearby. I do this when I want to dominate and the AI is too slow filling in the territory.

On immortal or above this is not a problem. The AI will fill in one tile ocean squares by the end.

This is interesting. What happens if you give a settler to a city state? Thinking of Venice here.

 

[Haig]

Tyrudo, I think big reason is that the default number of civs for each map size is too small, I ALWAYS add more civs when starting a game. It's in Advanced options.

Standard map size has 8 civs, I put it into 11-12 civs.
Large map has 10 civs, I ramp it up to around 15-16 civs.

Amount of city-states I usually lower actually, to the same number as there's civs.

 

[Primacide]

This is interesting. What happens if you give a settler to a city state? Thinking of Venice here.

You know, I've never gifted one to Venice. I've planted a city and sold it to them, but I never gifted them the settler because I yell at my computer enough as it is.

 

[ThorHammerz]

This is interesting. What happens if you give a settler to a city state? Thinking of Venice here.

The settler will just sit in the city doing nothing.

This applies to settlers built by city states (possible if you mess around with some value settings via XML, although I don't remember which ones I used to do so) - they will just hibernate for the rest of the game.