5 tiles apart?

[gozpel]

Have you noticed that the AI seems to be hard-coded to put their cities 5 tiles apart?

Insanity, move your frigging settler one tile further and you could have Cairo and Jerusalem together.

AI: Nah, I rather settle this city one tile from that and it does. One tile further is 2 fish, 2 whales and pearls.

Or in a recent game, it got one cow by settling 5 tiles apart from its next city, by settling one tile further it would've gotten 2 more cows, 2 sheep and dyes, not to mention the later 7 coals. Which was in my borders at that time.

Every game I play, they settle their cities EXACTLY 5 tiles apart, this must've been an overlook by the "team" that made the patches. Seriously sad.

 

[FeiLing]

Just wanted to say 'not really'... then I realized you probably meant the same as me. 5 tiles apart = 3 tiles in between, which is the minimum distance. Yeah it sucks, because just taking their cities isn't helpful as they are placed so poorly.

All the devs would have to do is exclude tiles that are already inside a cities work radius from expansion-value-estimation. As it is now the AI thinks a settling location is good, however it doesn't take into account that half of the tiles in range are shared with one or even two of it's other cities already.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I think it's to prevent something that seemed to happen in Civ 3, i.e they had cities EVERYWHERE. I remember half of the nations (and then I had 32 players on the Standard Earth Map xD ) and Elizabeth had a city next to me.

I think there's also the fact that they establish cities close towards you, so if the rule didn't exist they might as well establish 5 tiles away from your Capital.

EDIT : I also just noticed that occasionaly the AI will spawn cities near you, for exmaple if CS are blocking expansion, I just had 2 civs (Egypt and Greece in the Wonders of the World Scenario) settle city quite nearby.

 

[FeiLing]

If the common distance at least would have been increased on large maps or medium maps with huge landmasses...

 

[Ranos]

I only play on large maps so I increased the distance to 4 tiles between cities. It helps a lot. Interestingly, it seems to be hard coded when it comes to being on a different land mass. Cities on islands only have to have 3 between even though I have it set to 4.

 

[Glassmage]

you can change min city placement distance in one of the xml's files. Not so hard to do. I see that increase distance to 4 is the best. Once i tried increase to 5 and there was complications when you have too many civs and city states on the map.

 

[Hustapha Thool]

I only play on large maps so I increased the distance to 4 tiles between cities. It helps a lot. Interestingly, it seems to be hard coded when it comes to being on a different land mass. Cities on islands only have to have 3 between even though I have it set to 4.

I did the same and I also think that the AI has an easier time deploying their armies with this spacing.

 

[Aristos]

TacAI needs more maneuver room; I have been testing this variable for the last 4-5 months, and my conclusion is that war is more interesting with more room between cities; optimum is 4 tiles in between cities (MIN_CITY_RANGE = 4), 5 is too much for the system to handle (including CS), plus it leaves a death zone in the center of the triangle of cities.

A value of 4 is the best, and TacAI behaves better under that setting (and human cannot count on pooling the cities defenses to halt an AI attack with only bombardments).

All in all, a better game (but you need to alter size/#civs/#CS also to scale).

 

[Gucumatz]

you can change min city placement distance in one of the xml's files. Not so hard to do. I see that increase distance to 4 is the best. Once i tried increase to 5 and there was complications when you have too many civs and city states on the map.

You don't understand... this is regarding AI, reread the thread.

 

[FeiLing]

Sometimes I want to place a city only 3 tiles away myself or it is okay if the AI does, so changing the rules is not an alternative. I just don't want them to do it with all their damn cities all over the continent no matter if the city can only access 10 desert tiles without resources or a few ocean tiles with a single fish tile.

 

[Glassmage]

Well unless they make better AI this is as close as you can get.

 

[joncnunn]

They'll need to release an SDK & DLL. It took the BetterAI mod in Civ VI to fix AI city placement there as well.

 

[bcaiko]

Yeah. I've been annoyed by this, too, as it causes some AIs to build a bunch of crummy cities. (I guess it's not like happiness really effects them, tho...). There is some benefit to having cities close together (creates a guantlet of doom for incoming invaders), but you'd think the AI personalities would have some flavor for the spacing of their cities.

 

[Aristos]

There is some benefit to having cities close together (creates a guantlet of doom for incoming invaders).

And THAT is exactly what you would want to avoid if you want a more challenging TacAI, because it is game breaking (at least to me)... plus, not even realistic (pool of cities bombarding invasion force?).

I remember one of the many declarations of little Joni was that he envisioned a civ game where the battles were taken out of the cities and into the open; 1UPT was the way, but the scale conspires against that vision. Increasing that variable helps that vision, and the AI, and makes for better combat. Test it; you will even see the effects in a slightly better TacAI handling of its units.

 

[gozpel]

Would the AI handle a war worse, IF they planted a city by the ocean and got 5 more resources out of it? One tile further from the capitol.

I might hesitantly suggest to say a no to this.

 

[Aristos]

Would the AI handle a war worse, IF they planted a city by the ocean and got 5 more resources out of it? One tile further from the capitol.

I might hesitantly suggest to say a no to this.

say again? I didn't understand your question...

 

[gozpel]

say again? I didn't understand your question...

Was that a smirk in that answer?

Well, in this game the AI settled 1 tile away from the coast, just to be 5 tiles from the capital...while if it placed it's city as you and I would, one turn further next to the ocean and would've grabbed 5 more resources.

It wouldn't made any difference at all for the AI's capability of warfare, except maybe it might have been stronger. What was it, it missed out on because settling one tile away from the coast: 2 fish, 2 pearls and coal.

 

[Aristos]

Was that a smirk in that answer?

Well, in this game the AI settled 1 tile away from the coast, just to be 5 tiles from the capital...while if it placed it's city as you and I would, one turn further next to the ocean and would've grabbed 5 more resources.

It wouldn't made any difference at all for the AI's capability of warfare, except maybe it might have been stronger. What was it, it missed out on because settling one tile away from the coast: 2 fish, 2 pearls and coal.

oh, ok... now I understand.

I was only talking about the effect of more intercity space on the TacAI... the SettleAI may have some problems, yes, but that has nothing to do with the topic here: tiles between cities. YOUR topic, by the way.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

I only play on large maps so I increased the distance to 4 tiles between cities. It helps a lot. Interestingly, it seems to be hard coded when it comes to being on a different land mass. Cities on islands only have to have 3 between even though I have it set to 4.

When a city is on a different landmass the min distance is adjusted to from 3 to 2. I don't know if you change the regular min distance in the XML file if on a different landmass it stays at 2 or if it's simply Reg distance - 1

 

[The_Quasar]

They'll need to release an SDK & DLL. It took the BetterAI mod in Civ VI to fix AI city placement there as well.

Really? To be honest, I'd just like to see Civ VI vanilla! Wish I could see the future as you obviously can!