A curious game and some thoughts...

[Rwn]

After some time off I started a new game with the latest SVN to rediscover the sweet complexity of this mod as well as all the new stuff since last version (wow, it's so fast now!).

I was used to remain far ahead of AIs after Ancient era even at the highest difficulty settings, so this time I tried the Nightmare mode at Monarch difficulty. And got a very interesting and unusual game that gave me a lot of thoughts.

RNG gave me the French tribe on a decent-sized continent with 4 AIs around (over 15 in initial setting); like in my previous games, they were rather competitive, some a bit ahead of me, until the end of Prehistorical era. The gap then widened and they never catched up afterwards. Still, I wasn't the first to get Sedentary Lifestyle (by a narrow margin) so I expected to catch up with the yet unknown civs quickly like the others.

OK, things are going (a bit too) well, hope I won't get bored too fast...

Then I was surprised to see a few wonders completed before I even got the tech unlocking them (like the library of Nineveh, which requires at least 3 size 6 cities, not an easy task so early). And then some more. In fact, I'd say 95% of all post-prehistorical wonders were built by unknown civs ahead of me (while I was myself well ahead the other civs in the continent), with a only few ones that sliped away (usually due to local/resource requirements) that I was able to build.

By a strange trick of geography, it happens that my continent was only 3 tiles away from another. This means it was impossible to cross with ealy ships, but I was able to see the border of an unknown civ on the other side. In time, that border grew on the ocean, allowing that civ to contact the ones on my continent.

It seems you can cross the ocean if it's inside your cultural borders... Though not the other way around.

That civ was the Zulu.s And it was the mightiest crazy mother of all civs that I ever saw in a game of Civ (even vanilla). I could immediately see in the Wonder graph that all those I didn't get were built by that one civ. Which had about 23 cities, twice as much as I did (while the other civs on the continent were around 5-7). And twice my score. And so far ahead in tech that it triggered some sort of technology for everyone on the continent since the tech diffusion was suddenly bringing hundreds of science per turn...

Oh, that's were all the wonders are!

And of course things only got worse afterwards. Zulus entered a city frenzy, founding maybe 10 more cities in like 100 turns (where do they find enough space and money to do that???) while I could only fill the few empty spaces left on my continent with 4-5 cities (not that my finances would probably have allowed me much more anyway).

Seems I'm not nearly the almighty civ I thought I was...

Zulu declared war on one of the civ on my continent a long time ago, but it looks more like a cold war than anything since even with they enormous tech advantage they never even touched one of the civ's cities. My guess is that they can't (or won't) land units on the other side of the ocean, even though I've seen zulu outriggers patrolling around my continent (thus they are able to cross it).

Now it seems obvious I'm never going to catch up with the Zulus; even when I think I'm developing at a good pace, they remain constantly around twice my score and number of cities, not to mention their tech advantage that I can't evaluate since my espionage isn't (and will probably never be) sufficient. My bet is that the only thing protecting me is (the lack of) Astronomy, around early Renaissance. Zulus just completed the Via Appia, so I guess they are around early Medieval (while I'm somewhere mid-end of Classical with around 20 techs left in that era).

I kinda feel like one of the american pre-colonial nations when the Europeans first arrived with gunpower and horses... Anyway, I'm now considering my options before that inevitable deadline. Should I continue trying to develop my cities hoping to be strong enough when the Zulus will arrive? Should I conquer my neighbours to gain strength instead? Ally with them? Build up a massive army?

And by the way, what about the other unknown civs? Were they destroyed by the Zulus (which may explain their lightning fast growth)? I set up 3 continents in my map settings, so there should be some place that developed without the Zulus; there probably isn't another such powerful civ (since they'd have built some wonders), so I'm wondering what happened there... I hope it's not populated by wimpy civs like on my continent...

 

[Rwn]

Now some broader thoughts that came during that game (though not really related to this particular game).


City growth

I feel that city growth is a bit too fast in the early game. Prehistorical era does a good job of giving a hard time growing the city to even size 2, that's nice. But afterwards, with all the buildings giving food, reserves etc. they are growing blazingly fast.
I'm around 1000BC and my capital is size 28 (that's already 8 specialists, not counting the ones from buildings/civics/...) with +72 excess food so it's not going to stop growing anytime soon; my other main cities are around size 15-20. And I've not particularly focused on food - most tiles around my cities are mines or woodcutters since food is so abundent.

I'd say the ideal would be to check the whole food systems and especially reduce the sources of food from buildings, but if that's complicated or otherwise not desirable, I'd advise two easy things:
- Increase the amount of food required to grow.
It's easily moddable in the CivicInfo file (<iPopulationgrowthratepercentage>); the +50% penalty due to "No agriculture" civic could also apply to the next two civics.
- Reduce the "food kept when pop increases" bonus from buildings.
Early on there's the storage pit (5%, quickly obsolete so not cumulative), the Icehouse (10%), the Granary (30%), the Warehouse (10%) and the Cellar (5%), meaning that you can reduce the amount of food needed to grow by 55%! And later on I don't even know what happens if you build a Modern Granary (50%), a Modern Warehouse (30%) and a Refrigerator Factory (20%).
I'd say those bonuses should be divided by 2 or 3 (like 4% for the Icehouse and Warehouse, 2% for Cellar and 10% for Granary for a total of 20% max ; that's already a really nice push).


(rest will follow later on, too tired for now )

 

[arihant]

Why are your neighbours still alive if they are weaker? Conquer them!

 

[Noriad2]

Now some broader thoughts that came during that game (though not really related to this particular game).


City growth

I feel that city growth is a bit too fast in the early game. Prehistorical era does a good job of giving a hard time growing the city to even size 2, that's nice. But afterwards, with all the buildings giving food, reserves etc. they are growing blazingly fast.
I'm around 1000BC and my capital is size 28 (that's already 8 specialists, not counting the ones from buildings/civics/...) with +72 excess food so it's not going to stop growing anytime soon; my other main cities are around size 15-20. And I've not particularly focused on food - most tiles around my cities are mines or woodcutters since food is so abundent.

I'd say the ideal would be to check the whole food systems and especially reduce the sources of food from buildings, but if that's complicated or otherwise not desirable, I'd advise two easy things:
- Increase the amount of food required to grow.
It's easily moddable in the CivicInfo file (<iPopulationgrowthratepercentage>); the +50% penalty due to "No agriculture" civic could also apply to the next two civics.
- Reduce the "food kept when pop increases" bonus from buildings.
Early on there's the storage pit (5%, quickly obsolete so not cumulative), the Icehouse (10%), the Granary (30%), the Warehouse (10%) and the Cellar (5%), meaning that you can reduce the amount of food needed to grow by 55%! And later on I don't even know what happens if you build a Modern Granary (50%), a Modern Warehouse (30%) and a Refrigerator Factory (20%).
I'd say those bonuses should be divided by 2 or 3 (like 4% for the Icehouse and Warehouse, 2% for Cellar and 10% for Granary for a total of 20% max ; that's already a really nice push).


(rest will follow later on, too tired for now )

Regarding city growth, the game doesn't model that today, in many European
countries and Japan, the number of children per woman is way below
the replacement value of 2.1 children per woman. In Western Europe, births
are 1.5 - 1.8 children per woman, and in southern, central and Eastern Europe,
this is closer to 1.2 children per woman. Which means that in a few generations
the indigenous population of Europe will shrink tremendously. Meanwhile the
world's population keeps on growing more and more rapidly, but that growth
takes place almost exclusively in Afrika and southern Asia.

Birth rate map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_fertility_rate

Dangerous Demographics lecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w3meSupCME

Two possible reasons for the demographic suicide of Europe:
1) secular people tend to have less children than religious people.
2) people with higher education tend to have less children than people
with lower education (the theme of the movie "idiocracy")

Both reasons can be modeled in the game.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The statistics I saw say that the average world value is just over 2.5 children per woman. Europe and the former USSR region and the Americas are all below 2. Asia is about 2.1.

Also the number of children being born each year looks like it has stopped rising! If that is so then the prediction is for the maximum human population reaching about 11 billion - 1 in Europe & former USSR; 1 in each of the Americas; 4 in Asia and 4 in Africa.

It was UN statistics.

 

[Rwn]

Why are your neighbours still alive if they are weaker? Conquer them!

Well, the problem is, up until now I've always been barely at the cash limit for expansion (as soon as I'm back in the green for money I founded a new city, then waited till I was in the green again, etc.), so when I had the opportunity I chose to found my own cities to grab the nice spots rather than conquer the neighbours'. But maybe that wasn't the optimal strategy...

Regarding city growth, the game doesn't model that today, in many European
countries and Japan, the number of children per woman is way below
the replacement value of 2.1 children per woman. (...)

Well my point is not as much to fix anything in later eras (I don't mind cities with size 40 in modern era) rather than in early eras... Demographic transition issues sure could be implemented, but that's really something recent in human history.

There were a few unusually large cities very early on (Rome for instance) but they did not reach their size through farming and gathering fields near the city, they massively imported food from other places. So in game terms that would mean that cities should not become so easily very populated alone, though it could be done through food caravans and the like.

That was for the "realism" perspective. From a gameplay perspective, it gives an uncatchable edge to the first city/cities you found since they are all growing regularly and fast. Granted this is not just an issue of fast growth (I'll get to that later), but fast growth increases the problem since instead of being maybe 1-2 pop ahead they'll be 5 or 10. More importantly, it also makes terrain rather irrelevant for most of the game since the cities are so large that the main source of differenciation between them is how you spread the specialists, not what terrain lies around.


Oh, and by the way, it seems the Zulus have found out how to make their army cross the ocean afterall...

 

[Yudishtira]

100 siege, 50 tamed animals and 11 melee? Is that a genuine AI stack???!!! (It's extremely informative if it is...)

And there's no way that came by sea(where are the 30-40 ships anyway???): there must be a land bridge...

 

[Sparth]

100 siege, 50 tamed animals and 11 melee? Is that a genuine AI stack???!!! (It's extremely informative if it is...)

Aside from unit type Its way too many units in this stack

 

[Rwn]

Now some broader thoughts that came during that game (though not really related to this particular game).


City growth
(...)

(rest will follow later on, too tired for now )

City terrain dependency

With all the buildings providing food, gold, production etc. the cities aren't very dependent on the terrain around them. In my game, an average city that exploits every city tile around it only get around half of its ressources from the terrain; if you consider in addition that most terrains don't provide much more than what a specialist would and that the difference between a low-quality terrain (such as salt flat) and a high-quality one (such as lush) is ultimately quite small once you add improvements, you reach a situation where two cities with the same size and infrastructure development are very similar in terms of output. Some significant potential differences are coming from resources, rivers and coast, which allow some special buildings, but there aren't that many.

In addition to the difficulty to really specialize cities, this leads me to think that the optimal strategy in C2C would probably to spam as many cities as you can once there's no more room available, since the additional output you get from a new city is much higher that the loss of some tiles in another city.

I'd thus suggest to try to have cities more dependent on the terrain around them, which can be achieved through several ways:

- Increase the base output from terrain and decrease the bonus from improvements (or make it dependent on the base terrain). Instead of having a farmed grassland provide 10 vs. a farmed lush of 11 due to the +8 from the farm, you'd get maybe 8 from grassland and 11 from lush - either by changing the base of grassland and lush or by changing the bonus from the farm depending on whether it's on grassland or lush.
Of course, to prevent huge difference in unimproved terrain early on, the base output could be differentiated depending on technology - so early grassland and lush could still provide 2 and 3 respectively (making those terrain significatively different in Prehistorical era), but later on they'd provide say 5 and 8 , making them still different even if you put a +3 farm on them.

- Increase the terrain-dependency of buildings, such as building X requiring a peak, building Y a forest etc. I don't know whether it's feasible, but the best would be if there could be a prerequisite or a bonus based on the number of terrains around the city (in order to avoid multi-specialized cities just because they have 1 terrain of each in their vicinity).
For example, a woodcutter building in the city may require forest in the city vicinity and provide a + bonus depending on the number of forests in the vicinity; a wood harvester building may require at least 4 forests in the city vicinity etc.

- Decrease the number of building giving flat +X resource in favor of buildings giving +X% resource. As resources will then have to come mostly from terrain, a city full of buildings exploiting only 4 tiles will be much less productive than the same exploiting 15 tiles around it. This is mostly to address the "city spam" strategy above.

 

[Rwn]

100 siege, 50 tamed animals and 11 melee? Is that a genuine AI stack???!!! (It's extremely informative if it is...)

And there's no way that came by sea(where are the 30-40 ships anyway???): there must be a land bridge...

Sure it's genuine I'm not too surprised by the big stack, vanilla AI was also sometimes using very large stacks - and giving how far ahead in power the Zulus are, I'd guess this is their main stack where they put most of their offensive units.

I reloaded the save in the turn they landed, it looks like they came by sea, though I can only see 6 ships (there might be some more in the fog of war?)

Fear the almighty 20 strength trebuchet

 

[Toffer90]

100 siege, 50 tamed animals and 11 melee? Is that a genuine AI stack???!!! (It's extremely informative if it is...)

Jupp, a typical AI stack, seen this a lot lately, AI build way too many siege, tamed animals, crime fighters and healers and almost no regular troops.

Once I saw the AI declare war to only send a stack of over a hundred apothecary units to lay siege on a city without any other kind of troops but some tamed animals defending them.
Other times they might try to take a city with 30-60 siege rams without any other troops. (these can't actually kill units on their own.)

 

[Rwn]

City growth

City terrain dependency

Subdued animals

I have to say I enjoy a lot the initial animal "minigame" where you have to find and subdue as many animals as possible, pokemon style. There are still a few things that bother me.

First, getting an animal unlocking the master hunter building seems a bit too random. Until you get the master hunter building, you're stuck with very weak chasers and the impact of being able to switch to trackers then hunters is very significant. Of course you can wait until you get a Great Hunter, but by then you'll probably have missed a lot of subdued animals compared to if you had the chance to get a master hunter early on. Also, I don't understand the logic behind which animals unlock the master builder; at first I thought it was only the strongest animals or only the "wild" animals, but some weak or domestic animals like the bongo and the pig can create it; certain bears can and other can't (brown bear for instance)...
So I'd suggest increasing the number of animals that can create the master hunter to more animals so that you're reasonably sure you'll get one after some successful captures.

Another thing I dislike is how difficult it is to know in advance if your subdued animals will be useful once you've built the myth. Many of them have other uses (sometimes not even visible) that are unlocked later on:
- Special myths (dragon, phoenix...)
- Falconer (which in theory requires poultry and wine in the city vicinity, a rare occurrence...)
- Snake charmer/Snake Pit
- Story and stories (generalist and specific)
- Feather worker
- Governor's pets/menagerie (don't know exactly which animals can and which can't build them btw)
- Carnival, zoo (same here)
- Herds
- Dog/cat buildings
- probably others I can't remember

Worst even, some of those buildings can be built normally by the city while others are exclusively built by subdued animals. So, in the end, it means for me preciously keeping every subdued animal I can find in my capital until I reach the support unit limit and have to more or less randomly pick some for butchering or for creating buildings in other cities.

Also, I still haven't understood how "storY" and "storIES" building really work. It seems that you can build some based on the myths you have in the cities, but the whole thing looks a bit unclear since they are unlocked at various tech and/or building prerequisites, since "storIES" create "storIES" effects that are apparently identical from (but cumulative with) "storY", since some storIES appear only available through a Master Hunter (a bit of a waste)... Well, I've played quite a few games of C2C now and I still haven't completely figured it out...


In order to make things a bit more understandable, I can think of two possible ways:
- Either make any building that can be built by animals also buildable by the city (of course excluding the base myths). Subdued animals could then offer the building for free or cheaper, but you never lose anything by not keeping the right subdued animal for hundreds of turns.
- Or offer the possibility to create your own subdued animals once you have the corresponding myth. This would look a bit like the tamed animals currently, except that the tamer comes rather late and that many animals are not available in tamed version (and some tamed animals are available even if you never got the corresponding myth).

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

1) only those subdued animals that provide a lot of food when killed allow the building of a Master Hunter. Killing for food is what hunting is about.

Wild pigs are worse than other predators because they gang up on you. Even those animals that prey on them treat them with respect and have been known to be killed by them.

2) when you have a subdued animal active it's hover text shows the buildings it can build. This is a work in progress.

3) <Animal> Story can be built in each city. <Animal> Stories is a pseudo national wonder that basically gives you a free <Animal> Story in every city. The <Animal> Stories Effect makes it a pseudo National Wonder,

I need to change the colony formation so that your colony gets all the Myths and Stories you have and you get all they have.

Master Hunters need to be given a "Write Memoirs" action which will provide a number of Story or Stories buildings in the city.

4) It was a player request to have the Story and Stories buildings removed from the building queue. IE to only have them built by the subdued animals. Not all have been, only the ones not about animal groups at the moment.

The Story Teller line of units are also designed to build the Story and Stories buildings. If you have built a story building in your nation the Bard can build it in any city that has a Scribal School. If you have a Story and Library in the city the Bard can build build the Stories building.

5) Having all buildings built by animals also built by defeats the point of the early game. The tamer is where it is to allow you to build them.

6) Tamer is being changed. The building is now at the earliest point where a nation is organised enough to move animals around. The tamed animals will require the myth and will become available when it is reasonable to assume the organization, skill etc for moving them.

I am not decided on if there should be one tamed animal per subdued animal or one per (taxonomy) group eg one tamed bear or one for each of the various bears. If I do the latter, you will be able to trade with others for animals you have not encountered and get their Myths and Stories.

 

[Rwn]

OK, so back to the game now

After seeing the mega zulu pile near my city of Avignon, I considered that city lost and started to build my own force to retake it later. Very surprinsingly, the AI... did not attack the city, but rather spent some time pillaging the nearby improvements for several turns. By the time it was finished, I had built several good units in defense of Avignon, as well as walls, pit traps, etc. Then the AI attacked and crashed about every one of its tamed animal on my units :/ My own units got inside the city a few turns later while the AI kept bombarding the city (at this point it was even ready to sign peace), but through the auto damage from traps, even the super 18-20 str merged experienced units weakened, until I was able to take the 50-100 units left (mostly siege) one by one.

So, I don't know whether I should be relieved (that my game goes better than expected - though this doesn't solve the big edge that the AI has on the long run) or disappointed (that the AI handled its units so badly - if it had attacked immediately I wouldn't have stood a chance).

And I was wrong thinking that this pile was the main zulu force. Killing it only made a small dent in the overall power of the zulu, I'm now afraid to imagine what they have behind...

 

[Hydromancerx]

Sorry if you already answered this but what tech era are you at and what are the Zulu at (guessing by units)?

 

[Rwn]

4) It was a player request to have the Story and Stories buildings removed from the building queue. IE to only have them built by the subdued animals. Not all have been, only the ones not about animal groups at the moment.

OK. Is there a plan to make them all built the same way? Currently it's rather... confusing. Not only some "story" can be built and other not, but I've been able to build them in some cities and not in others (don't know why they are or aren't available). And I don't know why I was able to build a few Stories (maybe 10) while I had much more myths, while my Great Hunter has the option to build only a few additional ones.

It might also be easier to understand to have the "Stories" autobuild the corresponding "Story" in every city. So you can either quickly build (or have animals build) the cheap "Story" in your cities if you have few, or invest a lot of to build the "Stories" to do it automatically.

Oh, and a last odd thing I've noted, some of the Stories buildings are in Special category on the city's left panel, other are in the Buildings category... (while all the myths/story/story effects are in Special)

The Story Teller line of units are also designed to build the Story and Stories buildings. If you have built a story building in your nation the Bard can build it in any city that has a Scribal School. If you have a Story and Library in the city the Bard can build build the Stories building.

I'm not sure I understand. The bard can build any Story that is already built somewhere else in a city with Scribal school - OK. But what does the Library add? If you've built Stories somewhere you can't built them anywhere else since you have the Story - Effect?

5) Having all buildings built by animals also built by defeats the point of the early game. The tamer is where it is to allow you to build them.

Well in the early game the myths provide . That's already a big part of the early game, and they determine which further animal buildings you can build, so I don't think allowing to build those subsequent buildings with hammers would make the early game less relevant.

6) Tamer is being changed. The building is now at the earliest point where a nation is organised enough to move animals around. The tamed animals will require the myth and will become available when it is reasonable to assume the organization, skill etc for moving them.

I am not decided on if there should be one tamed animal per subdued animal or one per (taxonomy) group eg one tamed bear or one for each of the various bears. If I do the latter, you will be able to trade with others for animals you have not encountered and get their Myths and Stories.

I find that the level of micromanagement of animals past the myth phase a bit tedious now, so the least the better IMHO

 

[Rwn]

Sorry if you already answered this but what tech era are you at and what are the Zulu at (guessing by units)?

Not completely sure but my estimate based on the wonders they've built is that they're around mid Medieval (I'm somewhere late Classical), probably 20 techs ahead of me or something.

The pile I destroyed was mostly late classical with a few Trebuchets which are unlocked by one of the first Medieval techs; taking into account the time to build and bring them on my continent, that would fit.

That game is clearly one of the most fun I had in C2C

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

1) Myth, Story and Stories

Pseudo National Wonders work by giving a free building to all cities that prohibits the building of that Pseudo National Wonder.

Myth is a Pseudo National Wonder that provides Myth Effect in all cities. They require Knowledge Inheritance or Scribal School or Library.

Story requires Scribal School and Myth Effect.

Stories are Pseudo National Wonders that require Story and Library. They provide Stories Effect.

Stories Effect is identical to Story and replaces it.

We can't use Story as the free building because Stories can't both require and not have the building in the city.​

2) Some can be built by and subdued animals while others can only be built by subdued animals

Not quite true as once you have built a Story in one city you can use the Story Teller line (Bard and above) to build it in other cities if you have the Scribal School.

Stories can be built by the Entertainer in cities with a library if you have the Story anywhere in your nation (or is it only in cities where you have the story?)

The Story buildings are a work in progress. I would like to finish all of them before we release v36. I have only done about a third so far.

Only the Story and Stories about animal groupings eg Bears, Dogs, Sea Birds and so on will be built by . The point is that we may change the Chinese Culture to require Myth of Panda (or effect) for example but Bear Trainer to require Myth of any Bear ie the same as Myth of Bear.

It may be better to have Myth of Bear auto build when you build any of the Myth of specific Bear. That way they would be neither built by or subdued animals.​

OK. Is there a plan to make them all built the same way? Currently it's rather... confusing. Not only some "story" can be built and other not, but I've been able to build them in some cities and not in others (don't know why they are or aren't available). And I don't know why I was able to build a few Stories (maybe 10) while I had much more myths, while my Great Hunter has the option to build only a few additional ones.

It is a work in progress. I have only had chance to do about a third to half of the animals so far.

There are two types of "animal". There are the wild animals and then there are the groupings humans use when talking about the animals (Taxonomy buildings). The buildings of the former can only be built by the subdued animal and the Story Teller Line. The Great Hunter should be doing something different.

It may be better to have the Taxonomy Myth buildings auto build and then let the Story and Stories buildings be built by the animal or Story Teller line.

Story Teller line - Bard can build Story. Entertainer and better can build Story and Stories.

Oh, and a last odd thing I've noted, some of the Stories buildings are in Special category on the city's left panel, other are in the Buildings category... (while all the myths/story/story effects are in Special)

Where they appear depends on how they are built. Eventually they (animal) will all show up in Special

Well in the early game the myths provide . That's already a big part of the early game, and they determine which further animal buildings you can build, so I don't think allowing to build those subsequent buildings with hammers would make the early game less relevant.

I did have them built using but players complained. Thus the change.

There are plans to have the Story Teller line automate the spread of dances and stories with them gaining experience representing the number they can spread. They would not normally be consumed when doing this so that they move on to other cities. Although there would always be a chance that they will "settle down" or retire at some stage.

If we can come up with a good way of doing that we may make it a behind the scenes thing rather than micro manage.

It is still in the very early stages of discussion.

 

[Rwn]

OK, much clearer now, thanks for the detailed explanation.

Stories Effect is identical to Story and replaces it.

We can't use Story as the free building because Stories can't both require and not have the building in the city.[/INDENT]

Wouldn't it be possible to keep them different, but using the same TXT_KEY_BUILDING... to make them appear identical to the player? This might help with the potential confusion between Story and Stories - Effect.

There are plans to have the Story Teller line automate the spread of dances and stories with them gaining experience representing the number they can spread. They would not normally be consumed when doing this so that they move on to other cities. Although there would always be a chance that they will "settle down" or retire at some stage.

If we can come up with a good way of doing that we may make it a behind the scenes thing rather than micro manage.

It is still in the very early stages of discussion.

That sounds very cool!

 

[Rwn]

City growth

City terrain dependency

Subdued animals

AI Growth

I've noticed that the AI had trouble expanding. I was roughly on par with the various AI on my continent until each of their civilizations had founded around 4 cities. At that point (early ancient), the AIs completely stopped expanding for hundred of turns, while I was (slowly) building new cities when I could afford it up to maybe 8 cities. This is where I really gained an edge on my neighbour civs. Then some AI civs slowly restarted to expand (around classical), but too late.

The issue for the AIs was not available space, there was plenty of it (and it did not prevent them to add a few more cities much later on). Me bet is that they have issues with their earnings; I can think of two things that make them play suboptimally:
- Costly buildings. I saw that AI was very eager to build things like walls, pit traps, torches... that can be a significant economical hurdle for a limited benefit. I'm quite sure the AI isn't very good at balancing maintenance cost vs. benefits, so I wonder if would not be better to remove those maintenance costs early on (or at least make the AI less likely to pick a building if it has a maintenance cost unless it's doing very well economically).
- Crime. When I invaded an enemy city, I discovered a den of crime, with several autobuildings costing each more than 10 per turn (I'd say the total cost - before % increase is taken into account - would probably be in the 50 ); the total maintenance cost of the city was over 200 per turn for an income of 80 (though this was probably a bit reduced due to my invasion destroying some buildings). Unless invasion makes crime explode in some way, the AI cities must have thus an enormous strain due to crime; my guess is that the AI have difficulties managing it as well as the player, for example garrisoning town watchmen with policing promotions whenever the crime starts to be too high if there's no affordable building available to reduce crime instead.

Of course, this did not prevent the zulus from expanding like crazy so something else must have happen for them... (maybe the conquer bug that was mentioned in another topic?)