A No City Civ - Something Weird

[forkshy]

Something really weird (that hasn't happened to me before) just happened in my latest game.

I happened upon a Civ without a city and managed to surround him on a mountain. This will be good for my score because i'll be able to build an extra city in the long run.

It's pretty neat, here's two screen caps:





The really weird thing is that he's been like this at least since i built Marco Polo's Embassy around 1AD.

Questions:

-Has this ever happened to you?

-Does anyone know why they never built a city?

-What happens if i build a city near their settlers and demand they remove their troops?

 

[Prof. Garfield]

The computer doesn't build cities on mountains. I've never actually tried to surround them to keep them from building, but i have bribed the lone settlers in an effort to finish conquest. I have not tried to have them "remove troops." Perhaps you should build a city and do so.

 

[forkshy]

The computer doesn't build cities on mountains. I've never actually tried to surround them to keep them from building, but i have bribed the lone settlers in an effort to finish conquest. I have not tried to have them "remove troops." Perhaps you should build a city and do so.

I actually didn't find him on that mountain. I found him wandering around and 'herded' him onto the mountain with some crusaders to keep him from building a city. -_-

I think i'm deffinitely going to try telling him to remove his troops as an experiment. I'm kind of excited about the experiment.

I think he may have failed to build a city because of the proximity of the Germans but i'm not sure. He'd been around for a long time without building a city and i kept thinking, "That's weird, i wonder where he is?"

I had assumed he popped on one of the poles and wouldn't build because of the tundra. I'm really curious as to why he never built a city when there was plenty of good land around him, though.

 

[Ace]

This is a known item. Occasionally, the computer will start, or more likely, restart a civ where it won't build a city. And this settler just sits there, literally, forever. This is a trick when your playing a high score type game because if you can trap an AI settler like this so it cannot build a city, you can actually build 255 cities while the AI has none!

 

[forkshy]

This is a known item. Occasionally, the computer will start, or more likely, restart a civ where it won't build a city. And this settler just sits there, literally, forever. This is a trick when your playing a high score type game because if you can trap an AI settler like this so it cannot build a city, you can actually build 255 cities while the AI has none!

This kind of makes me wonder. The germans were pretty powerful pretty early in the game and he was stuck on a pennensula in close proximity to him. Perhaps this calls for an experiment. Hypothesis: the greeks did not build a city because of the proximity of a powerful civilization.

 

[BaconLad]

You will not be able to request that the greeks withdraw as they are not within your borders, (unless you build a city there) in any case I don't think you can request that settlers are withdrawn as they are not military units. I certainly know that my settlers/engineers in foreign lands have never been forced to withdraw.

If it was a military unit without a city to withdraw to, it will remain where it is.

Something happend in a game of mine a while ago that contributed heavily to the way I play civ2 now.
Rather than build a city I sent both my settlers exploring to gain a large mercenary army from huts.
Along the way I came across a city (can not remember whom) and more or less completely surrounded it. After initial diplomacy I signed a peace treaty but left my units in position. 2 turns later the tribe requested that I withdraw my forces to which I agreed, as I had no cities my units remained in position, fortified dircetly around the city. Every time they requested that I move, I agreed, but my units stayed there regardless. I managed to keep it that way untill the timeline reached well into AD. During this time I managed to surround another tribes city and both cities remained 1 city states untill I eventually got bored and quit the game. This is how I came up with my containment strategie.

 

[forkshy]

You will not be able to request that the greeks withdraw as they are not within your borders, (unless you build a city there) in any case I don't think you can request that settlers are withdrawn as they are not military units. I certainly know that my settlers/engineers in foreign lands have never been forced to withdraw.

If it was a military unit without a city to withdraw to, it will remain where it is.

Something happend in a game of mine a while ago that contributed heavily to the way I play civ2 now.
Rather than build a city I sent both my settlers exploring to gain a large mercenary army from huts.
Along the way I came across a city (can not remember whom) and more or less completely surrounded it. After initial diplomacy I signed a peace treaty but left my units in position. 2 turns later the tribe requested that I withdraw my forces to which I agreed, as I had no cities my units remained in position, fortified dircetly around the city. Every time they requested that I move, I agreed, but my units stayed there regardless. I managed to keep it that way untill the timeline reached well into AD. During this time I managed to surround another tribes city and both cities remained 1 city states untill I eventually got bored and quit the game. This is how I came up with my containment strategie.

No, AI settlers count as military troops and are withdrawn from your cities' spheres of influence when you demand it.

Also, I actually often do the same thing when i start with enough tech to justify it. I find that having a horseman or two is more useful than an extra three or four turns of city production when you've already got two tech towards monarchy. Though i never build my first city after 3700. You're just losing too much population growth to expand effectively at that point in my opinion.

 

[civiijkw]

In my second game ever (prince on the large world map) the restarting Carthaginians began with a lone settler on the two-square (tundra and glacier) Novaya-Zemlya. It was surrounded by my battleships (with nearby transports, armor, marines and stealth fighters). Eventually a second settler was spawned, but they never built a city. They rejected my offers of peace and said that only my possession of the UN kept them from destroying my worthless civilization.