[GS] "AI" and solar farms.

[orasis]

I'm sure everyone has noticed this but isn't a PITA? At least one civ in every game will destroy themselves by putting down an insane amount of solar farms. In RF we saw this irrational behavior with AI's offing city states (beneficial to themselves!) and now at least one (but sometimes 2-3) will just choke themselves with these farms.

How many solar farms do you build? 22-42?

 

[Victoria]

They like to get a tan.

 

[Tech Osen]

Yeah, it's rather odd. You can also see it with your own builders where the recommended improvement is pretty much always a solar farm or wind mill.

 

[Infixo]

Internal scoring for them must be off balance. I think devs put too much weight to the power. They wanted T3 buildings to matter in GS apparently, and they need power. So, power is important, even too important as we can see.
The bad thing is that they didn’t create a pseudoyield for power. So, we cannot re-balance it by ourselves.

 

[Tech Osen]

Took a look at it in my current game. A tier 3 building requires 3 power. Solar farms and windmills give 2 power. So you need 3 improvements for 2 buildings, that does add up pretty fast. Not sure if the AI is programmed to avoid co2 or that it's often has no resources to give power through power plants.

 

[Infixo]

@Tech Osen Yup, this could also be a factor. Imo AI is GS is not doing well with resource management. There are still some signs showing that it treats them as if pre-GS "1 or 2 is enough", makes weird deals, etc. This could lead to shortages or simply lack of them. As a result, renewable sources would be needed much more.

 

[Disgustipated]

Solar farms aren't too bad an improvement other than the lack of food.

 

[kaspergm]

Clearly they "forgot" to program the part where the advisor checks power consumption before advising you what to build in the city. I have had cities with 19 unused power, and the advisor still defaults to SOLAR FARM as sugested improvement on every single valid hex. Clearly this is the same problem that strikes the AI, it's programmed to think that solar farms is always the best improvement.

Similarly, they will advice you to build Offshore Windmills even on tiles where Seasteads are clearly the best option (like multiple adjacent sea resources and/or reefs).

 

[Jkchart]

Yep - the AI will spam these improvements incessantly. They do the same for Mountain Tunnels and that drives me even more nuts because it is an absolute waste of production to spam mountain tiles with tunnels.

 

[PapaMonkey]

Do solar farms have to be within the city radius and / or worked to provide power?

 

[Troy Bruckner]

Solar farms are fantastic on desert, tundra and snow.....

 

[rsirangelo]

Do solar farms have to be within the city radius and / or worked to provide power?

Nope, they provide power even if they are on the 4th and 5th ring

 

[iammaxhailme]

Nope, they provide power even if they are on the 4th and 5th ring

Wow, I need to remember this

 

[chademe]

Nope, they provide power even if they are on the 4th and 5th ring

Does this apply to the other power generating items like wind farms and geothermal plants? And do they get the other production and gold bonuses even if they're not worked?

 

[Sostratus]

Does this apply to the other power generating items like wind farms and geothermal plants? And do they get the other production and gold bonuses even if they're not worked?

Any tile yields can’t be worked in 4th and 5th ring. It’s only resource access/extraction (luxuries, strategic,) housing, tourism, and power that get added up just for being in the city’s territory.
That said I think amenities from improvements like the golf course, or camps etc under the Temple of Artemis, also stack up no matter how far away.