AI City Placement

[cgannon64]

I'm playing a leisurely Monarch game with America. I am halfway through a successful (with a few setbacks, but going strong) war against Babylon, and I am fighting a fake war with my other neighbor , Mongolia. They sneak attacked me but we hae only traded a few shots, nothing much. Anyway, I plan on conquering both these countries in a row, so I was looking at their cores to see if I had to resettle.

While doing so, I noticed something. At first glance their cities looked very spaced out, but when I looked for the 21-square radius, I noticed that there was very little overlap and they used all their good tiles. The same held true for Babylon. This was kind of a shock, because I had always thought the AI placed their cities terribly.

So, which is it? Was their well-placed cores a fluke, or was mistaken about AI city placement?

 

[WildFire]

It IS just one game where they have good city placement I had a game where the capital expanded to get 1 cattle out of 3 there and they didnt settle anywere near the other 2 cattle. For the most part, the AI just goes for rescources and luxuries and I don't think the progammers were really worried about the AI settling.

 

[TheNiceOne]

I think city placement is one of the areas where the AI does a relatively good job. But is suspect it only considers one city at a time, i.e., it only considers its next city and tries to find a good position for it, instead of thinking something like "if I put the city one more square to the left, I get two good city spots".

However, I think the AI puts way too much space between their cities, which means that they only get to use most of their terrain by the time of late industrial age, when (at least in my games), the game is decided some time ago. I will often settle some cities inbetween the AI cities.

 

[Gengis Khan]

I tend to find in most of my games that the AIs city placement is their second biggest blunder(next to their worker usage of course). The always seemingly place them randomly & love to grab tundra & desert cities even though resources won't pop up their for 1000s of years. Stupid, stupid AI.

 

[Clown2TheLeft]

If the AI had good city placement, it is likely because of resources that have not yet developed yet--uranium, aluminium, rubber, etc.--are in those radii. The AI is usually sinfully terrible at placing cities, especially those that could be high production ones. Seems they go out of their way to avoid hills&mountains, preferring, rather, to have grassland (all irrigated, of course)...


Later!

--The Clown to the Left

 

[sabo]

Originally posted by Gengis Khan
I tend to find in most of my games that the AIs city placement is their second biggest blunder(next to their worker usage of course). The always seemingly place them randomly & love to grab tundra & desert cities even though resources won't pop up their for 1000s of years. Stupid, stupid AI.

Yes, and even another example of how firaxis tries to give the AI a little bit of an advantage but backfires on them, because we all know if the AI plops a city down in the middle of the tundra 1000's of miles from their capitol there probably will be oil or something popping up there.

Can anyone say "culture flip it"

 

[carlosMM]

TNO is right, I think, the AIs are pretty good at placing one city, but NOT at using the land