AI City Spam... how?

[tyranny12]

Long-time lurker, I swear I made an account on here a long time ago but no email address of mine was recognized.

Anyhow - this has bugged me for the longest time. I research the forums occasionally to find it out until it stops bugging me, but have never found an answer.

How does the AI avoid the maintenance penalties from cities? I see AIs spam cities like crazy when I'm hitting a 4 city cap - and still get research.

I regularly play on Prince, win some half the time. This game I'm playing the Dutch. I hit a cap around 5 cities, expanding again now, but I've been watching two other civs spam out the entire time and still hit CS and Feudalism before me, though I have a slight edge on research too.

End result is Hungary and Arabs have 14 cities, Babylonians 10, and I have 6. That's about to increase since Shaka declared war on me, but still - what gives?

Prince, Big/small, Large, Epic game. I'm doing ok but is there some part of the maint cap I'm missing that the AI gets?

 

[tyranny12]

Forgot to add - this is primarily annoying when every city spot on all the small islands has been settled by Mr. Hungary over there - or at least all the good ones I scouted out.

Are there civics or methods you use to reduce maintenance outside of Courthouses? I was the first to discover CoL, but that didn't change anything - Saladin was 5 cities ahead and didn't have CoL for about 700 years after me.

 

[DaveMcW]

Cottages!!

 

[tyranny12]

Cottages!!

Love 'em. I will admit to having few initially, due to the four or five gold I was mining instead.

But cottage spam == 10 early cities without crippling research? I find that doesn't seem to apply for me.

 

[DaveMcW]

As long as you keep research above 50%, you're fine.

 

[tyranny12]

As long as you keep research above 50%, you're fine.

Yep, I did. Just frustrated at the stupid land eating Hungarians.

 

[Shoot the Moon]

At any level above Noble, the AI get bonuses while you get penalties. (Oh, and 4 cities is pretty small anyways).

 

[Powerslave]

The AI plays by slightly different rules than us. You can find out what those rules are by checking the XML files; for example, civ4handicap.xml details all the settings that both you and AI play by, per difficulty level. You'll see that the AI receives certain bonuses regardless of difficulty level, such as reduced upgrade costs.

Blake's AI improvements led to the AI essentially cottaging every single square possible, oftentimes leaving less-experienced players guessing how to keep up. Rather than cottaging most of your flat land, you really do need to cottage every tile that will take a cottage. An extreme form of cottage spam also includes cottaging grassy hills and less important resources. Some people consider this a bit excessive, of course, but I've found that it works quite well when you're playing against Mansa Musa or other high-speed techers.

Consider also that, besides the vast amount of cottages that the AI is working, that it also is probably using up Great Scientists (or other Great People) to "lightbulb" technologies. This is a quite legitimate strategy, but I often find that settling them in my cities helps me more, in the long run. I'm flexible on this, however. Using up a Great Person to found a religion or get a particularly useful civic makes more sense to me than waiting to see a benefit.

Finally, consider that a Shrine gives you a massive economic boost. In your game, I'd bet that the runaway AIs (HRE, Arabia) both have at least one Shrine. Charlemagne and Saladin both go crazy over religions, and it's rare to see them without a Shrine (or three). Once you spread your religion to a few other civs, you can use the extra income to finance your expansion.

Hope this helps.

 

[Roland Johansen]

My guess is that you're unwilling to let your science percentage drop to a low percentage during the expansion period. That's usually the reason human players can't keep up with the AI expansion rate. Lots of players think their rate of research is mainly linked to the research percentage which is nonsense. Another reason could be that you're not developing the commerce production of your cities enough. The best way to do that is cottages, resources (like the gold mines that you mentioned) and specialists.

 

[Belisar]

Roland is right, the science percentage (slider) is irrelevant, the total amount of beakers counts.
The AI plays with maintenance from noble level so the human player has a disadvantage at higher levels.
At upgrades, WW, inflation... the AI has even more discounts. (These were reduced to more reasonable values in the latest patch)

 

[Kelvenor]

I usably go after a neighbor with a shrine for an Economic boost...Usably its the Civ that Founded Buddhism, in my current game the Dutch and I'm about 4 turn to liberalism will soon get muskets and absorb the juiciest parts of the Dutch empire; the Capital holy city of Buddha . Doing this can help your expansion; this city will probably be the site of my Wall street (hehehe Wall street from a Dutch settlement, history is cyclical even in Civ ) You can even plan this war in advance diplomatically with other civs who hates your intended target, usably a rival religion. But also with some early war if your target is a little remote from early border. I had5 cities founded by myself, went for an early war to add cities to my empire and brought my border closer to my religious target .

Go to war with your alies, conquer/destroy him or vassalage and keep the best cities for yourself. As far as the Science slider goes....don't be afraid to lower it once you absorb other cities...usually they were cottage spam I usually go for a hybrid economy (CE/SE) add a holy city in the mix with an already well spread religion in most civ and your Economy should recover after CH are in place in each city. After that you should have a decent empire 11-15 cities you can go for space race, dominion or if your blood lust isn't satisfied go for a Conquest Victory.

 

[xanadux]

Block off the AI with early cities, whipping or chopping monuments to get a border pop quickly. If you have at least 1 city out of every 3 concentrating on working cottages, you can expand pretty rapidly. Even 6 or 7 cities before CoL or Currency is feasible. Getting a library or 2 built and running some scientists can help keep the research going even at 20 or 30% on the slider. You don't really need to match the AI expansion. You just need to get enough cities to both have a good production base and a good tech rate.

Most likely your problems lie in not playing the early game efficiently and not developing a strong economy, and possibly making poor tech choices. At prince level, 1 or 2 strong commerce cities is enough to get CS way before the AI and macemen way before the AI. Once you have maces, you can take the cities you want given enough production.

 

[futurehermit]

Currency + CoL + Cottages + Trade Routes + High commerce tiles (precious metals, calendar resources).

In BtS it is important to get your economy in order early on (try and maintain good diplomacy). If you have Shaka nearby, you have to expect a war (unless you bow to his every demand, gift him lots of stuff, and keep high power and him occupied--i.e., bribe him to attack someone else), but otherwise try and manage diplo and focus on economy for the most part. Doing this I routinely have 6-10 cities around the 200AD mark and sometimes earlier depending on the leader/terrain I get.

See my sig.

 

[oyzar]

on noble and prince you can basically build as many cities as you want without cripling your economy. At these difficulties i also find that you don't need cottages as there are always better things to build.

 

[xanadux]

on noble and prince you can basically build as many cities as you want without cripling your economy. At these difficulties i also find that you don't need cottages as there are always better things to build.

Yes, pretty much any reasonable play given knowing how to develop quickly at the start and you can destroy prince and below. You can even play a game with no cottages and no specialists at prince and still win handly if you know what you are doing.

 

[xanadux]

But given a financial leader and a city with a lot of river tiles, cottages are the way to go.