[BTS] Boxed-In By AI

Knightfall

Warlord
Joined
Jul 27, 2017
Messages
199
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United States
Every time I play this game, I wind up getting "boxed-in" by the AI by the end of the Classical Age. By this, I mean that I can't settle more cities because I've gotten completely surrounded by AI civs, so my only alternatives are to either attack them and take their cities, which is a problem because I like to play peaceful builder games for the most part, or settle the tundra and desserts the AI doesn't want. Does anyone have any advice for how I can avoid this?
 
It would be best if you learned to fight wars of conquest, but if you're adamant about not starting any wars I'd recommend playing on either an Inland Sea or Hub map. They're map scripts that make it much harder to get boxed in than, say, starting inland on a Pangaea.
 
It would be best if you learned to fight wars of conquest, but if you're adamant about not starting any wars I'd recommend playing on either an Inland Sea or Hub map. They're map scripts that make it much harder to get boxed in than, say, starting inland on a Pangaea.
I had a feeling someone would say that. I think I may have to adapt my playstyle a little. IV isn't my main game, I usually play V/VI. I'm starting to notice that the most recent Civ games have made turtling and waging only defensive wars much more viable than they were in IV.
 
I can't speak for Civ V/VI, but defensive wars in Civ IV are indeed a waste of time/resources for the most part. It can be useful to, say, trick an AI into suiciding an army into a heavily fortified city of yours, and from there send your army to take his/her relatively defenceless lands (bonus points if you have The Great Wall, +100% GG generation for battles fought in your territory), but beyond that you don't really gain anything from fighting a strictly defensive war.
 
I can't speak for Civ V/VI, but defensive wars in Civ IV are indeed a waste of time/resources for the most part. It can be useful to, say, trick an AI into suiciding an army into a heavily fortified city of yours, and from there send your army to take his/her relatively defenceless lands (bonus points if you have The Great Wall, +100% GG generation for battles fought in your territory), but beyond that you don't really gain anything from fighting a strictly defensive war.
Makes sense. Do you have any advice for how to avoid being boxed in just by settling quickly?
 
If you're insistent on peaceful games but you still want room to expand, you could settle a "blocker" city. Basically forward expand right to the AI's front door, preferably in a choke point, and then backfill all the good spots later. Build culture in your blocker city to really dissuade the AI from coming near you. Disclaimer: it will be bad for relations, tough to defend, and have high maintenance costs.

There's also certain map settings that make choke points more likely. I think high sea level is one of them(or is it low sea level?). You could also choose a custom game and enable less civilizations. Aside from that, you could pick a civ like Inca, quechua rush your neighbor, and then spend the entire game filling two civs worth of land.
 
If you're insistent on peaceful games but you still want room to expand, you could settle a "blocker" city. Basically forward expand right to the AI's front door, preferably in a choke point, and then backfill all the good spots later. Build culture in your blocker city to really dissuade the AI from coming near you. Disclaimer: it will be bad for relations, tough to defend, and have high maintenance costs.

There's also certain map settings that make choke points more likely. I think high sea level is one of them(or is it low sea level?). You could also choose a custom game and enable less civilizations. Aside from that, you could pick a civ like Inca, quechua rush your neighbor, and then spend the entire game filling two civs worth of land.
Good idea. I've got a game running as Inca right now, and I'm doing pretty well with regards to settling. I'm aggressively forward-settling, using my unique unit to guard against possible retaliation. From what I've seen, you need to ultimately have at least 7-8 cities in this game in order to avoid falling behind in the late game, so I'm well on my way, although I may still have to take out a neighbor at some point.
 
Do you have any advice for how to avoid being boxed in just by settling quickly?
City can be built only 2 tiles away on same landmass (1 if separated by water). Settler can't pass your cultural borders unless you enable "Open border" diplomacy treaty.

So you can secure land by blocking with you cultural border in special places living internal place for later settling.

Alternatively you can threat AI settling with military forces by declaring a war.
 
What level are you playing at? Immortal? Monarch? Noble?

Save from about 1000bc?
 
City can be built only 2 tiles away on same landmass (1 if separated by water). Settler can't pass your cultural borders unless you enable "Open border" diplomacy treaty.

So you can secure land by blocking with you cultural border in special places living internal place for later settling.

Alternatively you can threat AI settling with military forces by declaring a war.

I actually seem to have found some success with a strategy similar to this. As I said previously, it seems to have mainly been a matter of adaptation; I usually play V and VI, and I think after IV the devs made some changes to how settling works in order to fight ICS and early game blitzing, so I have to adapt in this case.

What level are you playing at? Immortal? Monarch? Noble?

Save from about 1000bc?

Playing as the Inca on Warlord difficulty. No save available ATM, but I think I've got things figured out anyway.
 
On Warlord it shouldn't be possible to get boxed in by AIs unless you've got an absolutely awful start, are surrounded by AIs on all sides, and/or get really unlucky with barbs. Aggressive forward settling is an option, but shouldn't be necessary to get your fair share of cities on that difficulty. I play on Noble and generally box in my neighbours whenever I play. Admittedly my favorite leader is Cathy, and she's basically ICS: The Leader, but still, I suspect a save or screenshot will still be helpful here. Do you adopt Slavery and whip settlers early on? Do you chop forests? I'm not familiar with Civ V/VI meta, so I'll explain in case it's different: In Civ IV, just building settlers is really slow. You want to use the whip and/or chop forests to get settlers out within a reasonable timeframe. Exceptions exist, of course, but generally you'll want to whip/chop.
 
Warlord you should have no issue with land. The Ai expand much slower compared to immortal/deity. Your issue is not lack of land but likely slow expansion.

I usually target 3-4 cities by 2000bc. (Whip or slow build.)
So worker first build.
Grow to size 3-4 pending on food resources your capital can work. Then build 2 settlers on trot and a worker in a new city. New cities should have food resource next to city unless you are creative or sharing a resource with your capital.

The key after this to to keep expanding to 6-7+ cities before 1ad. I would keep building new cities if your economy allows.

Don't judge expansion on Warlord AI.They have little or no bonuses on that level. In fact i think the player has some advantage over the AI at start.

Read the thread by Fippy on 'beginners help on basics'. It has a sticky on S and T section of forum.

Also look at games people have played on here. Plenty of youtube videos. You don't need to box every Ai in on Warlord. Settle best sites first.
 
On Warlord it shouldn't be possible to get boxed in by AIs unless you've got an absolutely awful start, are surrounded by AIs on all sides, and/or get really unlucky with barbs. Aggressive forward settling is an option, but shouldn't be necessary to get your fair share of cities on that difficulty. I play on Noble and generally box in my neighbours whenever I play. Admittedly my favorite leader is Cathy, and she's basically ICS: The Leader, but still, I suspect a save or screenshot will still be helpful here. Do you adopt Slavery and whip settlers early on? Do you chop forests? I'm not familiar with Civ V/VI meta, so I'll explain in case it's different: In Civ IV, just building settlers is really slow. You want to use the whip and/or chop forests to get settlers out within a reasonable timeframe. Exceptions exist, of course, but generally you'll want to whip/chop.
That's one of the big mistakes I've been making; I didn't whip/chop at all. I didn't whip because I was paranoid about having low population cities in the early game, and I didn't chop because I was saving forests for Lumber Mills later on.

Warlord you should have no issue with land. The Ai expand much slower compared to immortal/deity. Your issue is not lack of land but likely slow expansion.

I usually target 3-4 cities by 2000bc. (Whip or slow build.)
So worker first build.
Grow to size 3-4 pending on food resources your capital can work. Then build 2 settlers on trot and a worker in a new city. New cities should have food resource next to city unless you are creative or sharing a resource with your capital.

The key after this to to keep expanding to 6-7+ cities before 1ad. I would keep building new cities if your economy allows.

Don't judge expansion on Warlord AI.They have little or no bonuses on that level. In fact i think the player has some advantage over the AI at start.

Read the thread by Fippy on 'beginners help on basics'. It has a sticky on S and T section of forum.

Also look at games people have played on here. Plenty of youtube videos. You don't need to box every Ai in on Warlord. Settle best sites first.
You hit the nail on the head. I wouldn't settle fast enough and the AI would take all of the slots around me until I ended up surrounded by their cultural borders.

Thanks!
 
Yeah it sounds like you have been crippling your game by not using basic game functions. No wonder you are struggling on Warlord. Try reading through some of the play through threads here.
 
AI would take all of the slots around me until I ended up surrounded by their cultural borders
You need to consider religion and Creative (+2Culture/T) trait too.

If your opponent without culture modifier and you are - your border can pop directly to enemy city. You can conquest city from T0. You can assume that city as yours and keep it a bit for AI to pay the upkeep and improvements ))

Also your culture can open new places to settle! Unfortunately it is too costly to build those cultural building ((
 
That's one of the big mistakes I've been making; I didn't whip/chop at all. I didn't whip because I was paranoid about having low population cities in the early game, and I didn't chop because I was saving forests for Lumber Mills later on.
That's what I thought, and yes, that's where the problem is. To give you a short answer: Whipping early game is a good thing because any city that's settled near a strong food tile (hint: every city wants to have a strong food tile within it's BFC, ideally within it's first ring if you're not CRE or have another means to quickly pop borders) will grow population faster than you can provide it with tiles to work, specialist slots to fill, even just :)/:health: to keep that population working and healthy. Especially if you have a Granary, which is by far the most useful and powerful building in the game. At the same time you've got a dire need for :hammers: to build settlers, workers, infrastructure, at least some military, etc. Whipping allows you to convert excess :food: into :hammers:, and if carefully done you can do so without ever feeling the :mad: penalty from whipping too much. If you've ever seen someone settle a second city right next to their capitol and wonder why taking the capitol's food tile(s) with a second city is a good move, this is why - when one city is on the whip timer they can't regrow too quickly anyway, so having another city to grow on that food in the meantime is useful.

Chopping is in much the same boat - you're short on tiles to work and need a lot of hammers early on, so it's better to chop forests than saving them to improve later. 20:hammers: (30:hammers: with Math) and a tile to cottage/mine/farm/etc. now is a lot more valuable than being able to build a lumbermill on that tile, what, 2-3 millennia from now. The same is true for the National Park national wonder, incidentally - being able to get a dozen-odd free specialists in a city is extremely good, but having another city that contributes to your empire for the 3-4 millennia it'll take to get there is much better.
 
Whipping allows you to convert excess :food: into :hammers:,
You forget to mention city growth pattern, size 1 - 24, size 2 - 26, size 3 - 28, size 4 - 30, etc

Each whip converts 1 citizen into 30H. So 4->2 whip somewhat gives extra 2H (28+30 - 2*30), 6->3 whip has no penalty (28+30+32 - 3*30). But with 8->4 you lose 12H (30+32+34+36 - 4*30).

Whipping 2->1 isn't good as usually you have a few good tiles to work on.
 
I was trying for a short answer :mischief:.

That said, yes, cities require more food to grow another pop for each pop that city already has. That said there's many ways to (effectively) get more hammers out of whipping, and a Granary effectively cuts the food required to grow another pop by half. So a 3-pop whip from 6 to 3 will get you 90:hammers: base, at the cost of (28+30+32)/2=45:food: with a Granary. If on top of this you're, say, Imperialistic and you 3-pop whip a settler, you'll get 90×1.5=135:hammers: out of 45:food:, or 3:hammers: per 1:food:. Add to this the fact that you'll generally have more powerful food tiles than hammer tiles early game (hammer tiles will generally cap out at 4:hammers: early game, whereas food tiles often go as high as 5-6:food:) and you'll see why whipping is a powerful mechanic, especially early game.
 
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