Bug? Curse? AI cheating? Or plain old bad luck?

[Heyesey]

Hey all, first post, happy to be here, blahdy blah.

So I finally got round to playing Portugal; emperor/standard/large map, which shouldn't be relevant.

I've started four games, and run them to the start of the Medieval era, across the last three days. All on the continents map because I figure it's the fairest one to ge tan idea of how to play a civilization; I didn't want to use Archipelago and make it far too easy to sign with the Owls and control every city-state in the world.

Four maps,on each of them at least six AI civs discovered across one whole continent and parts of another, with Sinbad having explored ... and NOT ONE SINGLE FOREIGN CITY has ever been on the coast or had a harbor. At what point do I conclude that the dice are loaded on this one?

I've now caved and started a game on Archipelago, just because I can use the abilities!

 

[Naokaukodem]

IMHO the map script is terrible, that's one of the main problems of Civ6.

 

[Socrates99]

I used the continents and islands script. Didn't feel too cheaty. Fractal is another one that will have small or skinny land masses but doesn't necessarily negate Portugal's mallus like arpichelago would. Another way to get partners is to add civs with coastal bias like Norway, England, Carthage, etc.

Portugal is going to suffer early on on continents but that's intentional because hes OP once he does get trade going. Are you playing until the renaissance or quitting when theres no trade options in the classical? Just use his routes internally until sea trade opens up. They'll eventually build harbors or expand to the poorer spots on the coast that aren't appealing early on. I've never played a game on continents where theres nothing on the coast at all for the whole game.

 

[Heyesey]

Portugal is going to suffer early on on continents but that's intentional because hes OP once he does get trade going. Are you playing until the renaissance or quitting when theres no trade options in the classical? Just use his routes internally until sea trade opens up. They'll eventually build harbors or expand to the poorer spots on the coast that aren't appealing early on. I've never played a game on continents where theres nothing on the coast at all for the whole game.

That might be all it was. In two of those games I was about to get nuked by someone who'd gone belligerent before I had time to catch up, and in the third I was just beginning to think "what the blazes is going on here?" That third game had Norway in it and even HE wasn't on the coast with his first three cities, but that's most likely a freak scenario because I've never seen him do that before. I also found out about the "not exactly a bug but we didn't think that through" on city-state quests, 8 of 10 cities that I couldn't trade with wanted me to send them a trade route to get my free envoys.

I'm not any more than a casual player and don't optimise strategy by a long chalk; I might need to work harder on that to get the best out of Joao on higher settings. If he's fun enough to play on the archipelago, I'll give it another go on continents.

 

[Alaindor]

I played Portugal on "small continents" huge map (Marathon / Deity), and he was fun alright: after surviving the early rush and befriending everyone on the map except Cleo, I was litterally drowning in gold after Renaissance and paved my way with gold to SV. I never played on Archipelago but I thought that might make it too easy (as AI is no good in Naval) so "small continents" sounded like the best tradeoff.

 

[bbbt]

I feel like the AI has been pretty consistently averse to settling on the coast since vanilla.

 

[aieeegrunt]

This is why gimmick civs suck

 

[iammaxhailme]

I never realized how bad the AI city placement is until Portugal came out.

 

[Eva-kun]

I never realized how bad the AI city placement is until Portugal came out.

It's sadly always been poor.

The fun one watching them settle where there's no water and they can't build an aqueduct. You can city spam, just make sure it's on the coast or on or near a river or mountain for access to water.

 

[Alaindor]

I feel like the AI has been pretty consistently averse to settling on the coast since vanilla.

Well, this is not my experience... plenty of AI coast settling on my current continents - huge map.

 

[PiR]

Well, this is not my experience... plenty of AI coast settling on my current continents - huge map.

Same.