City Spacing

[Raiki]

So I just booted up my first game since the fall patch hit. Nothing fancy, going for a long, lazy religion/culture game with Ethiopia, trying to get the Rastafari Messiah trophy.

Anyway, long story short, at about 250 turns the AI has started filling in all the available land space it can, as per usual, and I notice something a bit off.

Spoiler :

Because I apparently don't know how to post an image, and it's 5am and I don't care.

This brings me to ask, did the patch change the minimum distance between cities, or is this a glitch of some kind? Because last I checked you couldn't have 2 cities so close together.

So, consensus?

~R~

 

[docbud]

Since Eindhoven is on a separate land mass (i.e., island), I don't think the three-tile thing applies.

 

[Jelster]

Since Eindhoven is on a separate land mass (i.e., island), I don't think the three-tile thing applies.

It does, I have a situation where I have no uranium, only bit I can get to is between 2 Dutch cities which is unoccupied. There is a one tile island just off the coast but the game won't let me settle on it as it's too close to the other Cities....

Damn, what am I going to do without nukes

 

[Dentalfury]

Interesting.

I am usually pretty anal about my city spacing and even if I have a large (5-10+ city) empire I'll still try to keep the spacing so there is no or minimal overlapping.

That still seems pretty odd and useless though having them that close. Very AI'ish...

 

[ense7en]

I saw this once in the last month or so as well IIRC.

Not sure how the AI is getting away with breaking the spacing rules, but it sounds like another way they get to cheat (like how they can capture and delete workers in the same turn BS).

 

[charon2112]

I saw this once in the last month or so as well IIRC.

Not sure how the AI is getting away with breaking the spacing rules, but it sounds like another way they get to cheat (like how they can capture and delete workers in the same turn BS).

Look at reply #2.

 

[Socratatus]

I always have an area explored then plan 3-4 cities quite well spaced for future expansion, but since the new Patch this always gets ruined cos the AI just must plant a city right in the middle of my perfect future civilization, no matter how hard I try to make the area `off limits`, causing all sorts of aggro.

 

[manu-fan]

Ahh. I saw this in a game recently also. There was a one tile island 3 tiles from the opposing capital and it had a city. It surprised me too. Good to know the 4 tile rule doesn't apply to islands.

Cheers.

 

[Matthew.]

Is the island thing confirmed? Does it apply to human players as well? I never knew about it before.

 

[ense7en]

If this indeed has to do with islands, what exactly constitutes the size with which this becomes possible?

How many or few tiles does this island have to contain to be able to be only two tiles in between?

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Any island, I've seen CxC.

 

[LordTightPants]

I always have an area explored then plan 3-4 cities quite well spaced for future expansion, but since the new Patch this always gets ruined cos the AI just must plant a city right in the middle of my perfect future civilization, no matter how hard I try to make the area `off limits`, causing all sorts of aggro.

I hate it when they do this. It gets interesting to land lock them in and deny open borders

I wish we could have a culture takeover, say like GalCiv....that would cure this

 

[Halcyan2]

I always have an area explored then plan 3-4 cities quite well spaced for future expansion, but since the new Patch this always gets ruined cos the AI just must plant a city right in the middle of my perfect future civilization, no matter how hard I try to make the area `off limits`, causing all sorts of aggro.

You can often deter AI Settlers by "blocking" them with your other units.

In particular, the Settlers tend to fixate on a particular spot. If you sit there, then the settler waits there for awhile before finding somewhere else to go. (Many patches ago, the settler would sit there indefinitely. Waiting. But some of the recent patches make it so that he eventually finds a different spot).

You can sometimes use this technique to steer an AI away from building towards you.

Alternatively, since the settler will eventually find a new spot, a different thing you can do is to leave a path to that spot open but constantly block the settler and force him to go a different way. So he goes for Path A and you block it. Then he goes for Path B and you block it (but open up Path A). That way he doesn't go wander off and do something else but keeps trying (futilely) to reach his destination. Reminds me of King Tantalus!

 

[Traejun]

I always have an area explored then plan 3-4 cities quite well spaced for future expansion, but since the new Patch this always gets ruined cos the AI just must plant a city right in the middle of my perfect future civilization, no matter how hard I try to make the area `off limits`, causing all sorts of aggro.

When this happens, I always think:

"Thanks for building a settler for me, Mr. AI"

 

[Jelster]

Is this post patch ?

As I play on a Mac, and I couldn't do it a cople of nights ago, I wonder if it is something that changed in the patch (us Mac people don't have the patch yet...)