[BTS] curious game settling location

[guermantes]

So I want to go and claim the gold and also be able to work it. The game wants me to go on the coast although there is no seafood available and it's in the middle of the desert. I don't think that is so tempting...

I was more thinking along the lines in the second screenshot, on the grassland hill. I can farm around the river and work the gold faster while continuing to grow and in the end also work a grassland hills mine. The city will remain smaller than on the coast but I will have gold money faster, and I am a bit tight for cash in the game.

Am I missing an advantage of going on the coast as the game suggests?

 

[lymond]

The blue circles are bupkis. Ignore them except in the fact that the AI will always settle on blue circles.

I'd settle 1S of that location if I wanted the gold, unless it was earlier. More farms and later windmills. But it is late enough in the game for the earlier commerce not to factor that much - just getting the extra happy at some point. Akkads culture may take it over as well soon, so you could ignore settling there and just going for the better city farther West with iron/cows.

 

[Gumbolt]

4 cities by 350bc and pretty much all your neighbours in war mode meaning they all likely have iron/horse. What level are you playing at?

With ivory I would be phant rushing here or swords/axes and pults. I fear science wise you are struggling. HBR might of worked but late now. I fear you lack HBR too for phants.

Too much forest left? Chopping vs mines. Chopping nearly always better. Road to ai city for foreign trade routes too?

Settling for the gold alone seems a waste. 4 dead tiles with desert and mountain. Zero food. Always settle for food.

Save?

 

[guermantes]

After years at Monarch I recently came back to the game and decided to go for Emperor. I have won my first three games at Emperor (vassaling the map with cuirs or cavs) and this is my fourth, and yes, I am struggling to get the economy/research going. I had some barb stress in the beginning and possibly did not build enough workers early on. My previous Emperor games have had more grassland for cottaging, I guess I wasn't sure what to do here with all the forested plains.

Actually the screenshots above are from me going back 40 turns to try again, after having fatally crashed my economy by failing to research Sailing and never reaching Currency/Construction/Calendar-level even though I got gold from conquering Barcelona swordrushing her without pults. (A desperate move to get money and a piece of the cake when Cyrus joined Shaka's war against Isabella.) Elepult is otherwise a favourite, but as I never reached Construction... I took two nice barb cities to the West but they taxed my money fatally as well and I never got to settle the "Moai city" even further to the West. I had nothing to build but units so that also increased the burden as I went along never getting to Currency. My people started going on strike mid-war and my units went popping. I can never delete units myself, though, seems such a waste of . At the time I quit, I analysed my mistake with World Builder adding techs: +4 at 0% had I had Fishing; +15 had I also had Sailing; +37 at 0% if I had reached Currency. I sure could have used that money!

Not roading to Isabella is indeed wrong, although I think I get around it now with Sailing and trading along the coast, no? Too much unclaimed land to the East to road in that direction. Shaka has attacked Isabella from the North and the other war is too far away from me. I figure the play here should be to settle as much land I can since the others seem insulated from my piece of the continent. Defenitely wat the two barb cities and my Moai location to the east, and also the the iron/cow site to the West and the resource heavy location Northwest of that, before Victoria comes my way.

@Gumbolt
The enclosed save is from 350BC. I use the Better BAT AI mod and play with tech trading off.

 

[Gumbolt]

I did wonder if you had a mod. I don't have that one.

You could of settled between the cow and gold for 2nd city. The main issue is the gold would of pretty much killed off the city growth. Albeit given some decent research. If your capital was 2 north you would of had gold in BFC.

No idea if you had coastal routes to AI had 2 pictures to go by. Roads can work if AI is nearby. Of course you would of lost the iron.

 

[f1rpo]

So I want to go and claim the gold and also be able to work it. The game wants me to go on the coast although there is no seafood available and it's in the middle of the desert. I don't think that is so tempting...
I was more thinking along the lines in the second screenshot, on the grassland hill.

It might be that the AI was planning on a city west of that mountain river, which would rule out a city on the grass hill or would overlap too much with it. If you set CheatCode = chipotle in My Games\Beyond the Sword\CvilizationIV.ini, you can hold down the Alt key while hovering over a tile to see the found-city values calculated by the AI (which the action recommendations are based on). It'll first show the cached value (possibly outdated), then the current value and last the tile's value as a starting location.

This highlighting of the found-city button at a go-to tile seems like a pretty bad info leak (screenshot attached); I hadn't been aware of this. Ironically, the leaked island isn't even worth colonizing. The AI realizes that too, but the button highlighting only checks whether the go-to tile's found-city value is positive and greater than the values of all revealed adjacent tiles. (But it doesn't check whether the go-to tile itself is revealed.) Edit: This trick only works when the settler is in a tile where a city can be founded.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I wonder, does the AI know all resource locations in advance? Like could those calculations be based off resources the player has not yet revealed but the AI knows are there?

 

[f1rpo]

I wonder, does the AI know all resource locations in advance? Like could those calculations be based off resources the player has not yet revealed but the AI knows are there?

To my knowledge, the AI only cheats (in a big way) with visibility of tiles, not visibility of resources (e.g. seeing Copper without BW). The bonus resource at a tile gets accessed by AI code through a function CvPlot::getBonus. That function will check for the necessary tech if a team is provided as a call parameter; otherwise no such check is made. The AI function for evaluating city sites (and for UI action recommendations – CvPlayerAI::AI_foundValue) calls getBonus correctly, i.e. provides the AI (or human) player's team ID except when evaluating starting locations. It's been that way already in v1.61 of the base game when the DLL source code was first released. It's difficult to prove that AI_foundValue doesn't indirectly, i.e. through some subroutine, access hidden resources in a consequential way; personally, I'm pretty sure that this is not the case.

 

[sampsa]

possibly did not build enough workers early on.

Can't open the save due to mod, but at least in the screenshot you have many improved tiles you are not working. As already pointed out, 4 cities by T100 is an extremely slow expansion. Chop more, earlier, to settlers and workers.