Distant settlers

[Jason Fox]

What do you do when you get a settler from a goody hut half way across the world? This seems to come up more lately. Do you bring them all the way home or do something else with them?

 

[sappling]

I try to find a resource or luxury nearby and put down a city. In my current game (Monarch, large map), after building my core cities I was sending settlers half way across the globe (marching them for 30 turns) to stake out all the luxeries and resources (I have all the iron except 1 and all 8 luxeries).

 

[Frodo Bolson]

What would be the problem if the city is far away from the main civilization ground? It is better that way. If the land is empty, you can send new settlers from that city, wich would get near that place before the other cities ones. And if there is another civ nearby, you can try to get some resource, luxury or at least a good city location before they can get it. But in this second case, build enough temples and cultural things to avoid your city being converted by culture.

 

[Moss]

The problem is corruption later in the game if you have too many cities.

 

[Zouave]

Yea, throw out settlers all over the map in distant places and on crummy terrain the way the AI does (Settler Diarrhea).

It is simply annoying, and dumb. These crappy towns are very hard to defend in warfare, produce little due to corruption, and are subject to Culture Flipping (which I consider a stupid concept).

So the AI just wastes its time and shields doing all that to its own detrement.

If YOU get a settler far from home? If it isn't too far from your nearest border 12-15 tiles, bring it back. If not, you can only settle near some resources and hope for the best. If you lose it you lose it; don't spend too much time trying to save it. Not worth it.

 

[smallstepforman]

Form a city, keep it either as a future military base, or as a trading city when the Germans/Iroqious/Zulus start beating on your Palace doors.

 

[kring]

Cash rush cultural improvements: Temples, Libraries, etc. If you can't cash rush, then just build them; pop rush if you feel the need.

Also, make sure to provide some good military units to protect them. Build roads, etc. to connect to your trade network.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I used to march those settlers home because of corruption. But now I try to stake out a luxury or resource. Most of the time I claim the resource just to deny the AI from getting it.

Rush a harbor if it's on a coast, or have it build a worker that will build a road to either back home, or to a nearby civ. After the worker, if the city wasn't built directly on an iron, you can easily build some cheap warriors for military police and some basic defense (the AI loves to attack totally undefended cities). The warriors can later be upgraded to swordsmen. If you are connected via harbor to that civ and you are at peace with that civ, then that city is connected to your trade route. Rush some improvements to prevent culture flips if it is near an AI capital. Even if you lose that city later on, if it was a luxury, the rest of your civ gained alot of benefit from it while you had it.