Do civilizations know how to expand anymore?

[Exterminas]

It really depends on the strategy that the AI choses.

This is a vast improvement over the Release-State of Civ, since there the AI seemed to know only a mixture of domination and science victory.

Now some AIs might chose to built a smaller, but highly efficient empire, while other focus on rexing.

From my experience their distribution is entrily based on the difficulty level you are playing.

In my last Monarch game for example, I head three Civs, far away from me, who went for culture and each only had three cities. However my three closest Neighbors went for REXing and pumped out five cities each before the Year Zero.

It might seem like a bad deal to you, but these small empires still can be a prick. They usually are top notch in science and can field a respecable defensive force, which, combined with their huge strenght cities cand make warfare against them really inefficient.

And inefficient Warfare is what kills big empires.

 

[UrbanX]

hard to tell, there has been less AI expansion in my current game. but it does differ from game to game.and difficulty perhaps.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Well i noticed that they're reluctant to expand on prince... but when you go king they start expanding like crazy.

 

[joltis]

After current patch AI builds more units, but less settlers. Problem is simple as that. Also there seems to be wonder building problem.

 

[SirSaab]

Actually, I kinda thought this was a problem too, but maybe the patch just adjust Civ flavor ranges? As in, a guy who is normally insular, non-expansionist won't flavor up as often to be a wild expansionist? Dunno.

I just started a game on a Continents plus map as Russia, and I had Ottomans REx'ing like madmen, Monty and Denmark battling for space with 5+ cities each to the northwest and then I noticed Rome plopped two cities to the north-northwest. Out of nowhere. I'd kinda slacked on exploration, so I sent a scout up that way and it turns out Rome has like 15 cities and was rapidly expanding toward me.

On the other continent, Germany and France each had 10+ cities, and were putting the squeeze on Isabella and (of all people) Darius. Meanwhile, on their own small continent, Siam has 8 cities and looks to be saving up for a diplo win. So, this game has been an expand-a-thon. It still happens, I guess.

On the whole though, it does seem like most games the AI is limiting itself to 4-5, MAYBE 6 cities post-patch.

 

[UrbanX]

just finished a game this afternoon. there were a total of 4 civs out of 15 that did not expand beyond their capitol. that is a little higher than average for my games.

 

[jagdtigerciv]

I have noticed less expansion for the certain civs who have flavours that discourage mass expansion. Other civs, that normally mass expand (like Russia), expand as they always did.

 

[Securion]

Easy. Turn off Culture victory condition and they expand.
If its on, half the civs will sit there with 1-3 cities and then get run over.

 

[Furycrab]

Could people who complain about a situation actually include the difficulty you are playing on and maybe a save file for if there's a real bug?

Last one I played on Emperor the AI Def expanded a good amount. The AI settlements are a little less cluttered now to the 2 to 3 hex change a patch or two ago, but other than that... They still do fine, if anything on Deity they are damn cheap and expand on turn 1 .

Getting the feeling some of these threads are just trolls.

 

[Bezurn]

Just had another issue with this. Both Khan and Eliz were to my north. I stole one city site from both (each about 5 tiles from my capital which netted me one of the luxury resources). I was playing King difficulty.

Eliz never built a 2nd city and spent almost all of her energy making troops and spamming them at either me or Khan. She had 3 or so sites she could get. She died once all my jaguars went to longswords.

Khan built one more city, but his land was pretty poor, lots of desert. He could have grabbed 2 more spots.

To my south was Hiawatha and Catherine. Catherine did her thing, claiming 5 sites, most of them pretty good.

Hiawatha played OCC for the first half of the game (maybe 2 cities as I was lax in scouting down south. At around 0 AD he started expanding grabbing 5 sites. Both died when my army had finished up Khan.

On the other continent WuZi and Odo expanded properly, even though it was a snaky continent. Even Ghandi had built 3+ cities, but WuZi put him down and finished him off shortly after I had axed Hiawatha.

If the computer would just stop with the silly warrior rushes and plop down 2 cities near the start of the game they would be in a lot better shape to carry out their plans.

 

[gozpel]

the 'flavour' of the AI will determine how often, or when, the AI expands. (war counts as 'expansion' if it's done correctly)

I see more 2-3 city empires, but there'll still be a few that want to spam settlers until every last hex of the map is covered.

Yes, they do spam settlers, but unfortunately they STILL send them out unescorted and get stolen by barbs.

 

[danieladler]

I don't know what the last patch did to the A.I, but now most civs don't even have an empire by the Renaissance period. It's 1400 in my game, and almost every civ has placed maybe 3-4 cities, MAX, on a LARGE map. What the hell? There's huge swaths of land open, and none of them both to expand at all. They just sit there, declaring war on each other. This never happened before the patch.

Anybody else get the same problem? Hell, Persia hasn't even placed more than 2-3 cities in any of my games. This is annoying.

Yes, this is something new post-patch as you say. Every game goes the same way. I could understand if the AI didnt build cities on useless locations, but we are talking about empty spaces with both strategical and luxury resources here. So thats another one of the endless old and new problems with Civ5. But i was fed up with complaining about every single flaw months ago. It really doesnt matter anyway. These forums are today merely a place you go when you are bored and want to whine a little, on a game you stopped playing a long time ago