Does the AI always settle in place?

[Outlandish]

Title says it all. When I start abnormally close to a protective civ I generally don't want to rush if they settled on a hill, but sometimes their capitol is too forested to see the center tile. Waiting for open borders seems too slow to bother axe rushing unless I have the perfect techs for my situation.

I think I remember reading that you always have at least 3 hills in your BFC starting position (probably doesn't apply on coastal starts? I'd swear I had coastal starts with fewer hills), so if I can only count 2 hills and if they settled in place they must be on a hill.

 

[soundjata]

Yes it does always settle in place.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I remember reading that you always have at least 3 hills in your BFC starting position

You cannot guarantee anything about a start location, there are biases towards two food, some hills etc but nothing you can absolutely count on.

 

[ArchGhost]

The start location selector tries to give you three hills since some point in BTS and at least one "food" resource (i.e can be as little as a plains cow), and then I think 2 other resources. The selector chooses a location based on some sort of valuation of tiles (similar to a "score" for the starting location, the way I understood it) that also includes other resources, even if unrevealed, and floodplains (which IIRC a certain number of in BFC can "count" as one your resources). Don't remember if forests factor, but jungle does; the selector will try to pick a spot for your capitol not inundated by it, but makes no consideration about surrounding land.

On maps with less of the hill terrain type it's not impossible that you could generate with less than 3 hills, in the same way that on map types with more fishing resources you'll see a lot more coastal starts as you reroll. For hills specifically you have to remember that the locations selector also doesn't care whether you are start on one of them or if it's jungled, and the bias toward hills and resources are not mutually exclusive so one of your hills may be "robbed" by spawning a resource on it like Pig, which you'd normally want to use as a food tile once AH is in.

Sullla emphatically denies that the AI gets any favor in starting locations, but from observation he's almost certainly mistaken when you see multiple AIs in the same game running 3-5 food capitols and maybe only one of them with a start more typical of the player's. And the ivalues states something about a handicap on starting location as the difficulty goes up (it's a player value, so maybe your location gets nerfed?)

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Sullla emphatically denies that the AI gets any favor in starting locations, but from observation he's almost certainly mistaken when you see multiple AIs in the same game running 3-5 food capitols and maybe only one of them with a start more typical of the player's. And the ivalues states something about a handicap on starting location as the difficulty goes up (it's a player value, so maybe your location gets nerfed?)

Maybe this happened after Sulla stopped working on Civ IV but as I understand it the map generator selects a number of starting spots that meet the criteria, ranks them in order and then decides where to place the human player based on iStartingLocPercent, for Settler this is 10% (human player gets placed in a starting location in the top 10% of starts), Chieftain this is 20% (human player gets placed in a starting location in the top 20% of starts) etc etc up to Deity where it is 90% (human player gets placed in a starting location in the top 90% of starts).

 

[gavenkoa]

What does that mean (left side on wonders (F9) page)?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

What does that mean (left side on wonders (F9) page)?

That Arabia settled their 2nd city in 3160BC, pretty early but not their capital which is Mecca.

 

[Pangaea]

Maybe this happened after Sulla stopped working on Civ IV but as I understand it the map generator selects a number of starting spots that meet the criteria, ranks them in order and then decides where to place the human player based on iStartingLocPercent, for Settler this is 10% (human player gets placed in a starting location in the top 10% of starts), Chieftain this is 20% (human player gets placed in a starting location in the top 20% of starts) etc etc up to Deity where it is 90% (human player gets placed in a starting location in the top 90% of starts).

Cool, so THIS is what StartingLocPercent means. I always wondered about that, when looking up those files and the nice difficulty spreadsheet. Thanks.