"Don't settle near us"...does it actually DO anything?

[d4everman]

Does the AI even heed "Don't settle near me" warnings or are they just fluff....a line you can click in the dialogue that really does nothing?

I ask because I tried a new game as France. It was still early game, plenty of space to expand without coming to close to my neighbor, Rameses. But lo and behold, I look and her is a settler from egypt moving towards the southern part of my border, between the gaps of Paris and Troyes. (I specifically turned down open borders to keep Ramses out of that part of the continent so the settler must have swam (embarked) since the city of Lyons bottlenecked the only path towards paris. I tell him don't settle near me, he says ok, I won't and still keeps moving the settler.

This bugs me if the AI doesn't even consider your warning. I can understand though if it is factored on things like the AI isn't afraid of your army, or there is no space left for it to expand, but its happened before and I'm thinking the warning has no merit or weight to it.

This happened in other civ games so its not new....but its really annoying.

 

[drachasor]

For all I know he was lying when he said "ok" and you took a diplomacy hit with him. The problem is that the diplomacy is incredibly murky (and even if they seem to be really good friends they will still stab you in the back).

 

[d4everman]

For all I know he was lying when he said "ok" and you took a diplomacy hit with him. The problem is that the diplomacy is incredibly murky (and even if they seem to be really good friends they will still stab you in the back).

Thats cool, but does any AI EVER think "Hmmm....I'd better not build here or this guy will be pissed off/it'll be dishonorable since I gave my word/ He could squash me like a bug since my army sucks"? I've never seen an AI actually NOT do it, though they are really serious about YOU building near them. Its even lamer if I get a diplo hit for clicking a response which can't do anything BUT give me a diplo hit. Its not like it says "Screw you!". Its marked as a request for a civ to NOT build near you.

 

[evrett37]

I asked a similar question and was told there is a bug having to do with the AI's units field of vision where the AI is treating land visible by a unit strangely. If there is a unit near where the aI is settling then this might be the problem.

 

[flyingbunnys]

I have had some experiances with this on several of my games. First I would like to mention Egypt in particular is really bad about doing stuff like this as well as a few other civs I have noticed. Either way from my experiance they won't build near you if they say they won't, but they will move their settler to where they were going to put it and leave it sleeping there. Also what they consider close isn't always what you consider close, they seem to think that building 2 or 3 tiles away isnt close. The AI isn't very smart I once had them build a city on 1 tile in the middle of my territory.

 

[Cashie]

I've only played a couple of games, and as best I can tell all it does is tick the AI off.
You're pretty much daring them to settle near you.

 

[SerialK]

Depends on your terms with the other civ (and its "flavor" apparently). I've used this option several times, and it works sometimes, especially if you've got a cooperation pact together.

 

[Zelig]

I rarely see a reason to bother with telling them not to settle rather than just razing their new city.

 

[S.K. Ren]

I've noticed alot of the diplomacy options weigh heavily on your relative strength to teh other Civ. For example when a Civ apologizes for attacking a CS you are friends with, You can pick "It's OK" or "You will burn in hell for this transgression!". Should you be stronger than the opponent, the "... burn in hell!" option is a huge deterrent to his efforts and will close off the war quickly. If you are weaker he will get pissed at you. Similarly its the same with the "Don't settle near us..." dialogue. However as SerialK said. Pacts of Cooperation greatly mitigate negatives and boost good reactions when using these dialogue options.

 

[Kiwi Tyrant]

Depends on your terms with the other civ (and its "flavor" apparently). I've used this option several times, and it works sometimes, especially if you've got a cooperation pact together.

From my experience, I agree with the above statement.

To add to this, I had a Horseman upgraded to a Knight from a tribal hut. All good; chose at that point not to start taking over the entire continent. However, with this unit I was able pull up next to AI Settler's coming my way and tell them "don't settle near me". Maybe it was just the outlandish power of this unit, but the AI would actually heed my warning's and usually just plonk the settlement down where they stood! There was space to expand and no Co-op Pact's.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Telling them not to settle near you pisses them off. You can actually offset this if you liberate a worker, though.

Whether or not it discourages them from settling near you? No idea.

 

[Jolly Rogerer]

I've only played a couple of games, and as best I can tell all it does is tick the AI off.
You're pretty much daring them to settle near you.

ROFL, which is the point, right?

 

[Louis XXIV]

It might not be entirely irrelevant. It might have to do with how much they consider you a threat.

 

[SuperJay]

I've just considered it the diplomatic equivalent of poking someone in the chest - something to do if you want to be deliberately obnoxious and provoke them into a fight.

 

[comatosedragon]

It seems to me that when the AI rejects this (which they almost always will, as noted by most everyone); most of the time it actually makes the AI look for a good spot near you to settle, just to tick you off.
For this reason alone I almost never need to build settlers.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Actually if your forces are superior to the AI, they should listen, but that's very rare case on high difficulty levels. The problem is what AI doesn't know how to use its units, so actually if AI has 2-3 times more units, that usually means the player is stronger.

 

[hyungry]

The only way to prevent them from settling near you is to make sure they don't exist near your cities in the first place. Welcome to Sid Meier's Conquest.

 

[Thry]

The AIs will never, I repeat, never say "yes" to this request.

Don't post a rebuttal to this post unless you have evidence in the phone of a screenshot of the AI backing off in response to the request.

 

[Jellly]

Possible they ignore you because the AI has already sent the settler and doesn't know how to cancel it's order to send a settler and build somewhere? Maybe it will say yes, but will only not settle with any future settlers?

 

[dannythefool]

The AIs will never, I repeat, never say "yes" to this request.

Don't post a rebuttal to this post unless you have evidence in the phone of a screenshot of the AI backing off in response to the request.

Here you go:

Spoiler :

Early in a Deity game.