Don't understand AI's "place city" logic. What am I missing?

[jpinard]

As a new poster, this is a really useful and thought provoking thread. It's also beginning to explain why I'm stuck on Warlord level.

Anyway...

1) I've always started my capital city in the initial location of my settler, as I've thought its best to get a city (and production) started rather than moving around the landscape trying to decide if elsewhere is better.
2) For other cities, I reckon I take the blue circles about 70% of the time. But I think my logic for not choosing a blue circle sucks and I need to take some ideas of this thread on board.
3) City specialisation - now there's something I haven't got my head around yet!! I think I need to spend more time reading this forum and the War Academy!!

You and me both. The sign of a great game is lengthy discussion about its strategy. And no clear cut line of right vs. a wrong way. That's what I love about this game.

From another thread if you make a commerce food city, you can get by with ZERO production if you have slavery. Your population willl explode, and you sacrifice one and ding! Building is complete! Of course your population (in that city) are made for a while, but who cares? Your populaiton is totally expendable and they breed like rabbits. From what I read, was to stay ins lavery until you get these commerce breadbaskets pretty well set, then change to a decent civic after that. Then you've got a city that pumps out cash like a monkey on fire.

 

[Morty]

Ahhhh...Slavery!! That's next on my list of things to try out!!

Going back to your original post all those forests do indicate that whipping and chopping could be fun!!

 

[futurehermit]

The computer is concerned you won't have the base food to work all of the tiles in the bfc if you settle in place. I don't think it takes into consideration you building farms.

 

[Antilogic]

You and me both. The sign of a great game is lengthy discussion about its strategy. And no clear cut line of right vs. a wrong way. That's what I love about this game.

From another thread if you make a commerce food city, you can get by with ZERO production if you have slavery. Your population willl explode, and you sacrifice one and ding! Building is complete! Of course your population (in that city) are made for a while, but who cares? Your populaiton is totally expendable and they breed like rabbits. From what I read, was to stay ins lavery until you get these commerce breadbaskets pretty well set, then change to a decent civic after that. Then you've got a city that pumps out cash like a monkey on fire.

I would say there are several right ways and a few wrong ways. There are some clearly bad ideas in the game that no reasonable player should ever attempt unless they like pain. Like massing spears to rush against somebody with copper (and who has axes already in the field). In general, not a good idea.

 

[JoeBlade]

And yes ... the AI does value hills a lot. Whoever said that +25% defense should be weighted lower ... what? If you found on a hill you get +25% that can never be bombared. If you found next to the hill, an attacking stack will use the hill against you.

That would've been me, and I still disagree with the current implementation. Mind, I'm not suggesting the algorithm shouldn't take the bonus into account. I'm saying it should NOT accept a generally inferior city in favour of the defence bonus, which it currently does, very much so. The bonus should be marginal compared to overall city value, in other words.

The computer-controlled civilisations generally attach far too much importance to the defence of the city tile proper (which is all that hill bonus applies to) whereas it should focus on protecting all of the land and getting rid of invaders ASAP instead, all IMO of course.
Let them sit in their well-defended cities all they like, I'll plunder them back to the stone age while bringing in reinforcements - sponsored with the loot from those very same plunderings no less - and finish them off in my own time.

But I realise the community is quite divided on this matter: some prefer computer-controlled civs to above all make it as hard as possible for other civs - and human players in particular - to win the game, while others (like myself) would rather they pursue victory as vigilantly as possible.
Less optimal but harder-to-conquer cities fit in the former philosophy, better long-term city yield with inferior defence in the latter. Horses for courses

 

[greggbert]

In my experience of the current BTS patch and all previous patches, the blue circle algorithm is concerned with (in order of importance) (1) distance from other cities, (2) access to as many resources as possible (3) build on hill. In my experience It never, ever seems to take into account the most important consideration of an early city which is to have access to at least 2 workable 3+ food tiles. Even if in theory it does, in practice I don't see it.

Challenge yourself and turn the suggestions off. With the workers I have found that the blue circles in BTS are much worse than vanilla, as is the governor AI. I have never had to turn governor AI off in vanilla, but I constantly have to do it in BTS.

 

[eewallace]

I must admit that I'm often surprised where the blue circles show up. First, they often would have overlapping tiles with other cities. Second, they often will ignore getting prime money-making squares (fur, gold) into the city radius.

 

[Andy06r]

In my experience of the current BTS patch and all previous patches, the blue circle algorithm is concerned with (in order of importance) (1) distance from other cities, (2) access to as many resources as possible (3) build on hill. In my experience It never, ever seems to take into account the most important consideration of an early city which is to have access to at least 2 workable 3+ food tiles. Even if in theory it does, in practice I don't see it.

Challenge yourself and turn the suggestions off. With the workers I have found that the blue circles in BTS are much worse than vanilla, as is the governor AI. I have never had to turn governor AI off in vanilla, but I constantly have to do it in BTS.

This is a very good point and even though I've been advocating the AI's blue circle in this thread as a player I am always skeptical of it. I shut off blue circle recommendations but I ended up needing to turn them back on (I cottage my plantation resources before calendar and I frequently forget to upgrade them once I reach calendar - worker blue circles and resource flags remind me much sooner).

I generall use blue circles as "why does it recommend this?". The computer will calculate blue circles up to about 2-3 tiles from your settler, and sometimes it will pick absurb tiles just thats the best it can do in that range and you should ignore these (or use them as an indicator that a city in that region is bad). I'm like a lot of people in this thread - if I was going to settle there anyways and a blue circle pops up one tile away I do a double take.

JoeBlade thx for the reply - I should have added that I do a lot of pitboss multiplayer with a group of guys. The founding on a hill/next to a hill question becomes much more important when you have human opponents (as well as chopping forests next to your cities if possible) and I generally try to practice that behavior against the AI to form the habit.

 

[ggganz]

"What you are missing" is that the AI is stupid.

 

[Andy06r]

Welcome to the conversation ggganz ... if you would have actually read the thread there is an interesting discussion about how to value city placement and the fact that this blue circle actually isn't necessarily a bad one, depending on your needs.