Fun With No Settlers

[solistus]

Anyone else like experimenting with the No Settlers game option? I just played a game on No Settlers, Raging Barbs, Barb Cities, double events/bonuses/AC changes/Monarch and it was pretty intense. Playing as the Grigori, I got by only by carefully managing my heroes. A few powerful adventurers-turned-warriors took some barb and AI cities.

By late game, I had about 8 cities and the next biggest had 4... I culture popped to a domination win before killing the dragon, AC got high enough to start spreading Hell in Infernal and unclaimed land and the first few horsemen died to my uber heroes, but the later Apocalypse events and such never happened as I won with a Domination victory in the 500s.

If you find settler rushing annoying but OCC/regular no settlers too limiting, I highly suggest adding barb cities, raging barbs and a few extra AI players. Cities aren't tightly packed by any means on most of the map, but there are a decent number and you expand with good old fashioned military might, not a bunch of vulnerable hammers in the form of a settler.

The constant miniwars against barb cities avoid war weariness while giving you plenty of early game exp. If you're lucky enough to have an early game world spell, UU, hero, etc., you might just steamroll over a few AIs along the way, but smart expansion and strong military will go a long way. Another interesting variant would be the same settings, but with TONS of empty space for the barbs and very few players... maybe Large with 4-6 total players? Pick races that can hold their own early game for the AI or your handful of opponents might die off to the hordes of barbarians.

 

[Furin]

I like no settler games too, they are so different to the "normal" civ games where the AI will fill up entire continents with so many cities, gives you more time to explore the map in peace, go to the dungeons and "play" just along, without having to fear being overwhelmed by AI cities.

I was thinking of a hybrid "no settler" option, where either by event or time restriction you and the AI will only get one settler unit every 100 turns or so. So far I have done it manually, with the worldbuilder, no settler on and then give every faction one settler in their capital in a certain interval. I was suprised that the AI could still play very efficiently with this method although some got overrun by barbarians, once there are sufficient cities around the AI will not wait for the next settler but instead actively take the now spawned barbarian cities and of course the land of their neighbors. Fun games

 

[Imuratep]

I played it once but the AI is too dumb to conquer these cities so I didn't finish it.

 

[solistus]

Imuratep: what difficulty were you playing at? On Monarch, I had to take out quite a few AIs to get my cities, and every AI that survived took at least 1 barb city.

 

[Jules.lt]

When you play with no settlers, what do you begin with? Just the initial settler, and that's the only city you'll get without conquest?

 

[Imuratep]

Immortal. I played Mahala of the Doviello and did what the Doviello do. Conquer everything that's near me. This time it were Barbarian cities, not enemy. Till turn 150 I had wrecked everything on my continent because the AI starts so late with attacking these cities. Perhaps on the other continent it would have been different, but if you control a whole continent how shall they win against you. I think it's like in normal FFH. At the start they ignore these cities, but once they have these giant stacks they conquer every barb city they can get. The AI lives from settling and this wrecks everything. Often they had one single city and dozens of warriors doing absolutely nothing. A few had some more but that was the exception.
The OP wrote they had four cities at max. Even if they had done this what is the challenge about four cities. With normal settings Doviello win games at turn 220-240 and they have to fight through gigantic empires. Because once you've managed to survive the first attacks and have advanced to bronze working barbs aren't really a big problem.
Perhaps I just got "bad luck" with the AI and the next time I start a game with these settings I will see them do pretty well.

 

[Bitwise]

That's odd. When I play on Prince, no settlers, barbarian world, raging barbarians, every AI player conquers barb cities that are close.

 

[cIV_khanh93]

maybe the solution is to play on deity where the Ai starts with a second settler? maybe the No settlers option should provide some sort of advantage to the AI in that regard.

 

[WarKirby]

I'd really like to play a one-city world.

I tried going with One City challenge, and no settlers. The idea being to force everyone to live with only one city. but the AIs kept declaring war on each other and capturing cities. ruined my fun.

It'd be nice to see a One City Challenge option that applies to all civs, rather thanjust yourself

 

[cIV_khanh93]

no settlers and always peace.or if they made that hidden option for always city razing available.

 

[DaleKing]

wow. I never tried the "no settlers" option. been playing it for the last few days and it's a lot of fun. changes the whole feel of the game.

 

[slithy]

I play with Settlers modified to require Bronze Working and costing 720 hammers to build; allows a longer beginning game and obviously slows expansion considerably. Just have to make a couple changes in the unit XML files and you're good to go.

 

[iffi]

I also do 'No Settlers' + 'Barb Cities' sometimes. I really like the feeling of separate kingdoms with plenty of no-man's land betwix them.

Another special thing is the random placement of the few cities. The normal AI routine of 'one city every 3 or 4 tiles until every single crappy location is filled' is mighty annoying.

One thing that can ruin a game with these settings is that if some of the barb/AI civ cities gets razed, the total number of cities on the map may go below the treshold when new barb cities start to get settled. I don't remember the exact formula. Or is it so that if the barb city settlement gets triggered once it won't get cancelled?

To compensate for the extra handicap of fewer cities for the AI, I always play these settings on Deity. That forces me to plan the conquest of the few special settlements like a real (fantasy) general would have to: Siege engines and/or magic. This may make city capturing for AI more difficult though, at least against other AI civ's promoted archers.

Another option I ofter choose in these games is advanced start. This allows every civ to start with 2 or three cities. The dwarves and elves may start with one since they like to get religious techs.

I think the AI starts to capture barb cities very early, so that should not be a problem. The actual problem may be that the barb cities have Axemen by default (?).

 

[Furin]

I play with Settlers modified to require Bronze Working and costing 720 hammers to build; allows a longer beginning game and obviously slows expansion considerably. Just have to make a couple changes in the unit XML files and you're good to go.

I tried that and made your prereq + prereq building granary. This actually helps the AI as they will have time to research cartography and other viable techs for big empires. It lead to an interesting game. Maybe this should be included into the vanilla game somehow, settlers needing at least cartography before being able to build. It makes sense, if you don't know where your settlers went to build a new city, you could never find them again. The barbarian civs get a little bit shafted with that deal though, the clan can make up the lost expansion possibilities with building twice the amount of settlers but the doviello have a problem, especially with a bad starting position that does not have good research plots.

 

[Imuratep]

The Doviello anyway will go conquer their next opponent so they will profit more from this than losing anything. I did a Doviello Immortal Conquest victory without building a single Settler and I didn't have No Settlers or OCC on.

 

[loffenx]

I've tried the No Settlers-option a few times, but the AI never gets larger than one city, atleast not as far in as Deception, Poisions etc. I haven't tried the double bonuses option though, does that help them to get up on their feet? I haven't tried Agressive AI either, will that help them attack eachother? (Attacking me won't help them much )

 

[DarkxL0rd]

Tried this "No Settlers" thing after reading this thread. Don't know if I will ever go back to playing immortal-diety games with settlers on. SO much fun! changes the whole pace of the game. playing pangea with barb cities on and double resources makes for a challenging (but not annoying) game. I found playing immortal and diety too tiresome, just at constant war, never getting the wonders and founding anything. "No settlers" stops senseless AI land grabs and makes the game alot more strategy minded. especially when your larger neighbor has copper and you don't.

 

[solistus]

I really like the idea of modding settlers. I would opt for something more aggressive even than cartography; Bronze Working sounds good time-wise although it doesn't make much sense flavor-wise, at least to me. Putting a single tech as the prereq is problematic, though, as it makes one tech progression much better. A few techs from the same depth in the tree off a couple major early game research lines would be interesting.

 

[Iceciro]

Putting it anywhere might give boons to one AI or another. Put it at Construction, the Clan and the Luchirip will do fantastically, others not. Put it at Code of Laws, and the Cabalim will utterly slaughter everyone else. etc, etc.

I like the idea of putting it at Bronze Working with a Granary prereq though... seems to be a good meet in the middle option.

 

[Furin]

The results from both tech and building prereq vary a lot from game to game though, sometimes the AI will not build a granary for a long time maybe because there is not enough food in the vicinity of their starting area. I have tried this setting from warlord to emperor difficulty and every game is totally different. I had one game in which, by turn 300, all the known world was settled just like in an unmodded game, mostly by 4 of the 12 civs, and then the next time all of the AI did not expand beyond their capital and a few barbarian cities that were close by.

The games become much more random and some are very interesting, while others do not really put enough stress on me as player and I abandom them due to boredom.

I would like to see a scripted option that gives you and the AI a settler unit every 100 turns, and there are no means to get a settler otherwise, beside the event that let you outfit the settler for money (rare), and goodie huts ofc. I'll have a look into events and check how well I understand them, maybe I can make something like that myself and put it in the modmod section.

The goal is to keep the world large, wild and unexplored as you advance through the tech tree and also give you time to play with all your units, not only the last tier city battles that the normal game eventually comes to.