Is my CIV 5 game corrupted? 1 city?

[hung_h]

Occasionally when I start a game a few civs will simply not expand. They'll stick to one major city and then only one more rather than expanding. I choose maps with lots of land like Oval and a bunch of times the main city will be gigantic. There's plenty of open space around them too.

My problem is that they get stomped by other civs because of their limited number of cities.

Is this just standard AI strategy to build like that or something wrong with my game?

 

[binhthuy71]

Don't know if it's related but I recently started an OCC game, Pangea, Standard map size. When the game opened all of the Settlers and Warriors were grouped together with my Settler/Warrior right in the middle. Okay, I built a city. The other Settlers/Warriors moved outside of my meager border and then continued unmoving. After a few more turns of this foolishness I started a new game and things went as they should.

 

[fmlizard2]

What difficulty level? AI builds a lot more cities on higher levels. Also, what Civs? Some Civs like India, Egypt, Arabia tend to build tall empires with few cities.

 

[hung_h]

King difficulty. Japan, Persia, greece even.

 

[RealHuhn]

Sounds like you don't have the latest version of the game. It can still happen that an AI stays at one city but it happens a lot less frequently than a few patches ago.

 

[LegionSteve]

Did you notice lots of barb camps with captured settlers? The AI is not very good at protecting its settlers. Hasn't been too much of a problem for me because I like to fit as many civs and city states on the map as possible. But maybe more open space = more barb camps = more lost settlers for the AI? Just a random thought.

 

[hung_h]

I have the steam version. it auto updates all the time.

 

[Jacques Lamerde]

I started a game last night. Prince, Earth , Standard size map. I was playing as
Montezuma. On the 3rd or 4th turn I captured the settler for Brussells which provided
me with a worker very early in the game. I always thought all the AI's & CS's setttled
in the year 4000BC. Glad I was wrong.

 

[Dreamshifter]

I've found that often, on the Earth map, you get CS settlers that spawn within 3 hexes of another civ (major or minor). If they do, they can't settle, and CS dont know how to move their settlers. As a result, they can't fully spawn, and are bait. Just be careful, putting them out of their misery can get you labelled a Warmonger really fast...

Note, though, that I've not played an Earth map for months, so that might have changed.

Regarding the OP, it is rare, but sometimes Civs do just stay home. It usually means they've rolled a Cultural victory, and if you (or, say, Ramesses) have built a lot of wonders, the AI seems to get confused, probably since it can't reach it's victory type. And yes, those Civs tend to get stomped bad, even if they are building the wonders. Builder Civs (players and AI) don't have it easy in Civ5...