Rapid AI Expansion

[Roman1]

Is there a way to keep up with the AI when it comes to empire expansion? I am playing on Regent level on a huge map with four other Civs. I can pop a settler every 7 turns in my capitol city. But even at that rate the AI has twice as many city’s as I do. Right now I am sending all my settlers out to the fringes of my empire to hold off the AI expanding into my area. This is giving me a lot of corrupt cites in my early game. I think I have only got two solutions to my problem. Use OCP around my capitol to develop a small but larger civ, or instead of building settlers, build warriors and attack the AI ASAP. Right now all the city’s they have are 1 and 2 population jobs. This is my current game. I am playing as the Persians on a Pangea with China, Ottomans, Zulu, Arabs and Babylonians. China is my current problem. I have not made contact yet with any of the other Civs. So my question is what is the best way to deal with AI expansion?

 

[budweiser]

The best way to deal with it is get a city to make a settler every 4 or 5 turns. Use a combination of terrain choke points, cities and units to limit the ai territory and accept the fact that they are going to get some ground. I'm not sure its best to send a bunch of setllers too far out to try and block off the enemy. It may wiser in the end to put them down on nice ground near your capitol. An expansionist civ will have a better time grapping land at the start.

 

[billindenver]

I didn't think this was as big a problem on Regent but in any case, the previous post was right. You need to find a city producing 5 extra food, build a granary in it, and it should pop a settler every 4-5 turns.

If that still isn't keeping up, you may need to build settlers in two cities.

 

[Strider]

Another thing... Build a Barracks and start popping out Archers as fast as possible and declare war... You can ambush the warriors guarding the settlers and might even take a city or two.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Huge map with only 4 other civs? That will leave lots of land, much of which will be highly corrupt. For very large land masses, you will need more than just 1 city as a settler pump to claim all of that land. What are your other cities besides the capital doing? Maybe they should be pumping military to attack the AI?

 

[Titan2018]

One efective strategy is to build a few cities near your capital (so they remain productive early) and then build the rest along a boardor as far out as you can reasonible control and then fill in the center later. The AI will go through the teritory of your boader cities to get at the open terrain so have some military units ready to kill off any would-be settlers (and get some free workers in the process).