Recommended city location?

[theis81]

The game itself often recommends a city location. It is often that I don't agree with the game, but wonders that I might miss out on something.

When they recommend location do they take hidden ressources into account?
Or are their advice just not much worth?
Or is it my judgement that is bad?

 

[Zanttu]

Don't look at those recommendations, they tell you just the stupidy of the AI. Only exception is with your starting settler, because usually the game knows if there are hidden recources in the fog.

 

[KMadCandy]

oh, don't necessarily even listen to the starting suggestion, it can be dead wrong. here's an example that i shortened from a very funny thread:

Here is the key shot – the starting position. It looked pretty good – great food-rich area and a bit of fresh water. The eternal question – settle in place, or not?

Spoiler :

Usually I do without much thought. But here, settling one square from the coast is generally regarded as a no-no… what to do, what to do… The south coast tiles were possible alternatives, but they lose the fresh water bonus, and the coastal grassland might hide a resource that I want to work...

so he moved the scout, saw stone to the north and liked it, so he settled in place. he hadn't seen the whole picture. he soon mapped out the entire island and this is what he found:

Spoiler :

there is nowhere to found a second city. at all. every tile is illegal. he's stuck and can't get out! can't make a boat to get to any other landmasses where it would be legal to settle! stupid peaks

so, sometimes the advice is very very very wrong.

supposedly the blue circles don't take into account resources you don't yet know about. and i think that's true, but i can't prove it. if you move around and clear more fog the blue circles move too. the starting locations are adjusted to meet some minimum standard for resources, but the weight it gives pigs vs uranium vs copper vs oil might not be the same you'd give, so don't expect to like your capital as much as you do the neighbor's capital. so chances are very high there will be hidden resources around your starting location somewhere, and generally you don't want to move too terribly far away. or if you do, remember where the spot was, since there will be goodies showing up there someday. maybe not until scientific method or physics tho.

 

[Zanttu]

@KMad: I dont see the blue circle anywhere =P. Usually the game doesn't suggest any location from the starting area. Just in case it does suggest something, you should at least think about it.

 

[KMadCandy]

his camera was on the scout. the game won't suggest for the first settler until you waste a turn and hit enter, is what i've noticed, bizarre change. and if i sit there and don't move any of my units, just sit there and hit enter to wait for the blue circle to show up like the AI would to see what they'd do, it invariably shows up on turn 1 exactly on the spot where the settler is now, and was on turn 0. so the AI always settles in place from what i've seen. yeah sometimes i run experiments like that .

 

[DarkSchneider]

You should almost always build the first city where your settler starts.
as for the other blue circles, yes, the computer is able to see all resources, but I'm not sure that it always makes the best choice. One thing to consider, you should almost always settle on either a river or a coast, if you miss both of these the growth of the city will be severly hindered.

 

[oyzar]

No he blue circles does not take into account resources you don't know the location of yet.. Often the suggestions are bad but not always...

 

[KMadCandy]

as for the other blue circles, yes, the computer is able to see all resources

it's able to see them. do you have any evidence that the blue circle suggestions the AI makes use this knowledge that the system possesses? the developers claim that the suggestions don't take that into account, and tests that i've seen on the boards show that it doesn't. i've done some WB tests myself, where i've watched the blue circle suggestions, then added in resources and checked if the blue circle moved, it didn't.

 

[oyzar]

There have been run tests on this... The starting settler do take into account future resources though.

 

[Zanttu]

his camera was on the scout. the game won't suggest for the first settler until you waste a turn and hit enter, is what i've noticed, bizarre change. and if i sit there and don't move any of my units, just sit there and hit enter to wait for the blue circle to show up like the AI would to see what they'd do, it invariably shows up on turn 1 exactly on the spot where the settler is now, and was on turn 0. so the AI always settles in place from what i've seen. yeah sometimes i run experiments like that .

Oh, my bad then I guess. But it's too much for the game to think about other facts than how good the initial settling position would be. The game just counts all food+prod and all that crap and then just suggests =P. It's too complicated to think about if its 1 tile from coast and other that kind of things

 

[Verge]

I look at this way:

When you look at the city layout of rival AIs, do you like what you see or not?

If "yes," follow the computer's recommendations for new cities.
If "no," turn off tips and place your cities your way.

 

[Daedal]

Spoiler :

there is nowhere to found a second city. at all. every tile is illegal. he's stuck and can't get out! can't make a boat to get to any other landmasses where it would be legal to settle! stupid peaks

so, sometimes the advice is very very very wrong.

Looks like the AI decided to check the 'one city challenge' box in game settings. I guess it's only fair once in a while.

When you look at the city layout of rival AIs, do you like what you see or not?

If it weren't for that annoying partisan BtS event I'd probably raze just about every AI city. As it is I still raze at least half. I don't even know what it prioritizes anymore because sometimes it'll settle in such a way that it appears to be purposely avoiding resources one square away.

 

[Verge]

If it weren't for that annoying partisan BtS event I'd probably raze just about every AI city. As it is I still raze at least half. I don't even know what it prioritizes anymore because sometimes it'll settle in such a way that it appears to be purposely avoiding resources one square away.

Exactly, the AI just isn't capable of making intelligent city planning.

 

[Airefuego]

Humans are more likely to take complicated factors into account, like sharing food resources between cities, or attributing a lesser value to calendar resources at game start, etc... whereas I guess the AI just assigns "points" to each possible city location based on what is nearly (more points for fresh water, resources, etc) and chooses that way.

 

[Collier20]

The AI also doesnt take into account city improvements (ever conquered the Dutch? Why would you build a city one tile away from water with them?) Lighthouses, harbors, levees, and custom houses make settling next to the water more valuable than settling one tile away from water.

 

[Airefuego]

his camera was on the scout. the game won't suggest for the first settler until you waste a turn and hit enter, is what i've noticed, bizarre change. and if i sit there and don't move any of my units, just sit there and hit enter to wait for the blue circle to show up like the AI would to see what they'd do, it invariably shows up on turn 1 exactly on the spot where the settler is now, and was on turn 0. so the AI always settles in place from what i've seen. yeah sometimes i run experiments like that .

I have aaallllmost always seen that as well

except - after I had that wonderful unwanted-OCC Zulu start above, I started again with a new map on the same game settings. I really wanted to have a Shaka-kicks-butt game!

Here is what I got:

Spoiler :

(Note the settler is the guy on the floodplain).

Now - the easy question is - did I settle in place?

Spoiler :

The answer is no, I moved north one square to get three seafood and three gold in a coastal freshwater capital. Bit overpowered really! The game was kind of over already... even more so after Gandhi next door built me Stonehenge in the Hindu holy city and defended it with two warriors...

The hard question is - where did the blue circle suggest settling??

Spoiler :

Incomprehensible! Yes, there was a wine to the east, but losing two gold and a seafood to get one wine??

So the message is... you always settle in place... except when you don't.

 

[LlamaCat]

KMad that is certainly an interesting start... a forced one-city challenge perhaps? however I'm not entirely convinced there is absolutely no way to expand later in the game. can we think of how it can be done?

 

[Zanttu]

KMad that is certainly an interesting start... a forced one-city challenge perhaps? however I'm not entirely convinced there is absolutely no way to expand later in the game. can we think of how it can be done?

That was Airefuegos start and there was a thread about it..
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=249615
There.

 

[oyzar]

The map generator really don't like desert?

 

[dragomaster]

in vanilla and warlords there where more often better to settle in place. I belive they have changed the script for behind the sword, now we or alteast I need to think more and change my settler one square or two for better position