Strange AI behaviour - explanations?

[Tweedledum]

This may belong in the Customization forum, but bear with me...

I'm working on a scenario, and one of my civs is behaving very oddly and I can't figure out why...

Start Position: (screenshot taken in Debug mode - obviously you wouldn't normally see all this straight away)

and the property page for the civ:

The landmass to the west is big one (Africa!). Zanzibar is pre-placed, and contains Warrier, Worker, Scout and Galley. Start treasury=100 gold.

Observing in Debug, what happens is: the scout wanders around the island and is then disbanded. The city (eventually) produces 2 curraghs one of which heads north but the other one just sits there doing nothing (!). The problem is, it never produces any settlers...

The second scout (a recent addition to try to fix the problem) behaves normally, but on the one occasion I saw it pop a settler from a hut, this settler just wandered around for about 5-6 turns and then seemed to get forgotten about.
Stranger still, on "bonus settler" levels, these behave normally (ie onto the galley, across to the mainland and found a city)

Just why the hell won't the AI build any settlers - I know it can, because I took over most of East Africa playing the civ myself...

 

[Chieftess]

Have the AI's "Build Navy" and "Build Settlers" checked. It might "colonize" more.

 

[Gengis Khan]

The AI isn't producing out settlers because until mapmaking, there's nowhere for him to go(well besides another cities a couple tiles SE, but the AI tends to stick pretty close to OCP).

Give them Alph, Writing, & MMing from the start & they'll be spitting out galleys with settlers in them non-stop.

 

[Tweedledum]

@Chieftess:
I tried that, and it didn't help - none of the civs have Build Settlers Often checked, and it doesn't hinder them too much...

@Gengis Khan
I gave them the free galley (and the second scout on the mainland) at the start to try to circumvent exactly this problem - so they can see that there is somewhere else to go...

 

[Gengis Khan]

Bizzare, i missed the part about the free galley. You can try giving them a free settler & spear from the start in addition to the galley to see if they'd use it with an escort.

Also try giving them all the techs up to & including mapmaking & see if that makes a difference.

 

[Tweedledum]

I tried giving them all tech up to and including MMaking (this was never going to be a viable solution for other reasons, but...) and it made no difference at all. Still no settlers...! Its beginning to look like the size of the island is a permanent problem, in that the AI says "well, I can't fit anything else on here" and effectively sets Zanzibar to never building settlers. (This sort of thing seems to happen in Sengoku as well - there's a couple of tribes in there that I've never seen build a second city...)

I also tried extending the island by one tile SE of the southern-most bonus grasland AND adding spices into the forest without any luck...

If the mainland scout pops a goody hut early and gets a settler, the mainland behaves perfectly sensibly, but it still doesn't trip anything on the island. So it looks like I'm going to have either rethink the civ or hope that the AI pops a mainland settler...

 

[Quasar1011]

Why not have the starting location on the adjacent mainland of Africa? The AI will get around to putting a city where Zanzibar should be.

 

[Kiech]

Better yet, connect the island to the continent, and toss the boat idea. You should be able to connect it without it ruining the look of your map.

Or just give them a free settler on the continent as well.

Heh, silly AI.

 

[Kiech]

Thinking on this further, I bet the AI isn't happy because they want easy trade routes to their capital. Heck, how long do you have to wait before the AI finally makes a stupid harbor just to trade with you? Or build a road to that extra luxury that you would pay them handsomly for?

Connect Madagascar to the continent.