Suicidal AI?? Where is he settling?!

[kroket]

Ok so i just fired up a game as Harun thinking it would be interesting to see how the bazaar works. I meet Japan thinking 'o they are not going to trade much' with CIV4 in mind. But hey he wants a pact of cooperation and open borders... I was like 'ok!'.

Just then i see his settler showing up!! Where is he heading?? Well take a look at the screenshot and the minimap! I just bought the silvertile. I wanted to coexist peacefully but now he will have to die i think...

I just dont understand why he would want to found his city at the other side of the continent right next to my capital?! If he wanted silver he could claim a source between my 2 cities (in which case he would have had to die as well...) but this just doesnt make sense!!

 

[PibbZ]

Forgot to attach screenshot maybe?

Update: nvm there it is ^^

Yea, the AI in Civ5 aint the brightest. Japan demanded that i didnt settle near them on turn 188, and on turn 189 he popped up again telling me that i had broken my word and we were now enemies. I didnt do anything, just pressed "end of turn"

 

[lissenber]

Yeah, the AI is suicidal if there`s resources involved.

But try playing high difficulties and you`ll see that the tables turn. You`d be suicidal to go to war with the AI for just 1 silver.

 

[kroket]

It's added now

 

[turingmachine]

Well there doesn't actually seem to be any penalty for creating cities far away from your capital like there was in Civ IV (Civ IV had the distance from Palace maintenance). So you can kinda settle wherever you want, whenever you want.

 

[Doctor Phibes]

That's mad. In defence of Civ5 for a change, I'd have to say I've seen some pretty crazy settling in Civ4, though usually there's a rationale there that there isn't in this case, namely that they are trying to smother you (it's usually Gandhi who tries this, I notice, settles rubbish sites right up to your borders, while there's a vast land full of resources right behind him). It's still pretty dumb, though, just brings on the inevitable war which they lose, when they could have been expanding peacefully.

 

[r_rolo1]

i recommend you to check the confirmed bugs subforum to see the explanation for this. It looks like the AI considers their units as their cultural borders as well, so , if they have a settler ready and a unit scouting farfaraway, they will consider the tiles near that unit as close of home as well ...

 

[kroket]

O my rolo thats just uhm funny... Thing is there was a japanese scout around there so you might be right!!

 

[Tylerryan79]

The Ai, or specific civs, like to trigger wars with you by building close to you and then complain your too close. Don't be surprised if this is the case. More likely than not he's trying to get everyone he's met to hate you and declare war. Try get pacts of cooperation with other civs, and pacts of secrecy against him. Hopefully they see him as too powerful etc and will side with you.

 

[LL_LordOmega]

On a related note, never build a long road in neutral territory. The AI suddenly goes insane and sends a convoy of settlers to claim the precious road.

 

[kroket]

This is funny too. Now i have the island for myself with my bazaars

 

[tybris]

Civ 5 AI is poor, but building a city / military base next to one you are about to invade is typically a very good tactic.

 

[wolfigor]

i recommend you to check the confirmed bugs subforum to see the explanation for this. It looks like the AI considers their units as their cultural borders as well, so , if they have a settler ready and a unit scouting farfaraway, they will consider the tiles near that unit as close of home as well ...

That explains a lot!
I have seen this weird AI behavior too (a couple of times).
In both cases the AI had a scout hanging around my borders.

It's both dumb and irritating.

 

[evrett37]

I'm sure this behavior is tied in somehow with the "dont settle near me" dipomatic option. The AI regularly crosses the map to plop a city in my area or right next to my boarders. It annoying and unrealistic use of city mechanics..

 

[r_rolo1]

I'm sure this behavior is tied in somehow with the "dont settle near me" dipomatic option. The AI regularly crosses the map to plop a city in my area or right next to my boarders. It annoying and unrealistic use of city mechanics..

You are absolutely right... From the relevant bug thread:

It's related to this;

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93309

You can reproduce either point listed by using the world-builder and forcing the situations (that's the easiest way of reproducing bugs like this, rather than hoping for a handy save game), but it does happen in "normal" games just the same (it's not exclusive to world-built scenarios!).

In essence the AI treats *ALL* unit line-of-sight, as "cultural border". This causes at least two issues;

1: Settlers can be launched half way around the world to settle somewhere a scout had line-of-sight on at the time the settler was built (even if the scout has long since moved away), rather than being "restricted" to sticking close to their expanding empire. This is the major cause for the apparently random expansion of AI, when you see cities dotted all over the map, or get them building cities right next to your empire and miles away from their own.
2: You can get the "Unit buildup" popup whenever an AI units sees your army, regardless of where your army is - even if it's in your own cultural borders and you are on a different continent to the AI altogether.

And I imagine this causes some un-necessary slow down in turn processing too, as cultural-border check code is being done on every single line-of-sight tile, rather than exclusively on the cultural border tiles.

 

[evrett37]

Le Sigh. How'd this make it past testing?

 

[r_rolo1]

I think ( take this with a grain of salt , OFC ) that they wanted to make a mechanic to also detect concentrations of enemy troops in other sensitive spots ( like helping city states they want to take down or blocking some important pass ) and that they were forced to leave the work half finished ... and most likely untested

Atleast that is the only explanation that makes sense while considering them as reasonable coders IMHO

 

[Jerrymander]

Yeah, this bugs the crap out of me. I was playing a game as Gandhi, and I had 4 very large cities and was teching like a madman, when Ramsses (bless his heart, the fool) settled a city right on the border of Mumbai. The next turn, he sends me a message saying "how dare you settle near me" and I told him to stuff it, so he declared war.

Riflemen vs Spearmen isn't a pretty site, but I did capture the Pyramids and Angkor Wat.

He also had Giza and Heliopolis on the other end of the map on Inland Sea.

 

[JP1]

I think ( take this with a grain of salt , OFC ) that they wanted to make a mechanic to also detect concentrations of enemy troops in other sensitive spots ( like helping city states they want to take down or blocking some important pass ) and that they were forced to leave the work half finished ... and most likely untested

Atleast that is the only explanation that makes sense while considering them as reasonable coders IMHO

This is definitely reasonable and logical guess. I certainly can't think of anything else.

 

[Theodorick]

The AI did it for the lulz.