The Best Way to Protect a Settler Is...

[isau]

...put another unit in line of sight. Even if you stand right next to the enemy AI's home city with a Settler, they won't try to grab it. This seems to include Barbarians.

So, if you're trying to protect a Settler it's actually bad to put a unit like a Scout on it, because the Scout attracts the AI's attention. If the Scout won't survive an attack, have the Settler run off unescorted and send the Scout the opposite direction. They'll chase the Scout and forget about the Settler.

Encountered while trying to test a mod that makes Settlers die on capture. Forcing the AI to capture a Settler took a degree of work I was not prepared for.

 

[mnf]

I once had an unescorted Settler sit in dense rain forests against an enemy chariot. I didn't realize it belonged to an enemy. He was on my way to my capital (war already declared) and we met at a choke point. I just sat there and throught, right, he's gonna move away the next turn, I'll just skip the turn. This continued for 3 turns at which time I realized he was an enemy. The moment I moved my Settler back, he pushed on ahead to my capital, completely ignoring my Settler.

That was Prince, so I don't know if they deliberately coded the AI to make "careless" mistakes like that.

 

[10KEyeCandy]

I once had an unescorted Settler sit in dense rain forests against an enemy chariot. I didn't realize it belonged to an enemy. He was on my way to my capital (war already declared) and we met at a choke point. I just sat there and throught, right, he's gonna move away the next turn, I'll just skip the turn. This continued for 3 turns at which time I realized he was an enemy. The moment I moved my Settler back, he pushed on ahead to my capital, completely ignoring my Settler.

That was Prince, so I don't know if they deliberately coded the AI to make "careless" mistakes like that.

Nope, happened on Deity too.
In one early game I was testing a strategy on Gandhi's UA to see if I can use the double war weariness to cripple an AI through defence.
So I DoWed my neighbour Rome at around 20T. Using my warrior and slinger in reinforced locations to defend while my scout set off to steal their settlers.
Soon my scout successfully nabbed a Roman settler going south into the large jungle of nothingness (why though?).
Yet the next turn, 2 barb rider just showed up from nowhere. Sandwiched my scout and settler with Rome to the north.
After some thought I decided to save my scout and use the settler as bait.
So I sent my scout west to circle around Rome and the settler straight east to my territory, in the hope that after capturing the settler, the barbs would see Rome and attack them.
And the barb riders just went straight for my scout, and kept doing so until they are really close to Rome. Then they started to attack Trajan.
All the while ignoring that settler who is moving at the speed of 1 tile per turn towards my defending warrior.
Rome did the same thing too. At one point a Roman warrior is right next to the settler, yet still chose to dance around my warrior in the next turn.

Though at that time I wasn't thinking about it too much, just a bit surprised as i remembered that barbs are quite canny and resolved at grabbing every civilians they see in Civ5.
Now that it's brought up I think it's clearly a bug, like AIs also send out civilians unprotected quite often. I highly doubt this behavior is intentional.

 

[isau]

Since we're mentioning it, I'm sure we've all also seen the behavior where a Barbarian Spearman will exit a camp to chase a Slinger or Archer it can't reach. It's almost like enemy units are using the formulas from Civ V for movement, where they'd likely be able to move 2 tiles. Altho with Settlers/Builders and also Goody Huts they seem oblivious or to even avoid the hex. I am curious whether you can stop an invading force by parking a Builder in front of a chokepoint. I have a decent feeling it might stop them.

 

[UWHabs]

Just had a weird case in my game. Playing emperor, so AI starts with the extra settler. I was exploring with my warrior and Gilgamesh was moving his settler out, unescorted. I thought, "hey, free settler", so I grabbed it. Of course, the next turn, I remembered that he had war carts, and was like, "well, I guess I'm restarting this game soon". So he buys a war cart, and comes in and attacks my warrior with his warrior in the area (my warrior was just out of range of his carts). So now I have a damaged warrior, blocked, next to a war cart and a warrior. And what does he do next turn? Moves his cart away! So he could have killed my warrior, taken back his settler, but instead he basically sends it off exploring. I managed to run him a couple tiles away and settle. A few turns later, my slinger can come defend the city as well, and I fight him back and sue for peace (him giving me ~6gpt). I'm pretty sure he had enough to take the city as well, since he had a cart in the area but never used it to attack the city.

Of course, I also got a notification that a far-away AI had been defeated as well, so it's not like the AI is always incompetent...

 

[dturtle1]

...

Encountered while trying to test a mod that makes Settlers die on capture. Forcing the AI to capture a Settler took a degree of work I was not prepared for.

LoL.... I am not surprised

I dont do escorted Settlers, as long as I have units in the general vicinity or recently cleared the Barbies, it is good enough. I have had an A.I take an unescorted Settler once, but that was just after he declared war, one almost could say that it was intentional I have also had barbarians "miss-step" with a Free Settler for the taking

 

[whyidie]

Odd.

I had a settler sleeping in position waiting for right conditions to found new city. Barbarian scout showed up and did nothing. For multiple turns. Finally got sick of it and sent a couple of units over to take the scout out.

Thought maybe barbarians didn't capture civilian units until they nabbed a couple of my builders. Then I thought maybe they don't capture settlers until I found an island of barbarian settlers.

Now I'm down to "maybe barbarians don't capture human settlers".

 

[dexters]

Odd.

I had a settler sleeping in position waiting for right conditions to found new city. Barbarian scout showed up and did nothing. For multiple turns. Finally got sick of it and sent a couple of units over to take the scout out.

Thought maybe barbarians didn't capture civilian units until they nabbed a couple of my builders. Then I thought maybe they don't capture settlers until I found an island of barbarian settlers.

Now I'm down to "maybe barbarians don't capture human settlers".

I had the opposite though not exactly a settler issue. Scout showed up and looked like it could threaten my trade convoy. I had a unit nearby to block but didn't think much of it. Scout proceeded to pillage my trade route the next turn

 

[Nefelia]

I had the opposite though not exactly a settler issue. Scout showed up and looked like it could threaten my trade convoy. I had a unit nearby to block but didn't think much of it. Scout proceeded to pillage my trade route the next turn

Barbarian scouts definitely go for the trade convoy. Not every time, but often enough that I don't like seeing them sneak into my territory. Warring AI, however, have passed back and forth over my traders without pillaging.

 

[Aldor]

Still trying to find out the rules by which AI or barb scouts attack (or not) civilian units. Barb scouts for example never seem to take builders or settlers, but they sure love to pillage traders. Otoh, I've had a builder taken from me by an AI scout. So they appear to have different rules of engagement...

 

[isau]

They will eventually grab the Settler, but only if another unit isn't close by. That's what was maddening about testing that mod. I needed to be able to see them grab the Settler to be sure it died when they grabbed it. But forcing them to do it was incredibly difficult, because they'd prefer to chase a unit for miles than take the Settler, even if the Settler stood right next to a barb camp or enemy city. Tested with both the "Settler dies" condition turned on and and off, so not an artifact of the mod.

The funny part was the realization that it was actually easier to lose a Settler by putting a Scout on it to "protect" it because then they would attack.