It seems the AI in this game is designed with a single goal in mind: plant terrible, useless settlements in the absolute middle of the player's empire as early as possible. This happens consistently, nearly every game. It often happens so early that you couldn't really do a whole lot to prevent it. Example:
That AI's capital was so far west I hadn't even found it yet. He hadn't settled any other towns, despite plenty of land available near him. He chose to plant a garbage town literally the minimum possible distance from both my capital and my first expansion before he did anything else that game. Because of that, he rendered himself obsolete from the start.
Civ7 has an obnoxious trend of seemingly being designed with the express goal of inconveniencing you, even when it makes no sense. It's like they programmed the AI with one thing in mind: "make the game as unenjoyable as possible for the player." Getting rid of a worthless parasite town is not some kind of fun challenge, it's utterly trivial and you can do it with a slinger and a warrior. It just saddles you with nasty warmonger penalties for the entire era, for no reason. Or you can accept that there's a trash foreign settlement smack up against your f***ing capital the entire era instead. Both are terrible options.
This kind of reckless, trollish nonsense can be reserved for the exploration era where the game actually facilitates encroaching on other civs' lands. It should not be happening from the literal beginning of antiquity. It adds nothing but annoyance and doesn't present any sort of challenge, just arbitrary penalties for the player.
At the very least, there needs to be some kind of special war declaration option for "this guy basically moved into my back yard and I have every right to kick him out." You should not be regarded as an evil warmonger for doing so. The AI should also prioritize actually using its starting area before forward-settling all the way across the continent.
Spoiler :
That AI's capital was so far west I hadn't even found it yet. He hadn't settled any other towns, despite plenty of land available near him. He chose to plant a garbage town literally the minimum possible distance from both my capital and my first expansion before he did anything else that game. Because of that, he rendered himself obsolete from the start.
Civ7 has an obnoxious trend of seemingly being designed with the express goal of inconveniencing you, even when it makes no sense. It's like they programmed the AI with one thing in mind: "make the game as unenjoyable as possible for the player." Getting rid of a worthless parasite town is not some kind of fun challenge, it's utterly trivial and you can do it with a slinger and a warrior. It just saddles you with nasty warmonger penalties for the entire era, for no reason. Or you can accept that there's a trash foreign settlement smack up against your f***ing capital the entire era instead. Both are terrible options.
This kind of reckless, trollish nonsense can be reserved for the exploration era where the game actually facilitates encroaching on other civs' lands. It should not be happening from the literal beginning of antiquity. It adds nothing but annoyance and doesn't present any sort of challenge, just arbitrary penalties for the player.
At the very least, there needs to be some kind of special war declaration option for "this guy basically moved into my back yard and I have every right to kick him out." You should not be regarded as an evil warmonger for doing so. The AI should also prioritize actually using its starting area before forward-settling all the way across the continent.
