Ugh.... AI! BUILD CITIES!

[StrideColossus]

I´m playing my first G&K game and Monty, who in vanilla games used to build lots of cities, is sitting on one, as is Byzantium.

Had Monty in my first G&K game and he did similar there: only built one additional city despite the fact that he had bottle-necked the only other civ on his continent to the north, and had the other half of the continent to his south full of nice resources that he didn't have. And he didn't seem to be going for any sort of win - wierd, has Monty gone nice in his old age?

 

[@nthony]

I've had extreme's even in one game. Germany built two cities, as did The Celts, Babylonia didn't build any (just one city all game), The Dane's on the other hand went spam crazy and must have built about 7, and acquired a couple of city states through warfare.

 

[Aurelius321]

Just started up my 3rd or 4th G&K game (America, Large, Continents, King) and I just got Minutemen and started a war with Germany. When I started, All I could see was his capital from an earlier embassy and a two cities that he settled between a couple of mine. I took those two cities, and then decided to take a look in the trade window to see how many cities he had left. Turned out good ol Bismark has close to 10 cities! Some of them conquered, some of them built on his own. Wow, this is going to be a long war.

 

[smallfish]

I'm not sure why Siam thought this would be a good idea, but there you go

Spoiler :

 

[DrZ]

I have played on King one game, my neighbor is Bismark and he spams cities like crazy. I am also in Industrial age.

 

[Aurelius321]

I'm not sure why Siam thought this would be a good idea, but there you go

Spoiler :

LOL. Only thing I can think of is that Siam needed some resource that was there... Anyways, who needs supply lines? Isn't Siams UA to teleport units across the board?

 

[smallfish]

Apparently AIs will come and build spam cities right on your borders, even if their core territories are 20 tiles away, if they hate that particular civ.

 

[Light Cleric]

I've noticed the AI's city spam has gone down a bit(unfortunately Deity is probably still the same with their free second settler but I haven't gotten the guts to try G&K deity yet :x). I've also noticed that they do seem to be a BIT better about city placement sometimes. In my last game, I saw Hiwatha had gotten a city in behind me and my reaction "Great, he's got a terrible city where I...oh hey, that's where I would have actually placed mine". Unfortunately, most of the time, they still make awful cities, i.e. on a snow hill surrounded by only snow and ice(hi Cathy!) so maybe they're just getting luckier .

 

[SlithyTove]

Some civs definetly seem to be going for the tall strat rather than the wide which makes for some nice variation.

It is also nice to not feel so pressured to hurt my growth to pop out that first settler so early.

Some of the civs seems to do quite well going tall too. My last game was dominated by Rome going ICS/Warmonger (gobbled up Greece and Japan), and by Ethiopa who didn't build a second city until the Renaissance despite being on his very own small continent.

 

[MisterBoomBoom]

In my first game I found two Egyptian settlers that got captured early. Why you ask? Not escorted. I guess that mechanic never got looked at.

 

[RohirrimElf]

Anyone played a game with barbarians off. How did that work with the amount of citys they have middlegame (middle ages, Renaissance)

I would like to see a mod which increases city spam rate by ai. Or know how to make one myself. As it works now some civs are just spamming as usual and some are sitting dugs waiting to get conquered.

 

[dexters]

Just started up my 3rd or 4th G&K game (America, Large, Continents, King) and I just got Minutemen and started a war with Germany. When I started, All I could see was his capital from an earlier embassy and a two cities that he settled between a couple of mine. I took those two cities, and then decided to take a look in the trade window to see how many cities he had left. Turned out good ol Bismark has close to 10 cities! Some of them conquered, some of them built on his own. Wow, this is going to be a long war.

You already did half the work. His conquered cities won't be unpuppeted unfortunately.

Still something on the team's todo list I hope, but it's not fun to see an AI capital move to a puppeted city and have the AI not do anything about it and or unpuppet additional cities when their core cities are taken.

 

[blackcatatonic]

As an aside to this, I haven't seen the 'expanding too aggressively' negative diplo modifier around for while. In my current game I've spammed cities like crazy (I think I built 3 within the space of like 5 turns or something, not including another two which I captured at around the same time), but not so much as a sniff from the AI. This is only on Prince level, but still... I was impressed.

I doubt they've got rid of it altogether, but maybe it's more difficult to earn now?

 

[StrideColossus]

As an aside to this, I haven't seen the 'expanding too aggressively' negative diplo modifier around for while. In my current game I've spammed cities like crazy (I think I built 3 within the space of like 5 turns or something, not including another two which I captured at around the same time), but not so much as a sniff from the AI. This is only on Prince level, but still... I was impressed.

I doubt they've got rid of it altogether, but maybe it's more difficult to earn now?

Definitely had this in my very first G+K game, only from my nearest neighbour though.

This was on Emperor mind (was going to drop a level but forgot!)

 

[Bisqit]

They build plenty of cities. Every civ i played against expanded a lot and strategically. I noticed a few strange spots or spammy cities but that was after almost all of the land was settled. It was very late game and Sweden put a city right by my border in a tundra. The ai did this in every civ especially 4. It was always annoying when they plopped down a city in a worthless area when all it did was annoy you.

 

[Bisqit]

As an aside to this, I haven't seen the 'expanding too aggressively' negative diplo modifier around for while. In my current game I've spammed cities like crazy (I think I built 3 within the space of like 5 turns or something, not including another two which I captured at around the same time), but not so much as a sniff from the AI. This is only on Prince level, but still... I was impressed.

I doubt they've got rid of it altogether, but maybe it's more difficult to earn now?

I got that modifier once from one leader that already hated me. It was fitting though because I actually was building them fairly agressively. The modifier disappeared after about 20 turns. A lot of the modifiers have been greatly improved and they don't last forever. It is much easier to repair relations.

 

[blackcatatonic]

Heh, good to know that it's still there. Maybe it's not being shown because everyone loves me at the moment.

I have noticed that some of the modifiers have been improved, which is great to see. Catherine made me promise not to settle near her and after a while it expired... there wasn't much land spare by that point anyway but still nice that you know when it's 'safe' to start expanding again.

 

[Arkangelus]

I noticed quite a bit of variation in my first few games. I would agree that barbs taking settlers probably accounts for some of it.

Biggest one I've had so far I was Byzantium, on my continent were Carthage (right next to me), Egypt, Denmark, Sweden and Austria. Egypt stayed in one city and wonder spammed, then VERY sensibly joint declared war on me with Austria with no army. A nice extra capital with 3 wonders for me then Austria put a city right on my borders, I burned it - her little bit of land seemed to have a lot of very tall cities on it too but she was quite boxed in and haphazardly flinging cities all over the continent whereever she could find space. Over time, Carthage spammed cities all around me before I took them, Denmark stayed almost on one (and settled a GM beside Copenhagen) before LUDICROUSLY backstabbing me while my entire army was already mobilized on his border fighting Carthage - he was left with just one rubbish polar city.

Sweden were interesting - they went to 3 cities very quickly, but there was a huge expanse of land between me and them that they just didnt fill in at all. I've now got the entire left hand side of the continent and the tip of the right side where Egypt were, Sweden are middle right, Austria bottom right, but theres a huge expanse right in the centre that'd be prime for Sweden to move into - or Egypt, had they survived I guess. On the other continent everyone seems to have expanded fairly normally, they've got far more land and a lot of big civs.

So it might be partly flavour, and partly barbs taking settlers. Egypt seemed to be very clearly choosing to stay in and turtle up, but utterly neglected to build defenses or an army. Austria liked being wide, as did Carthage (despite lack of space), but Sweden built a very compact core and wouldnt expand further.

 

[smallfish]

I got that modifier once from one leader that already hated me. It was fitting though because I actually was building them fairly agressively. The modifier disappeared after about 20 turns. A lot of the modifiers have been greatly improved and they don't last forever. It is much easier to repair relations.

No, it pops up even with leaders you have made a DoF with.

 

[Securion]

Can anyone vouch for this? If I do this, could I expect a more expansionist AI that will actually BUILD cities in good locations (not just in snow/desert)?

Try it mate, it helps.
I also hate that some civs dont expand, and just sit there and then gets annihilated by a civ that actually expands. And civs that decide to go for a cultural victory just dont want to expand it seems.

As for England, that never expand in any game ever, i dunno... Maybe the AI gets fubar when its combined with the english AI script parameters or something?
Its really weird.
I tried out choosing England for all my games, and they have never built more than three cities, and almost always gets wiped out by their closest AI neighbor.