Ugh.... AI! BUILD CITIES!
- Thread starter El Caballerion
- Start date
Well theres several factor to consider here, if a Civ is in Defensive mode(-10 flavor expansion along with a bunch of other flavors) they dont expand the same goes for if they are at war(-20 flavor for expansion), same also applies if they are mobalizing for war(-10 flavor for expansion). You can see all this in CIV5AIMilitaryStrategies.xml.
Edit:
Also if they feel thier capital is under threat they will not expand, flavor is set to -25. Can see this in CIV5AICityStrategies.xml. Somthing that seems realy messed up to me is:-
Kinda contradicts its self settign a negative flavor for expansion if the civ thinks it needs a settler...
Edit:
Also if they feel thier capital is under threat they will not expand, flavor is set to -25. Can see this in CIV5AICityStrategies.xml. Somthing that seems realy messed up to me is:-
Code:
<Row>
<AICityStrategyType>AICITYSTRATEGY_CAPITAL_NEED_SETTLER</AICityStrategyType>
<FlavorType>FLAVOR_EXPANSION</FlavorType>
<Flavor>-10</Flavor>
</Row>Kinda contradicts its self settign a negative flavor for expansion if the civ thinks it needs a settler...
First two games have seen some differences:
1) First game, Prince, Standard Continents, Standard Speed. One continent had Japan and Netherlands. Japan conquered them a CS in between them. Whole continent was filled with cities and cultural borders by end of game in the 1950s. Seemed like very solid use of the available space. My continent had me (Byz), Maya, Austria, China, Russia, and Carthage, plus 8 CS. Very crowded. Most of them only built 2-3 cities. Russia had a couple extra. By end of game, all land was used. Seemed fairly appropriate based on how crowded the continent was.
2) Second game, King, Large Pangea, Epic Speed. Set to Raging Barbarians. I wanted to focus on combat since I focused on Diplomacy / Religion in first game. Picked the Huns, ended up in the north-center of the map. It is now around 1000 CE. Most Empires have founded 2-4 cities. There are huge, huge swathes of empty, unsettled land. Rome was my closest enemy to the west and DOWed me fairly early, and I eventually conquered their 4 cities. Songhai was my closest enemy to the east, and DOWed me but never did anything. I eventually marched over and conquered their 3 cities. There were big empty lands between myself and Rome and Songhai. Looking at all the other Civs to the south, there tend to be huge empty lands between them and around them. They have engaged in a few wars, but without much impact. I'm not sure if the Raging Barbarians are the cause of all the empty land. They have been a challenge for me, but not enough to stop me from founding a few cities and marching back and forth across the continent to conquer two enemy civs, leaving most cities undefended while I am at war. Not sure if an AI higher than King would do better than this setup. It just makes for a weird feeling game...we are already at 1000 AD and the vast majority of the map is unsettled. I have the largest empire by far, and it has massive gaps since I had to cross so much undeveloped space to get to Rome and Songhai. The southern Civs include Mongols, Netherlands, Greece, Celts, Sweden, Byzantium, and Ethiopia. Seems like there should have been more expansion, what with Epic Speed and Large map size.
I'm really curious what the common patterns are here. AI? Map type? Civ? Raging Barbarians? I want the AI to be smart about expanding their empire, and I love that some Civs will go Tall and some Wide. But it will be a real shame if the AI generally fails to make use of larger map sizes and game lengths. If I play a big map with Epic or Marathon speed, I expect the AI to expand along with the map size and game speed. The AI generally shouldn't be founding the same number of cities on a duel map that it founds on a large map. Really throws the scale off and wastes lots of space.
1) First game, Prince, Standard Continents, Standard Speed. One continent had Japan and Netherlands. Japan conquered them a CS in between them. Whole continent was filled with cities and cultural borders by end of game in the 1950s. Seemed like very solid use of the available space. My continent had me (Byz), Maya, Austria, China, Russia, and Carthage, plus 8 CS. Very crowded. Most of them only built 2-3 cities. Russia had a couple extra. By end of game, all land was used. Seemed fairly appropriate based on how crowded the continent was.
2) Second game, King, Large Pangea, Epic Speed. Set to Raging Barbarians. I wanted to focus on combat since I focused on Diplomacy / Religion in first game. Picked the Huns, ended up in the north-center of the map. It is now around 1000 CE. Most Empires have founded 2-4 cities. There are huge, huge swathes of empty, unsettled land. Rome was my closest enemy to the west and DOWed me fairly early, and I eventually conquered their 4 cities. Songhai was my closest enemy to the east, and DOWed me but never did anything. I eventually marched over and conquered their 3 cities. There were big empty lands between myself and Rome and Songhai. Looking at all the other Civs to the south, there tend to be huge empty lands between them and around them. They have engaged in a few wars, but without much impact. I'm not sure if the Raging Barbarians are the cause of all the empty land. They have been a challenge for me, but not enough to stop me from founding a few cities and marching back and forth across the continent to conquer two enemy civs, leaving most cities undefended while I am at war. Not sure if an AI higher than King would do better than this setup. It just makes for a weird feeling game...we are already at 1000 AD and the vast majority of the map is unsettled. I have the largest empire by far, and it has massive gaps since I had to cross so much undeveloped space to get to Rome and Songhai. The southern Civs include Mongols, Netherlands, Greece, Celts, Sweden, Byzantium, and Ethiopia. Seems like there should have been more expansion, what with Epic Speed and Large map size.
I'm really curious what the common patterns are here. AI? Map type? Civ? Raging Barbarians? I want the AI to be smart about expanding their empire, and I love that some Civs will go Tall and some Wide. But it will be a real shame if the AI generally fails to make use of larger map sizes and game lengths. If I play a big map with Epic or Marathon speed, I expect the AI to expand along with the map size and game speed. The AI generally shouldn't be founding the same number of cities on a duel map that it founds on a large map. Really throws the scale off and wastes lots of space.
That pretty much sums it up..
I mainly play modded marathon games for a slower pace of growth/research but standard speed unit construction. The way the AI crapped settlers in vanilla CiV they'd run their empire into the ground in a heartbeat, but this new slow expansion tends to work a little better... although a few tend to get stuck trying to build a tall empire and fall a bit behind in tech compared to the more expansive civs.
I haven't noticed a difference between game speed, map type, or barbarians. Usually on Large Continents with standard number of civs/CS most of those on my hemisphere tend to go tall and a few on the other continent as well but there's always ONE wide empire on the other continent conquering the others and having a tech race with me (was Gandhi one time, oddly enough... if anyone should do a tall empire it should be him).
I haven't noticed a difference between game speed, map type, or barbarians. Usually on Large Continents with standard number of civs/CS most of those on my hemisphere tend to go tall and a few on the other continent as well but there's always ONE wide empire on the other continent conquering the others and having a tech race with me (was Gandhi one time, oddly enough... if anyone should do a tall empire it should be him).
That is what I figured, but I was hoping the AI on King would be able to handle them, perhaps with some difficulty. I wonder if higher level AIs have the same problem.
I'm tempted to run the same game again without Raging Barbarians to see if anything changes, but I hardly have time to play, let alone do test games.
compwiz1202
King
I'm playing Austria. I finally claimed all the city states. Babylon had one city before I wiped him out. Korea has two and Byzantine has one. They are both friendly so I am just continuing toward science. I suppose Korea and Byzantine don't mind warmongers since I DoWed Babylon just to see if artillery were as nice as people said, and the other two were still friendly with no modifiers for warmonger. I suppose Sejong would always want Nebuchadnezzar II eliminated though. Not sure about the personality of Theodora yet. Probably goes for Cultural so is friendly and nonexpansionistic.
juxtapose519
Chieftain
I did a lot of digging deep into the code of vanilla Civ V and found some very interesting things. I put some of my findings into a simple flowchart to help everyone understand and appreciate its complexity:
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/8222/civvai.png
I personally think they did a much better job with G+K. I think it seems a bit off because we're so used to seeing every civ expand to every possible corner of the map, but in reality it's much more realistic.
As of yet, I haven't seen a civ stop after their first city, but I've seen a few stop after 2 or 3. I've also seen the typical city whores that don't stop until every inch of land is within their borders. I think it's great. It adds a lot of variety when each civ tries something different, especially when they're not all trying to take over the entire map as quickly as possible.
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/8222/civvai.png
I personally think they did a much better job with G+K. I think it seems a bit off because we're so used to seeing every civ expand to every possible corner of the map, but in reality it's much more realistic.
As of yet, I haven't seen a civ stop after their first city, but I've seen a few stop after 2 or 3. I've also seen the typical city whores that don't stop until every inch of land is within their borders. I think it's great. It adds a lot of variety when each civ tries something different, especially when they're not all trying to take over the entire map as quickly as possible.
mindbreaker
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2011
- Messages
- 15
Great, and fairly accurate flowchart. Thank you
As I didn't bought Gods & Kings just yet, I wondered if those civs that don't expand to more then 3 or 4 cities are able to keep up at science and military? Usually the pattern in vanilla was, that there were a few runaway civs with lots of cities that were vastly superior in terms of research and military power and therefor steamrolled weaker civs until sometimes only you and 2 or 3 other civs remained.
Is this not anymore the (usual) case?
JustHonour
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2012
- Messages
- 1
I'm on similar settings (at around turn 350) and England has a similar number of cities as your game... Germany has 18 cities though, and that's after I captured 2 that where a bit too close to my borders ;-) Russia and America each have about 10. Perhaps it's simply down to how expansionist the AI character is?
I've noticed this. However I've seen some games where the AI goes crazy. For instance I had 1 game where Songhai built 2 cities the whole game to the north of me while Spain to the south was city spamming like crazy. She built 5 fast and even after me essentially knocking her out of the game she built another city way up north of Songhai for whatever reason.
On the continent to the west of us Persia and Russia both built quite a few cities. The ironic thing is I built 3 cities the entire game and found that I had to really conquer people to get anywhere mainly because Spain was mass expanding. The game I played after that though everyone except me built next to no cities. China sat on 3 cities one being a conquered city. She fell waaay behind since me and Egypt whom I never really see expand was really the only other civ to build more than 3 cities that entire game. Attila never made it past his capital. The eastern continent everyone had around 3-4 original cities so I guess they didn't really feel like expanding. As for myself I had like 10 cities I founded before Egypt decided to pick a fight who he lost horribly and I nuked China for the hell of it. I literally conquered her in 1 turn using 3 nukes, 3 stealth bombers for a finisher and 2 land units since 1 of the cities was wiped off the map by getting hit by 2 nukes.
On the continent to the west of us Persia and Russia both built quite a few cities. The ironic thing is I built 3 cities the entire game and found that I had to really conquer people to get anywhere mainly because Spain was mass expanding. The game I played after that though everyone except me built next to no cities. China sat on 3 cities one being a conquered city. She fell waaay behind since me and Egypt whom I never really see expand was really the only other civ to build more than 3 cities that entire game. Attila never made it past his capital. The eastern continent everyone had around 3-4 original cities so I guess they didn't really feel like expanding. As for myself I had like 10 cities I founded before Egypt decided to pick a fight who he lost horribly and I nuked China for the hell of it. I literally conquered her in 1 turn using 3 nukes, 3 stealth bombers for a finisher and 2 land units since 1 of the cities was wiped off the map by getting hit by 2 nukes.
Securion
Civ Veteran
Just finished another game. Same story.
Ethiopia, Byzantine, Babylon and Polynesia was on my continent and they all stopped expanding at two cities each. I took the rest of the continent, and let them be as i needed trading partners (i was the Neatherlands...)
On the other continent there were only one civ that was expanding and it was Rome. China, Arabia, France and Songhai were all wiped out, making Rome a "runaway AI" very quickly.
Emperor level btw.
Ethiopia, Byzantine, Babylon and Polynesia was on my continent and they all stopped expanding at two cities each. I took the rest of the continent, and let them be as i needed trading partners (i was the Neatherlands...)
On the other continent there were only one civ that was expanding and it was Rome. China, Arabia, France and Songhai were all wiped out, making Rome a "runaway AI" very quickly.
Emperor level btw.
budweiser
King of the Beers
In my current game, as France standard continents, I had me, Greece, Germany and Arabia. I am in the 1300s.
Germany quickly grew to about 6 cities, paused and eventually spread to 8 or 9. He had room to grow. Greece had a jungle start and I was luckily able to plant my second city in his first ring to jam him up even more. he made a total of 3 cities.
Arabia had the whole southern half to himself, but stayed small at around 4. Now that mid game has hit he is slowly exapnding, I think he might have 5, but I am not planning on letting him get big at all.
So, I think everything is OK, they are just following a different exapnsion plan than before.
Germany quickly grew to about 6 cities, paused and eventually spread to 8 or 9. He had room to grow. Greece had a jungle start and I was luckily able to plant my second city in his first ring to jam him up even more. he made a total of 3 cities.
Arabia had the whole southern half to himself, but stayed small at around 4. Now that mid game has hit he is slowly exapnding, I think he might have 5, but I am not planning on letting him get big at all.
So, I think everything is OK, they are just following a different exapnsion plan than before.
Moderator Action: Merged 2 threads together.
Seems like there is a very, very high degree of variance here. People seem to be seeing wildly different results in each game. I like that AIs seem to follow varied strategies. I think the only problem is when something happens that seems irrational to a human player, such as a seemingly successful AI with tons of room to expand, suddenly halting any further expansion, forever. This just doesn't seem realistic or historically accurate. I can't think of any time in history when a culture failed to expand into valuable territory, without some negative issue (war, plague, whatever) stopping them. Right now, it is sometimes possible for a late-game world to have a situation where multiple Civs stop expanding, leaving large parts of the world unclaimed.
I think that there needs to be some balance added here. Maybe the AI needs to be set to prioritize expansion more if there is lots of valuable, uncontested terrain. Part of the problem is the balance between small and large maps. It seems like some AIs build roughly the same number of cities, regardless of map size and game speed. This also just feels wrong. A larger map should mean larger empires. I have always seen larger maps as simply being a different scale than smaller maps, not a different size 'planet.' So a Small map might be zoomed out so that you can only see national capitals. A Large map might be zoomed in so you can see capitals, big cities, and medium cities. Maybe we just need better balance between map sizes so that a 'Tall' empire can function properly with 2-3 cities on Standard size maps, 4-5 cities on Large, and 6-7 cities on Huge (or something) instead of always going for 2-3 cities regardless of map size.
I think that there needs to be some balance added here. Maybe the AI needs to be set to prioritize expansion more if there is lots of valuable, uncontested terrain. Part of the problem is the balance between small and large maps. It seems like some AIs build roughly the same number of cities, regardless of map size and game speed. This also just feels wrong. A larger map should mean larger empires. I have always seen larger maps as simply being a different scale than smaller maps, not a different size 'planet.' So a Small map might be zoomed out so that you can only see national capitals. A Large map might be zoomed in so you can see capitals, big cities, and medium cities. Maybe we just need better balance between map sizes so that a 'Tall' empire can function properly with 2-3 cities on Standard size maps, 4-5 cities on Large, and 6-7 cities on Huge (or something) instead of always going for 2-3 cities regardless of map size.
I like establishing surveillance in AI cities and viewing their production every turn. Guess I'm just a snoop.
However one thing I've noticed that the AI is bad about is, they will get a low production city building a national wonder like ironworks or wall street or some such, and they will neglect all expansion until it is done building which could take upwards of 40-50 turns. I've personally seen 4 different AIs do this turn after turn, and just when you think they would start building a settler? nope they finish one national wonder and start on the others. I think the AI would be improved by leaps and bounds if you could build national wonders without having a workshop in every city or some such, or maybe only required to have one at time it's started building and new cities after that dont count. cause as it is now, the AI is screwing themselves trying to get a boost in city performace at the expense of expansion.
just my 2 cents.
PS on a side note, does the AI ever annex a previously puppeted city? I dont recall ever seeing that happen.
However one thing I've noticed that the AI is bad about is, they will get a low production city building a national wonder like ironworks or wall street or some such, and they will neglect all expansion until it is done building which could take upwards of 40-50 turns. I've personally seen 4 different AIs do this turn after turn, and just when you think they would start building a settler? nope they finish one national wonder and start on the others. I think the AI would be improved by leaps and bounds if you could build national wonders without having a workshop in every city or some such, or maybe only required to have one at time it's started building and new cities after that dont count. cause as it is now, the AI is screwing themselves trying to get a boost in city performace at the expense of expansion.
just my 2 cents.
PS on a side note, does the AI ever annex a previously puppeted city? I dont recall ever seeing that happen.
Could the introduction of religion have made mindless expansion less desirable to the AI? I played a game in a mosh pit recently. We started with four civs and four religions, closely packed together, and the pushiest religion and its missionary/prophet brigade quickly took over. The rest of us spent the next few centuries trying, with little success, to purge its influence (before we finally took out the offending holy city, and washed it clean).
Anyway, maybe part of the reason for less expansion, is that the AI "knows" in some cases it doesn't want to be subjected to pressure from other religions nearby. I've certainly seen it appear to suspiciously stop expanding just past ~10 tiles from my cities (although, clearly, this is not scientific evidence). Personally, I now think twice about plopping down a city right next to a few AI ones, in an otherwise convenient location, if they've got some obnoxious pushy religion.
Of course, I played a Frontier map the other night, and the Rome AI built 12 cities and then suddenly seemed to stop forever, even though there was plenty of room and attractive land to keep going. He hadn't met a happiness cap and he seemed able to go further without getting religious pressure. I suppose in that case, based on what I saw today in the XML, that he probably stopped expanding right about the moment someone declared war on him.
Anyway, maybe part of the reason for less expansion, is that the AI "knows" in some cases it doesn't want to be subjected to pressure from other religions nearby. I've certainly seen it appear to suspiciously stop expanding just past ~10 tiles from my cities (although, clearly, this is not scientific evidence). Personally, I now think twice about plopping down a city right next to a few AI ones, in an otherwise convenient location, if they've got some obnoxious pushy religion.
Of course, I played a Frontier map the other night, and the Rome AI built 12 cities and then suddenly seemed to stop forever, even though there was plenty of room and attractive land to keep going. He hadn't met a happiness cap and he seemed able to go further without getting religious pressure. I suppose in that case, based on what I saw today in the XML, that he probably stopped expanding right about the moment someone declared war on him.
I tried turning off cultural victory and barbarians and this is Bismark at turn 75. China has 3 cities, Babylon has 2, and Ottomans still only capital. Small continents, standard, emperor. I'm going to start a new game but that looks like it could help. Every game so far has been no one with more than 4 cities on any map size.
http://i.imgur.com/HjZoY.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HjZoY.jpg
