Why are AIs not building citys?

[Sturmgewher88mm]

The answer is Prince. Full stop as the detailed reasons have been mentioned a couple times so far.

Try a game on Immortal and you'll typically see that many/most AIs will expand quickly early and not stop.

I've seen AI with 10+ cities by medieval era on settler, so...

 

[eldiablonoche]

I've seen AI with 10+ cities by medieval era on settler, so...

Oh it can definitely happen on lower difficulties but with far less happiness to go around, I would imagine that it's rather uncommon. AI Flavour being the main factor when they do so (Russia is always massive in my games).

To be honest (on Emp...) I've seen it swing both ways; civs spamming so many cities I can't fathom how they aren't revolting and some civs staying small (3 cities)for no *apparent* reason.

 

[Sturmgewher88mm]

Oh it can definitely happen on lower difficulties but with far less happiness to go around, I would imagine that it's rather uncommon. AI Flavour being the main factor when they do so (Russia is always massive in my games).

To be honest (on Emp...) I've seen it swing both ways; civs spamming so many cities I can't fathom how they aren't revolting and some civs staying small (3 cities)for no *apparent* reason.

But what I don't get is how someone like the OP can go 1500 hours and never see major expansion from an AI... Kind of impossible with that amount of time.

 

[BSPollux]

But what I don't get is how someone like the OP can go 1500 hours and never see major expansion from an AI... Kind of impossible with that amount of time.

Still true.

 

[ixias]

OP, I see where you're coming from to an extent. Since this latest patch, the AI is settling fewer cities (usually further away from their capital as some people have pointed out). The change was a blessing and a curse. It was obnoxious to see those terrible cities in the tundra/snow with no resources, but at least they expanded more and kept closer to their capital.

However, with that said, I understand you don't want a "just go up a difficulty level" answer, but that really is the answer. The reason they aren't settling all of those lands early is because they can only really focus on one thing at a time. On higher difficulty levels, they get a slight production boost, which allows them to finish their main focus (ie military, infrastructure, etc) and move onto other things, like settlers.

Just the other day I played a game with my friend on Prince and saw exactly what you're talking about. They didn't settle cities nearly as quickly or frequently, leaving a lot of space open. Again, on my Emperor+ games, those spots are usually settled quickly.

Many people have also pointed out that certain civs have higher expansionist flavors. In my Emperor+ games, civs like Greece, Iroquois, Zulu, etc have sprawling empires with little to no free space available by the Medieval Era.

I wish there was something else to say, but that's my answer. Settlement rate is mostly a function of difficultly level and if you want them to settle more, either up the levels in the XML files or bump it up to King.

Good luck!

 

[Smokeybear]

in over 1500 hours of playing Civ5, yes I had every AI as my opponent. And yes some of them expand. But they are a tiny minority.

Once I wanted to play a 'huge empires' game. So I set one up using the following settings: continents, large, legendary start, epic, 10 CS, opponents usa, russia, china, germany. I quit that game when I realized that the one guy on my continent, washington, had 2 citys when I had like 10. There was a lot of valuable land, he just never settled. I thought that maybe it was the barbs fault, so I restarted a game with the same setting, but 'no barbs' as well and therefor replacing germany with rome. And guess what? I got russia as my landmass-buddy and she grew to three citys and stopped.

I am realy surprised to read that there are players here who have never encountered that. For me theres allways huge spaces of free land. Its so annoying. This realy breaks the game for me. I cant see any reason for colonization or wars while theres still room. It just seems dumb.

As for the bolded part, you only placed 4 other civs on a large map? Try making a huge/epic pangaea with all 12 civs and 24 CS's, and put it on King if you want to see how it's supposed to work. You will see a lot more competition for land with those parameters, I guarantee you. Not sure what your bias against King is, but if you are unable to get a good game because the AI isn't good enough to challenge you on Prince, then, uh, why not try King? Can't you handle it? If you can beat Prince so handily, I would think King would be a natural next move for you.

Do you usually beat Prince? If, despite your complaining that the Prince civs don't expand enough, you are still not able to regularly beat that difficulty and move on up to King and a better challenge... then you really don't have much of a point. But, if you are beating Prince regularly and all you want to do is play easy games that you can beat without much effort, then you really have no room to complain about those easy-mode civs not being aggressive enough- that's just the way civs work on Prince. Seeing the connection here, yet? Easy-modes like Prince give you slower, easy-mode civ behaviors, including slower expansion. Move it on up, if you want to see more civ expansionism.

 

[Zenstrive]

I think there's a reason the AI is slow in expanding this time:

Trade Route

If AI tends to expand, it will tend to get more friction toward player, thus more war. Something that trade routes dependent player resent.