Try this mod:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=502958
And/or just edit the expansion flavour for all leaders
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=502958
And/or just edit the expansion flavour for all leaders
Why are AIs not building citys?
- Thread starter BSPollux
- Start date
Exactly. In my current game with Byzantium, I have Shaka and Oda. They both expended into each other and both have like 30 cities. Both of them are terrible at tech, but they can easily overrun my high tech cities because in theory, they can pump up like 20 units per turn.
but, I've been keeping them busy with each other. I have few extra luxuries that I need, so it's worth it.
I wasn't always like that. In the early G&K civs used to expand in a normal fashion. I'm not sure when it changed but in all my recent games (by recent I meen this year or more) most civs aren't expanding beyond 3-4 cities. Very few expand since the beginning, some spam cities in the renaissance. But that's it. In the late game half the land is unoccupied. I also play on prince and have a lot of gameplay hours. I thought it was going to change with the fall patch, but no, the AI still gets 'stuck'. And it's not about difficulty level becouse it used to be differnt some time ago.
step 1.
Select advanced options and chose following ai civs: The Iroquois, Rome, Russia, Greece, The Ottomans and Japan.
step 2.
Cry deeply.
Moderator Action: Please do not troll the OP.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
I saw what you describe while I played on Prince again for my first BNW game to learn the new mechanisms. I have no idea how much of that is intentional from the developers, but it's there on Prince. That don't happen so much on King (except on maps that prevent that), where I always see one, two or three or more civs going very wide (in my current game, Austria has founded 14 cities, Indonesia has 8, Germany has founded 20 and conquered 6 or 7 more so far, Brazil had 4 in the early game but got destroyed by Germany, England had 12 but lost 5-6 to Germany, Russia has built 16 cities and conquered a few, and Venice has puppeted 5 city-states. Only Morocco, the Netherlands and myself really play "tall". In a game not so long ago, Austria had 30+ cities and Poland had near 50 by the end game, over a third were conquests, but Casimir also razed and rebuilt a lot (he did that with two civs late game and while struggling to fight Ideological pressure... he razed everything but the capitals and founded new cities, often in better spots - that was a game started pre-patch and finished post-patch).
If they did that on Prince, though, I suspect with the BNW mechanisms that would raise a lot the difficulty level. What didn't work as intended in BNW before the new patch is that the AI wasn't performing well in science by neglecting its science buildings, making it too easy to counter wide civs who could produce tons of units but systematically fell behind in science (making them poor conquerors as well as not competitive in the other victory types). That was tweaked with the new patch, and a wide Germany, Russia, Poland can be quite challenging if you don't play strategically enough (stick too much to a peaceful/isolationist style, and you might see you tech lead gained by the Renaissance melt later and be gone by the Information Era). Extremely wide civs on Prince would make it hard for the more casual human player who play on that level not to get outraced in science, or else the AI would become too handicapped if it played wide (you see it a bit with warmongers who have tons of cities but were totally backward by Modern).
Many civs in BNW now prefer (have the programmed flavor) to play "tall", with a Tradition opener and just a few extremely big cities, and many specialists. A lot of players do the same. Playing wide well in BNW is harder, for the AI too.
What I see a lot post-patch is wide civs who stop founding new cities at some point, leaving land they don't like enough. Instead they go cherry-picking the better cities of their neighbors, razing others.
I know you don't want fixes, but you could try to increase the number of Civs in your Prince games so there's more fighting for land control again. You could also make sure to always have Russia, Germany, the Iroquois, England, the Mongols, Japan, the Ottomans, Rome etc. in your games. When one or two Civs go wide there seem to be pressure/incentive for other AI who favor either style to also go wide (otherwise they seem to often go tall instead).
And here I am, repeating myself. Please people, dont read just the threads title and fire a standart answer. Please read what I post next time. I appreciate every constructive post, but I hate it if people bring up stuff I allready adressed 
First of all: As I pointed out twice allready, I played way over 1500 hours of Civ5. This is not about a single game and I vary my settings a lot. The one game I described was an example, given to show that I tried quite some things allready to make it easier for the AI. As said, I had civs that are said to build many cutys, I gave them lots of space and disabled barbs and they still didnt found citys. I tried that at the very least a dozent times with varying settings.
As I said: I tried it without barbs and it still didnt work. As I said I dont want to play higher difficulty settings. I hate the idea that the AI just gets better results on everything. Thats why I asked for someone to make a tiny mod that aims to fix the problem precisely, instead of just letting the AI command a nation of superheroes. But I dont want to discuss that suggestion here, If you want to discuss it, do it in that thread, not here. And: I'm not wonder spamming.
As I said: I allready did that. And I tried it for like 100 hours. It didnt help much at all. Still huge parts of the world stay unsettled.
Maybe its a gerneral problem with the game, and you guys are to used to it to see my point..? People have fought wars over tiny pieces of land, but the AIs in civ dont care at all about it right now.
First of all: As I pointed out twice allready, I played way over 1500 hours of Civ5. This is not about a single game and I vary my settings a lot. The one game I described was an example, given to show that I tried quite some things allready to make it easier for the AI. As said, I had civs that are said to build many cutys, I gave them lots of space and disabled barbs and they still didnt found citys. I tried that at the very least a dozent times with varying settings.
(...)
Now, reading BSPollux settings above, it's a very low number of civs for a large map, so barbs were probably running all over the fog of war.
I've never seen as many captured Settlers as in your other thread, and this should not happen on Emperor and above. In my games i rarely see unescorted settlers.
So you want a more competitive AI, but don't want to use the game's built-in feature that makes AI better, and you would rather make a mod that basically does what an increased diffculty does : give AIs cheasy bonuses
As i said, as long as you stay below Immortal you can still wonder spam (with some competition on Emperor), found 1st religion 90% of the games and get your own religion 100%. I agree that Deity is stupid in some aspects (mostly because the AI gets tons of starting bonuses but is just as bad as below when you catch up), but i'm not suggesting you to try Deity. You would probably already notice some improvement with King.
As I said: I tried it without barbs and it still didnt work. As I said I dont want to play higher difficulty settings. I hate the idea that the AI just gets better results on everything. Thats why I asked for someone to make a tiny mod that aims to fix the problem precisely, instead of just letting the AI command a nation of superheroes. But I dont want to discuss that suggestion here, If you want to discuss it, do it in that thread, not here. And: I'm not wonder spamming.
As I said: I allready did that. And I tried it for like 100 hours. It didnt help much at all. Still huge parts of the world stay unsettled.
Maybe its a gerneral problem with the game, and you guys are to used to it to see my point..? People have fought wars over tiny pieces of land, but the AIs in civ dont care at all about it right now.
This bothers me too. Sometimes, a civ will turtle after a war. I can understand that -- defense over expansion. But too much empty space is weird.
Yes, Cath will expand like mad, but usually late in the game -- starting in Ren/Ind ages. Too late.
Yes, Cath will expand like mad, but usually late in the game -- starting in Ren/Ind ages. Too late.
Winged Hussar
Warlord
Hi guys,
I recently posted about AI founding cities , and later discovered this thread.
I played several games on one particular TSL Earth map with prince as the difficulty, and noticed the following:
Since the AI is now looking for more fertile lands, it tends to venture out farther away into the unexplored. That being said, they sometimes lose settlers to barbarians - I have seen a lot more red workers in barbarian camps, and at early stages of the game too. I also had a funny thing happen to Germany, the weakest civ in my current game. The poor settler was trying to find a hole in my borders, obviously trying to break through into more exotic lands. It was there for centuries, all the while sitting on perfectly good terrain which, despite some overlap with two other cities and being close to my borders, would make a perfectly good location for a new city. Now, more centuries later, my borders pushed the settler and warrior into the territory of a city state, and Germany is down to just one city with no hope of coming back - they have to support the settler and warrior on limited resources.
...also:
I also noticed that with this latest patch, the AI tries not to build cities too close to other civilizations. In the previous patch I had a civ always build a city between one of my well established cities and a city state, 3 tiles between them. In this patch, settlers stumble onto that particular spot, and keep on walking.
I recently posted about AI founding cities , and later discovered this thread.
I played several games on one particular TSL Earth map with prince as the difficulty, and noticed the following:
Since the AI is now looking for more fertile lands, it tends to venture out farther away into the unexplored. That being said, they sometimes lose settlers to barbarians - I have seen a lot more red workers in barbarian camps, and at early stages of the game too. I also had a funny thing happen to Germany, the weakest civ in my current game. The poor settler was trying to find a hole in my borders, obviously trying to break through into more exotic lands. It was there for centuries, all the while sitting on perfectly good terrain which, despite some overlap with two other cities and being close to my borders, would make a perfectly good location for a new city. Now, more centuries later, my borders pushed the settler and warrior into the territory of a city state, and Germany is down to just one city with no hope of coming back - they have to support the settler and warrior on limited resources.
...also:
I also noticed that with this latest patch, the AI tries not to build cities too close to other civilizations. In the previous patch I had a civ always build a city between one of my well established cities and a city state, 3 tiles between them. In this patch, settlers stumble onto that particular spot, and keep on walking.
player1 fanatic
Fanatic
Is maybe AI coded in such way to stop expansion in order to finish some national wonders?
That is pretty valid strategy for human player.
Do first wave of expansion, build key national wonders and then second wave of expansion.
Other possibility is to stop expansion to get some happiness buffer and army for next wave of expansion through conquest.
You do not want to overexpand and then be unable to take new cities without happoniess going into negative.
That is pretty valid strategy for human player.
Do first wave of expansion, build key national wonders and then second wave of expansion.
Other possibility is to stop expansion to get some happiness buffer and army for next wave of expansion through conquest.
You do not want to overexpand and then be unable to take new cities without happoniess going into negative.
KillingMeSoftly
Warlord
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2011
- Messages
- 279
I play on Emperor and haven't encountered this problem. The opposing Civs will always gobble up all of the land and typically settle all around my Capital if I'm not aggressive enough (or early enough) in my own expansion. The behavior of lackluster expansion from the AI is likely to do with lower difficulties to make it easier (insure there is open land for the player).
And here I am, repeating myself. Please people, dont read just the threads title and fire a standart answer. Please read what I post next time. I appreciate every constructive post, but I hate it if people bring up stuff I allready adressed
First of all: As I pointed out twice allready, I played way over 1500 hours of Civ5. This is not about a single game and I vary my settings a lot. The one game I described was an example, given to show that I tried quite some things allready to make it easier for the AI. As said, I had civs that are said to build many cutys, I gave them lots of space and disabled barbs and they still didnt found citys. I tried that at the very least a dozent times with varying settings.
As I said: I tried it without barbs and it still didnt work. As I said I dont want to play higher difficulty settings. I hate the idea that the AI just gets better results on everything. Thats why I asked for someone to make a tiny mod that aims to fix the problem precisely, instead of just letting the AI command a nation of superheroes. But I dont want to discuss that suggestion here, If you want to discuss it, do it in that thread, not here. And: I'm not wonder spamming.
As I said: I allready did that. And I tried it for like 100 hours. It didnt help much at all. Still huge parts of the world stay unsettled.
Maybe its a gerneral problem with the game, and you guys are to used to it to see my point..? People have fought wars over tiny pieces of land, but the AIs in civ dont care at all about it right now.
Ok so you keep repeating that you do not want solutions and that you only want o know the reason why this is happening. Well the reason is the difficulty level as many pointed out, not to say that prince is a low difficulty but this is the logic of difficulty levels. Asking why the AI does not expand as crazy is the same as asking why doesn't the AI play better and ultimately why isn't it hard enough to beat them (in your case by having more cities than them).
Another think worth mentioning is that the number of cities is arbitrary, who said that 2, 3 or 4 cities is not enough? Maybe I can say that your 10 cities are not enough next to my 20 cities? or next to someone else's 2 godlike cities filled with wonders? What I am trying to say is that building cities is very tricky as a measure of optimal play. Sometimes it is better to not build cities and to build buildings, national wonders, an army and wonders. Or even saving for a golden age or happiness. Speaking of happiness the higher the difficulty the more happiness the AI has and the more expansionist it will be.
Here is your answer to this thread, I hope.
Nope, not a valid answer. The AI says its wants land, but it just doesnt take any. The reason is definately not, that the AI doesnt want to build citys. It does. Its just unable to do so for some weird reason.
Dralix
Killer of threads
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2001
- Messages
- 2,407
That diplo modifier doesn't appear only when you prevent AI expansion by having taken a lot of the land. It's also triggered (at least initially) by shared borders. It says "covet your land" but it's the city and its content it wants, most of all your capital that typically has the better stuff inside and around it. In my current game William forward settled near Venice and the "covet your land" modifier appeared right after. He had a lot of good land south of his capital which in the Renaissance he finally settled.
Your "weird reason" for the stunted expansion on Prince since BNW was already pointed out: the AI doesn't get an happiness bonus on Prince and below and with BNW generating extra happiness has become the key to expansion. The AI will stop expanding early because it can't generate more happiness to make it viable (CS and other Civs and their luxury resources for trade aren't discovered yet etc.). If it did, it would stunt its growth with all that entails (slow down its progress from pop in science which will make it fall behind fast). It will go Tradition and grow just a few cities tall instead, and this means it will forcibly have a small # of happiness buildings available, and not a lot of land to get new luxury resources from. If mid-game it gets happiness Wonders or gets allied with a few Mercantile CS, or can trade a lot for luxuries, it will have a new phase of expansion. The Prince players probably make it even "worse" as they typically get most Wonders for themselves, and ally all the CS.
On King and higher (and increasingly with each dfficulty level), the AI get bonus happiness that lets it expand faster early on, and with more land comes more luxuries, and the possibility of having more happiness buildings, getting more bonuses from happiness religious beliefs and in the end even more expansion. I've seen AI civs have a phase of expansion if they get to build Notre-Dame, for instance. Portugal often expands after building a few feitorias.
In my current King game - 13 civs, Small continents, huge - nearly all the land is taken by the early Renaissance. Russia, the Ottomans, Germany and Poland all went beyond 8 founded cities. Russia is on its way to capture all of Portugal's and I'll need to stop her in her track soon or with the patch tweaks that make the AI more likely to build science buildings she'll erode my tech lead and run away.
I don't play on Prince, but post-patch the King level certainly seems much better balanced and fun again than the Prince level which seems to have suffered from it. The AI don't have big enough happiness and other bonuses to rush settle nearly as much as it does on the levels above, but very wide civs aren't rare anymore on King, and there isn't the empty land problem you guys have on Prince.
eldiablonoche
Chieftain
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2012
- Messages
- 87
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.
Try a game on Immortal and you'll typically see that many/most AIs will expand quickly early and not stop.
