Why Civilization 6 AI Sucks - Part 2: Settling

[ezysquire]

What a whinge. The production bonuses etc for the ais means that ics is always their best strategy because it allows for the biggest number of cities. It's a pretty good strat for the human too!

 

[Civrinn]

I apparently need to screen shot my games because I agree they seriously need to work on the AI. I had one game where they kept trying to settle near my cities. With the new loyalty mechanic, I kept flipping them. They gave me 2 or 3 free cities before they decided to settle elsewhere. I think that was on prince so I assumed maybe it was because of lower difficulty.

 

[PhilBowles]

I apparently need to screen shot my games because I agree they seriously need to work on the AI. I had one game where they kept trying to settle near my cities. With the new loyalty mechanic, I kept flipping them. They gave me 2 or 3 free cities before they decided to settle elsewhere. I think that was on prince so I assumed maybe it was because of lower difficulty.

Loyalty pressure doesn't change with difficulty. The AI's more reluctant to forward settle than it used to be, but that doesn't help it in cases where it wants to settle along a natural border between the two civs since it obviously doesn't take any direct account of loyalty.

The reluctance to forward settle seems to be coded as a desire to settle within X tiles of another friendly city, as noted on this thread - in other words the AI's coded with a simple rule that should minimise the adverse impacts of loyalty, instead of being coded to manage loyalty. In fairness this isn't a terrible approach - loyalty management can be hard. I just came out of a game where I had to very aggressively capture or clear Sumerian cities as I advanced to prevent losing my new captures. As it is, Uruk flipped before I could destroy the cities pressuring it - whereupon the Mongols captured it. As it was nowhere near their territory it flipped again in two turns, now spawning more advanced units.

 

[Everad]

Yup, have to agree that I see far to many cities placed by the AI poorly. Especially so, when if the city was moved 1 tile farther it would be able to build an aqueduct. Also, the point about not settling near natural wonders is also valid, plus with 4 tile wonders you can settle 3 cities around them and get +3 era score for each city to work towards a golden age!

 

[Art Morte]

You can predict where AI will settle
It always settles 3 tiles away from its own border. It does not take water into account at all or luxuries. It is all about those three tiles

Except when they decide to send a settler or more away from their "own" terrain. This is the worst thing about AI settling, imo. I was playing an inland sea map last week - where there's plenty of space even on just standard size - and Japan had huge areas of good free land right in their backyard. Room for probably 10 good cities, or so. Instead they sent first one and then a second settler to tundra/snow locations at least 20 tiles away from their border. Both cities flipped to my control in less than 10 turns from founding.

 

[KandAffar]

One things to test, is whether the AI settles cities based upon future strategic resources that aren't revealed until the late game.

 

[Thaelmann]

Reminds me of my last game on King with Chandragupta. Had the Georgians to the south, with a one-tile landbridge connection they could easily have blocked with their first settlement. They did not, settled at a suboptimal location, and got toasted. The rest is history. Sparta put up a fight, but I guess Gorgo likes a bit of a scuffle anyway.

 

[PhilBowles]

One things to test, is whether the AI settles cities based upon future strategic resources that aren't revealed until the late game.

On a purely anecdotal basis, it doesn't. It certainly did in Civ V and I think IV, but it will frequently not have late-game strategic resources when these are available in the landscape. My suspicion is that it likes to settle as many resources as it can see and doesn't distinguish between luxury, bonus and strategic at all.

Of course even if it were able to see the strategic resources, its settling decisions away from water and Wonders, and refusal to use improvements, still don't make sense.

 

[steveg700]

I don't know that AI's should be too excited by settling on wonders. Don't know that it should be a major consideration for players for that matter.

Seems that in some instances the AI is being faulted for wanting to settle its cities in tight clusters. Some of the available water settles that they were criticized for ignoring were simply farther away.

But would like to know why settlers just wander forever some times. For that matter, why do some civ's not create more settlers to expand in the first place?

 

[Kurnn]

There is a great mod called "AI+" which fixes alot of the AI problems. It's updated with the expansion.