Why do a few civs go nowhere?

[IglooDame]

Many of my games (mostly regent level, and the last couple have been standard maps mostly water islands) have had a civ that has stayed in one city through 1AD, not due to lack of expansion room. Opening an embassy has shown that they generally have not been building a wonder off the bat which is the only logical explanation, and that they have quite a few spearmen in the capital. Does anyone know why a civ occasionally doesn't expand? Does the AI take a OCC without telling anyone?

 

[Colonel]

never had it happen to me

 

[WildFire]

Maybe it was a game that was edited and you made it so they couldnt build settlers?

 

[Smellincoffee]

Never seen this before, but I have heard of it.

 

[Ision]

Does the AI take a OCC without telling anyone?

No it does not.

I would venture to guess that the civ had any combination of the following occur:

1. an extremely poor start postion that greatly ******** its growth ability.

2. an early war you could not know of prior to the embassy. thus the civ switched to unit production.

3. your forces, or enemy ai forces nearby for a long period of time - keeping the settler at bay for a long time.

4. an early Wonder attempt that failed (before your embassy peek), and the extra shields were converted to the most expensive available building.

5. I have no idea! -lol-


Ision

 

[KaNick]

Did you turn the agressiveness down? Was this in Vanilla, PTW, or C3C? How bout a save?

 

[Chaos_BF1942]

I did see that one time but they didn't have any room for explanation because they got a very bad starting location.

But seeing them with only one city is pretty rare, but there are almost always one civ that are off on this island by them selfs and are normally far behind in Tech.



Anyways I think they may just want to give you Peace and Love....


You should kill them now.

 

[warpstorm]

I have seen it quite a few times. Like Chao BF1942 suggested it was because of bad starting locations. They eitehr were set up so as not to grow or they had no neighbors to trade with. The AI very much needs trading partners to stay competitive in the tech race (you should too).

 

[t3h_m013]

ive had a game with 2 civs (vikings and japanese) staying in one city even with expansion room. probably to do with start positions etc.
dont have a save i dont think as i deleted all my old saves on patching to 1.22

 

[Reprisal]

I've seen it happen a few times, when you expect a civilization to expand into prime real estate, only to stay with their four cities and build city improvements or Wonders far too early. When you look in the manual or in the editor under the tribe/civilizations tab, each civilization's AI has building preferences. This may have something to do with the problem.

By the way, IglooDude, you have an awesome avatar.

- Rep.

 

[IglooDame]

I have never used the Civ3 editor, so I don't think it is anything I've done. The settings were v1.15 Regent, max water, islands, warm, medium (wet/dry land), and 4 billion years, max # of opponents on standard and large maps (on the standard map the keygenerator used was eeeek), raging barbarians, max aggressiveness, and the following victory conditions: Conquest, Cultural, Space Race, and Mass Regicide, and at least once I had Victory Points and Domination victories on as well. Starting positions for them (it has happened to the Dutch, Germans, and Greeks) have varied from so-so to decent. In two recent cases it was the civs starting nearest me on the same island and no one else ever made contact with them before I wiped them out.

I'll hunt down a save and post it this evening.

 

[Moss]

I've had it happen a couple of times when the civ started in horrible terrain, or when two civs started extremely close to one another. But other than that...I've never seen it.

 

[zeon252]

I've seen it before, I played a map of the world(100x100) and Japan started in the middle of the Sahara and they never expanded until they were destroyed, it's probobly because of a cruddy starting posistion.

 

[HalfBadger]

He also had the game set on ragging barbarians, maybe they produced other units, but they were killed by Barbarians?

 

[IglooDame]

Here's two example savegames. In the first one the Greeks haven't expanded out to a second city even while I've got a half-dozen, and in the second the Dutch and Germans each have stayed at one city even as I've expanded to a dozen cities.

 

[RagingBarbarian]

I have seen this happen before. I was in the late middle ages. When I explored the other continent and found France only had one city, Paris. I assumed they lost all their other cities in wars, but found no cities had french names. They had never expanded, even though they had ample room to do so. It seems like the other civs on the continent expanded and suorunded Paris so quickly that they were'nt able to expand.

 

[taper]

I once started a game where the Iroquois had such a terrible starting position their capitol couldn't grow beyond 2, and therefore couldn't make settlers.

 

[warpstorm]

In the example that taper gave they would be particularly hamstrung as they are programmed to build a settler early. They would keep throwing shields into a project that can't ever be finished.

 

[Halcyon]

I've had this happen once or twice when a civ with a relatively bad start position (albeit not a completely unproductive one - just bad enough to stop them building settlers for 15-20) gets into a very early war with a close neighbour. When the war ends, or when the attacking side's forces get diverted, the civ starts to expand. Well, if there's any room left. I've a current game wherein the Aztecs built their second city in something like 650BC, after I drew their weak aggressors (Babylon, three cities) into my war on the traitorous Dutch, since the less than clever Babs felt like paying me for the privilege.