Why doesn't the AI ever settle as much land as possible?

[Gary King]

I'm more familiar with Civ IV, and in that game, there was definitely a race to settle as much land as possible vs. the AI. But in Civ V, this is not the case.

When I am playing Continents and I get Astronomy, I see that there is plenty of QUALITY land available in the world to settle, on the AI's continents. I'm often tempted to settle there, and sometimes I do, especially if I want to warmonger, since it provides a nice base to setup.

So why doesn't the AI settle this land when they can? I can understand if they don't do so in the early game, but around 1700 AD and there's still space.

 

[Sagax]

1. Happiness issues.
2. Depends on the civ. Have you played against Iroquois or Rome?

 

[xPrISM]

Whaaat?

In my games the AI is putting cities on every little sliver of land it can find. It's especially irritating when they do it right next to my borders just because there's maybe 3 hexes that my boarder hasn't engulfed yet.

 

[Gamewizard]

Play on a harder setting. On immortal, especially with certain AI leaders like Hiawatha and Alexander, they will city spam into your face.

 

[mclericp]

russia, immortal, good luck

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

The Ottomans too. Sully has forward settled on me more than any other leader. I've gotten to the point where every time I meet him I automatically start building archers.

Personally I like V's more relaxed expansion. It's one of the things I hated about IV, the mad land grab in the first few turns. No way to expand peacefully later in the game. Even crappy 1 tile islands would be claimed by the time you found them.

 

[beetle]

In my games the AI is putting cities on every little sliver of land it can find. It's especially irritating when they do it right next to my borders just because there's maybe 3 hexes that my boarder hasn't engulfed yet.

This was bothering me so much that I now use the setting for 4 hexes minimum between cities. I no longer mind Hiawatha being in my games.

What would be even better is if the AI would favor settling on bays/coves rather than on points. I always end up razing those towns!

 

[Sonereal]

Personally I like V's more relaxed expansion. It's one of the things I hated about IV, the mad land grab in the first few turns. No way to expand peacefully later in the game. Even crappy 1 tile islands would be claimed by the time you found them.

But the slow expansion is why Civilization V's early game is so much more boring. The barbarians are pushovers even on Turn 1, and since expansion is so slow, conflicts take forever to pop up.

 

[troublmaker]

There's only a very small number of expansionist empires in the game. Your chance of striking them in a game is low.

 

[joncnunn]

Normally the problem is that the AI founds too many junk cities, but the fall patch somewhat helped with that.

But expansion is flavor driven like anything else. Russia (and other high expansion flavor AIs) city spam. Low expansion flavor don't.

 

[manu-fan]

I think it depends on the difficulty. On the lower difficultly, yes, the AI doesn't seem to expand to the land that's available on Large maps.

 

[Callonia]

Happiness is the only reason why.

We have a virgin player here that hasn't met the Iroquois!
Seriously, put Hiawatha in the same map as you, he will settle every hex, although he's slightly restrained himself in BNW.

 

[Gary King]

Yep since posting this thread I've seen some really aggressive Civs. Rome and Hiawatha come to mind. Rome was very aggressive and eliminated two Civs from his continent, while Hiawatha settled every little bit of land he could find, and was also fairly aggressive (he backstabbed me when we were at Friendly).

I also played against Venice and was confused when he didn't settle a single city. Now I know why!