Why here?

[Dominico]

Ok so why is the AI telling me to build here on the blue circle? Isnt the spot i have chosen on the coast a lot better? Im not the greatest player of civ but i wonder if i have missed something here and i should be building onto the blue circle.

I know the AI is not always right with its suggestions but is there something i have missed here?

 

[Sephlock]

Are you playing on Monarch or higher? At that level, the computer actively tries to screw you with recommendations as well as giving bonuses to AI civs.


...


j/k.

Maybe it thinks two desert tiles would be a good thing? Or maybe it takes into account resources that are not yet revealed?

 

[Cvntpumeler]

Ok so why is the AI telling me to build here on the blue circle? Isnt the spot i have chosen on the coast a lot better? Im not the greatest player of civ but i wonder if i have missed something here and i should be building onto the blue circle.

I know the AI is not always right with its suggestions but is there something i have missed here?

Maybe it's trying to make sure you can work the Pasture for those horses... Seems like a bad idea though becuase of all that desert. The blue circle is doesn't seem to be too smart....

 

[KMadCandy]

it doesn't count resources that you don't know about yet. maybe it values the plains hill more than the grass hill since it'll give an extra hammer? i like your spot better. i wish there was seafood, i love to settle on plains stone.

that area is crazy tho! if you settled on, or one west, of the cows, you'd have 5 different resources in the cross! don't do it, but i'm just looking at it going

 

[Peng Qi]

it doesn't count resources that you don't know about yet.

Actually, it does, except it only counts them as "don't settle here, there's a resource."

 

[KMadCandy]

Actually, it does, except it only counts them as "don't settle here, there's a resource."

not in my experience. i've even had my initial settler spawn on a resource i can't see yet, and it's recommended that i settle there, and i've done it and regretted it later when i do learn to see copper or whatever it is. i don't have any saves of that tho. my current game i'm looking at 4 AI cities that are settled on top of resources, in 3 cases coal, the cities were founded before the AI knew steam power. does the AI settle cities where there isn't a blue circle?

i do know that barbarians know where unrevealed resources are. i'm often impressed with barb city placement, sometimes even more so after late-game resources are revealed. fun fact: barb animals are not allowed to step on tiles with any resources ... dye, uranium, oil, cows, you name it. so if you're playing "come chase me, i want your exp but i really want to be on a hill when you attack" with a bear, and he just refuses to come at you, that might be why *giggle*.

edit: it definitely won't move blue circles off of resources if you add one to a blue circle it's already recommending, i just tested that in worldbuilder. i even hit enter to see if it needed a turn to register the fact that i'd sneakily added iron to that tile (i don't know IW). no change in the blue circle.

it will change blue circles if you change the terrain quite a bit. in the past hubby's tweaked maps for us to do duel-OCC games, and given us extra health resources. the blue circles move a lot during that process, even before you hit enter, just as soon as you leave WB the blue circle kinda bounces *giggle*. it seems to confuse the system, it wants to split the goodies into two cities or whatever. so i know it is capable of changing the decision once its been made. but it did not in this case.

it would obviously take a lot more time for me to find a situation where it's naturally giving me a blue circle on top of a resource and i'm not going to go to all that trouble .

 

[Peng Qi]

What resource did you try plunking down under it? The AI seems to be perfectly fine with plunking cities on top of copper and iron for some reason, but is less likely to do so with other resources.

 

[KMadCandy]

i did iron, the AI has some on coal in my game. tell me some to try and i will *giggle*

 

[Peng Qi]

Hmmm, try uranium, horses, and oil. If all of those result in the same thing, then I concede the point to you.

 

[Arlborn]

All I can think of about this blue circle is that it will allow you to make one city for wheat/horse and later other for stone/cow. I don't think it is optimal though.

 

[KMadCandy]

haha! checked all 3, the circles didn't move. not only that, but i gave myself AH to take a picture as proof that you owe me one, since the random leader i rolled was cyrus and just look at this lovely capital...

Spoiler :

which of course i can't use, since i've opened up WB and know the map. gold and food galore and ponies and cyrus!!!!!!!!! he's the only guy i can conquer the world with early! so you suck *giggle*.

the last resource i put on the blue circles was the ponies. and look at this...

Spoiler :

it didn't move the recommendation off the ponies even once i could see them? so maybe there's something wrong with my SuperScientificTestingMethod. btw that circle in the south, originally there was oil on the grass directly west of the circle. i deleted that oil during the oil test, and put it right on the circle. then i forgot to put back the original oil when i checked uranium and ponies on the circle, but the circle still didn't move. i just now realized that i didn't put it back. but i didn't change anything around that northern blue circle.

but what convinces me that it doesn't consider what you're not seeing is the placement of the AI cities in my current game. i'm far enough along that i can see all the resources now. all of these cities were founded when the AI could not see the resources in question ... there are 3 cities right on top of coal, and one on top of aluminum. my theory is that they're the AI, they have to follow the blue circle logic. they're not allowed to disobey it are they, since they have no free will? i think they would have founded cities on oil too, but any of the oil that isn't within 2 tiles of another city already, i got to first, since i knew SciM before they did .

the very first case i remember this sticking out to me was a game where i killed somebody early enough that he had only 2 cities (that's very rare for me). i kept his capital, it was a capital so i figured it would be good, and then i realized it was built on smackdab on top of ponies, and i was all kinds of ticked. why did the dork not place it next to them, so that he could build a pasture and get full use out of them??? then it dawned on the permanoob ... he didn't know animal husbandry in 4000 BC .

yekaterinburg is my current game is on top of horses, but my spies tell me it was founded in 760 AD so he could see them by then and it must be the funky land shape that made him put the city right on that tile.

there are 2 cities on gold and 2 on fur as well, which of course they could always see. they're not getting the full bonus from the tile since the city is on it of course. given how weird this hemispheres map is, i actually agree in these cases and would have put cities on those tiles myself. go figure, you never see me putting a city on gold!

i'm curious, do you think it would be particularly terrible of the AI to recommend settling on uranium or oil compared to other resources? or were you just curious since they show up so late? i settle a city on top of oil on purpose if i think things are gonna get hairy, just so that it can't get pillaged. sure, then they're mean and try to take my whole city, but it saves me all the spy pillaging which was so annoying even back pre-BtS when they couldn't have unlimited spies.

 

[Spearthrower]

Personally, with BtS AI, you can safely say that the blue circles are there to show you where NOT to settle!

And this screwy city placement AI explains why the AI players have such poorly placed cities so often.

 

[KMadCandy]

to do the test i had to give myself like 8 settlers sprinkled over the map! does anybody else usually NOT get a blue circle with their starting settler now? i can't remember the last time it gave me a blue circle on turn 1. not that i use the circles as rules but it's just odd to sometimes see them and sometimes not

 

[Peng Qi]

i'm curious, do you think it would be particularly terrible of the AI to recommend settling on uranium or oil compared to other resources?

No, it's just that in my personal experience I've never seen the AI build a city on either of those.

 

[draethor]

Personally, with BtS AI, you can safely say that the blue circles are there to show you where NOT to settle!

And this screwy city placement AI explains why the AI players have such poorly placed cities so often.

I've honestly noticed that I'm totally ignoring blue circles in BtS. In vanilla civ 4, I nearly always went with them.

I suspect something is screwy with the code.

 

[Elandal]

I would say that the BTS blue circles are completely useless. They feel like actively avoiding eg. seafood and gold... Sometimes they are spot on, but that's to be expected of true random: it can't ALWAYS miss the spot or it wouldn't be random

Blue circles are drawn by some weird founding values that define how good a spot would be, based on the map and resources as known by the player. They do not take into account resources not seen yet nor anything that is in the fog.

Oh yes, in BTS it seems that settling on hills is valued very highly. Feels like the game expects every city to come under attack and thus be better if it has hill defense bonus.

 

[Arlborn]

People, the capitol placement in 4000BC takes in consideration the hidden resources as well. In truth, forget the blue circle when you build your capitol because the blue circles only take in consideration what you already can see, and nothing else, but the capital, and only the capital, knows what hidden resources are around. In truth, the capitol placement has its own script, to change the tiles around it, so it has a 'good' placement and that is why it is normally a good idea to settle there.


Ps: Blake said it himself!

 

[Carabodes]

The only thing I can think of is that settling on the blue circle would "secure" your access to horse, and at the same time give you room for two more future cities, one with cow/stone and one at the landtip up north.

I like your way, though, allthough it gives room for less cities.

In my experience, the blue circles have seldom been the best advice, in earlier versions they were too close, making your own cities compete for food and resources, in BtS the circles have gone haywire, only showing up outside your cultural borders, and almost never picking the spot with the most important resources. I've had a game were I've had no iron/copper and no horses, but I've had copper in sight at an acceptable distance from nearest city (where the settler was born), and that site also gave stone (which I didn't have) - and where did the blue circle turn up? In the other end of the island, at some corn, a resource I already had. Guess who ignored the AI and went for the copper and stone!

 

[draethor]

I would say that the BTS blue circles are completely useless. They feel like actively avoiding eg. seafood and gold... Sometimes they are spot on, but that's to be expected of true random: it can't ALWAYS miss the spot or it wouldn't be random

Blue circles are drawn by some weird founding values that define how good a spot would be, based on the map and resources as known by the player. They do not take into account resources not seen yet nor anything that is in the fog.

Oh yes, in BTS it seems that settling on hills is valued very highly. Feels like the game expects every city to come under attack and thus be better if it has hill defense bonus.

I think it's just screwy in general. Look at the picture I've attached, of the game I just started. There are several town sites that are obviously better than the one recommended. Furthermore, the initial town site for me was suggested at one tile up and to the right.

I marked on the map sites that are better. 2 and 3 are understandable I suppose (given I don't have BW let alone IW), but are they drunk by missing 1? TWO GOLD MINES WITH SUFFICIENT FOOD NEAR A RIVER not recommended? Yeah right.

 

[KMadCandy]

but are they drunk by missing 1? TWO GOLD MINES WITH SUFFICIENT FOOD NEAR A RIVER not recommended? Yeah right.

well, your #1 is cutting it close on what i'd define as sufficient food. i'd probably move #3 to be on the river (yay for levees and health!) and catch the silk, and move #1 up and over so that i could use the flood plain rather than settle on it. not that you asked . i see your point, i wouldn't go where the blue circle is!