Forward Settling

[Battleturtle]

Forward settling makes sense when you use it to get resources away from your opponents into your hands, to increase your territory and outgrow your opponent. The AI forward settles 25 tiles from their capital with no defending units, this is griefing as the game has no real counterplay to it beyond angering everyone, and if someone did that in a multiplayer lobby, they would soon have difficulty finding opponents. Its not good, its not interesting, its not realistic, its bad, and worse, unfun.

I have played about 70 hours now of Civ 7, and the vast majority of the games the AI settle 10-20 tiles away from their closest city, not even capable of internally trading their resources to the capital. All of the civs seem to do this, once all of the cities are settled, they might as well be city states based on how apart they are from the other cities in their nation.

My suggestion is to have the AI prioritize growing and strengthening their own borders, building near themselves to at least give the illusion they know what they are doing. I understand that the AI has to cheat to compete, but they should still at least try and make a nation instead of just griefing. You can still have certain aggressive civs forward settle, but if they aren't even connected by a road to their own city network, its just a grief on the human player who - and this is important - is just trying to have fun playing the game.