ai settlers

[Traveler]

Something is very messed up with the AI using settlers. For the second game in a row I'm seeing civs build settlers but not use them. The first ime I noticed was playing on a large island map where France went the whole game with just Paris, this time it's America on an large inland sea map. In both cases there's plenty of good land to settle.

[Shadowdance]

The AI seems to follow set steps to the point. It never changes those or reacts to something super inteligent. I love when i'm about to get a city by force and bam... a worker just gets build (I attacked the city for like 10 turns), same for a settler :) Such a nice gift...

[Traveler]

Originally posted by Shadowdance:

The AI seems to follow set steps to the point. It never changes those or reacts to something super inteligent. I love when i'm about to get a city by force and bam... a worker just gets build (I attacked the city for like 10 turns), same for a settler :) Such a nice gift...

But the fun runs out when I have ten cities and they have one. What's stranger is that we both seem to be around the same tech level, how is the ai producing science with one city?

[churley1965]

Originally posted by Traveler:

Originally posted by Shadowdance:

The AI seems to follow set steps to the point. It never changes those or reacts to something super inteligent. I love when i'm about to get a city by force and bam... a worker just gets build (I attacked the city for like 10 turns), same for a settler :) Such a nice gift...

But the fun runs out when I have ten cities and they have one. What's stranger is that we both seem to be around the same tech level, how is the ai producing science with one city?

The answer is simple, the AI cheats, the AI civs can produce unlimited military units and religious units regardless of how much gold or faith they have available.

[Steppenrazor]

Ive seen this a lot too. Seems to me it happens mostly when the land is...

less then 100%

like, one of the glaring ones i saw was...

this one spot had 4 fish(in the starting city area!) 2 rice, 1 spice. But no freash water, or hills/trees. - the Civ near it had 2 cities on either side, with plenty of room to drop a city in the 'sweet spot' to be abke to grab everything.

even had a settler for who knows how long. (I lost count of the turns) but he kept trying the send his settlers down by my city to claim a less ideal spot, but one by a river.

i think the AI puts to much weight on freash water...

because in the end i wioed his civ out and claimed that spot for my self..

AND it ended up being a nice navy base for my northern border. Bit slower to build units and such then some if my other cities.. but still very useful

[DrUltraLux]

Originally posted by churley1965:

The answer is simple, the AI cheats, the AI civs can produce unlimited military units and religious units regardless of how much gold or faith they have available.

^^^ this

Many games now watching the AI flounder about with one city and a settler just sitting there. It seems to happen when humans mess up their pre-ordered plans and blocks where the AI wants to build.

The AI will also cross huge distances sometimes to build a useless city in the middle of nowhere. I watched it build one on Tundra (no hills) once just because it had copper nearby and was on a river, with only desert to expand onto later. City sat at 2 pop most of the game and just got to 4 pop late game..

The AI can see all resources and can cheat to spawn in units it cannot possibly afford. The only way the AI survived though. If it wasn't for the cheating, it would simply be far too stupid to ever pose a challenge for a human on even diety setting.

[Saxon]

Yeah they cheat pretty hard. The AI rush-buys with gold they don't actually have like they are the Weimar republic.

I'm not sure if it was this bad in CIV5, but if so it did a better job at hiding it.

[Boris Baconbeer]

I think Ai is dumber in civ 6 with settlers than civ five. I've now seen twice with two different civs settle one or two spare tiles inbetween two of my big cities. I didn't think this was supposed to happen. I'm sure in older civs there was a minimum requirement for tiles between for new city.
Very annoying because now I'll have to war to remove the pesky little dumps. The two civs that did it had plenty of other cities and space so i can't understand why. Also they could have used that time building better military or competing with me to make a wonder. Nope put a settler in the dumbest spot possible. This is emperor level too.

[intorpere]

When Civ5 first came out, the AI did all sorts of stupid things. A lot of that was eventually patched out. I'm surprised they weren't able to use all the improvements they made, and for Civ6 we get the same old broken AI again, on release..

[Traveler]

Part of the problem is that it's basicly the same code as CivV (and earlier?) yet they've somewhat increased the complexity of decision making with the districts system and some other bits. The CivV ai was really bad at managing road building so making it an auto function of trade may have been an attempt to ease the load, or not.

[Evilgenius]

Dont forget that people demand that AI turns dont take longer than 30 sec, in late game with 12 civs, so dont expect a Super AI without its downsides, like longer turn times.

So it is either have a cheating AI and a fast game, or have a better AI and its downsides. ( I would prefer the better AI)

On diety there is no Civ that ever only has one city, if there was another AI would kill it the moment they laid eyes on it. It still isnt optimal at city placement, and it does prefer fresh water tiles miles away over mediocre city close by, but it will eventually settle those places to.

And yes the AI seems to know where strategic rescourses will spawn, that why it probably places cities right between your cities. But it is your fault that you let that space be free to settle. Build your cities closer together, more cities is only good in Civ 6.

[Hurkaleez]

Originally posted by evilgenius:

Dont forget that people demand that AI turns dont take longer than 30 sec, in late game with 12 civs, so dont expect a Super AI without its downsides, like longer turn times.

IDK, early programming chess games used to be like this because they would simply try out every possible move X number of turns ahead and then settle on the best option based on a pre-defined cutoff point(for scenarios). From what I understand modern AI limits these intelligently so a Dev that invested a decent amount of love into an AI will see it take way less time making decisions.

[SamBC]

Originally posted by Hurk:

Originally posted by evilgenius:

Dont forget that people demand that AI turns dont take longer than 30 sec, in late game with 12 civs, so dont expect a Super AI without its downsides, like longer turn times.

IDK, early programming chess games used to be like this because they would simply try out every possible move X number of turns ahead and then settle on the best option based on a pre-defined cutoff point(for scenarios). From what I understand modern AI limits these intelligently so a Dev that invested a decent amount of love into an AI will see it take way less time making decisions.

Programming AI for chess and programming it for Civ are completely different propositions. Chess is a perfect knowledge game, it's deterministic, and you move one piece in a turn. All of those things make it rather simpler, in the sense of being able to apply more analytic practices.

[Prester]

i have seen a frustrating settlerbehaviour of the ai:

they want a specific spot to settle. if that spot is blocked or they cant for some reason reach it, they will try again. and again. and forever. they wont build additional settlers, they wont build somewhere else, this one spot will cost them prettymuch the game. i have had marathon games, where agypt or germany remained 2-city-states because i blocked a spot they wanted next to my capital. they completely stopped developing for 500 turns before i had mercy and let agypt settle down. but this is kinda lame, when half of the ai countries remain primitive the whole game for something like fixation on a settling spot. i dont know how hard it is to programm a decent ai, but i think something like THIS can be fixed.

[WildHunt]

i hate that ai always provoke war & trying to limit your city border by sending their settler from as far as 40 tiles from their capital to your city, eventhough there is plenty of space near their capital. they are damm desperate to limit your city potential.lol
most of them ignore "dont settle near me".
the game should give diplomatic penalty to expansionist ai & not only to player. as player will get penalty from all civ if player go expand their city rapidly.
i usually declare war on any civ that intend to block my city border by capturing their settler xD