AI city building

[Flamegrape]

I've been working on "realistic" earth maps for some time. I've found that either the map that I use is too small and land details become unrecognizable or the map is so large that hundreds of cities are built and it bogs down the game.

I would prefer to use larger maps such as Kal-El's 180x180 map. But until I get a very, very fast PC the game eventually slows down. I'm pretty sure this is because of the vast number of cities that are built everywhere by the AI players. I've tried to remedy this by preventing the building of cities in Tundra terrain. This does cut down on the amount of cites and prevents the dozens of useless cities that are usually built in Siberia and northern Canada.

But I've thought of another idea and I'm not sure if it will work. What if I were to prevent the construction of cities in Forest and Jungle terrain? Those squares would have to be cleared before cities could be constructed. This might help to limit AI expansion. But would they just ignore Forest and Jungle as potential city sites altogether? And only build on terrain that permits cities such as Hills, Plains, and Grasslands? Has anyone tried this?

I tried pre-placing cities for all the players. I figured that this would also prevent the building of ANY cities in places where they were not historically built. But this still resulted in a huge number of cities.

I even tried giving each city a starting culture of 100 and spreading them out evenly across the world. I thought that this would prevent the AI construction of cities within civilization borders but this does not work! The AIs still build cities in between city borders and as well as in between borders of cultural influence.

Any idea of how I can cut down on the number of cities that the AI builds?

[Stuie]

Re: AI city building

Originally posted by Flamegrape
But I've thought of another idea and I'm not sure if it will work. What if I were to prevent the construction of cities in Forest and Jungle terrain? Those squares would have to be cleared before cities could be constructed. This might help to limit AI expansion. But would they just ignore Forest and Jungle as potential city sites altogether? And only build on terrain that permits cities such as Hills, Plains, and Grasslands? Has anyone tried this?

I've tried it. The AI ignores jungle/forest as potential city sites.

Even so, I still use the restriction because I can't stand the way every square inch of land gets populated in vanilla Civ3. I just try not to take advantage of the fact that I'm smart enough to clear decent city sites and the AI isn't.

[Flamegrape]

Re: Re: AI city building

Originally posted by Stuie I've tried it. The AI ignores jungle/forest as potential city sites.

Hmmm. That's what I figured.

Perhaps doubling or tripling the shield cost of settlers would help slow down rapid AI expansion? I've noticed that shortly after the game begins, there is this mass exodus of settlers from western Europe stampeding throughout asia in a mad-dash land rush.

[Willem]

Re: Re: Re: AI city building

Originally posted by Flamegrape

Hmmm. That's what I figured.

Perhaps doubling or tripling the shield cost of settlers would help slow down rapid AI expansion? I've noticed that shortly after the game begins, there is this mass exodus of settlers from western Europe stampeding throughout asia in a mad-dash land rush.

Try raising the food requirement for citizens to 3 instead of two. That helps quite a bit. It can be done on the General Settings page of the editor.

[:) Smiley]

Does Civ3 also have the "Fertility" values like Civ2 that cause cities to be built only on plains and grass?

[Flamegrape]

Originally posted by Smiley
Does Civ3 also have the "Fertility" values like Civ2 that cause cities to be built only on plains and grass?

I'm not familiar with Civ2 so I don't know. I don't think so. In Civ3, you can build cities anywhere except on water and mountians. You can even build one on frozen tundra.

I considered the possibility of designating one terrain type as the one that permits cities. That would certainly control the number of cities! But it always ends up dramatically changing the map in totally unwanted ways.

[Egbert]

You could go into the editor and reduce the optimum number of cities. That certainly does steady the AI down (also reduces the number of cities the human can build).

Increasing settler cost just means it takes longer for the AI to spam the map with countless cities (and retards the AI in the early to middle game).

[:) Smiley]

Fertility only affects AI, you can still build anywhere. In Civ2, AI would only build on grass or plains.

[The Mad Monk]

Since the AI seldom or never builds in land already "owned" by it -- covered by a border -- try making border increases cheaper and/or add more culture generators. That's how I'm solving the problem in my 362x362 map scenario.

Adding one culture point to barracks insures that even military civ AIs will do their part.