Too close for comfort.

[Silver14]

Click for the full image.

Anyone ever see two AI's start this close together??

Karakorum is the Mongol starting city isn't it? They appear to be blocked in by Washington’s culture spread. Note the four seafood buffets that were likely put there by the AI for the Mongol/American starting location. This isn't a small map, 7 civs on a standard size continental map - sea level is set to low.

From the pic it may be hard to tell, but they are not on an island the rest of the US sprawl is west of Washington on the same continent as the Germans, Egyptians and Japanese.

I am playing as the English and had the Aztecs as my continental 'friend' so I focused on wiping them out before they became too powerful. I'm sprawling to cover the rest of my continent before the galleons start showing up with AI settlers. As long as the AI will try to cover as much territory as possible ICS won't go away.

I'm playing on Noble difficulty. I've never seen Civ's start that close together in Civ4 yet, their capitals are only 3 squares apart! Near as I can tell the AI Mongols are doing a OCC in this game, it doesn't look like they've built any other cities or if they did they were destroyed as all the ones to the west have American city names. This is hands down the most snafu'd starting location I have seen for an AI. I wonder why the Americans haven’t taken them out yet, should be an easy feat and they aren’t sharing the same religion either. That and the cultural tensions should have sparked a war between them by now I would have thought. I could understand them being so close on a smaller map with a lot of Civ’s but it doesn’t make much sense here.

I figure I'll put the Mongols out of their misery as soon as I get a few galleons built and use their city as a staging point for campaigns on the super continent.

I havn't even spoke with them yet (traded maps a few times) and was trying to figure out where Civ #7 is hideing at when I found them next to the Americans.

[MoonWolf]

Hehe, those mongols must feel alone Never seen this before either... Not only do they start isolated, but their neighbour also got a really good starting location! You should take it...

[Silver14]

Yeah I should raze them both and build a city that can use all four seafood squares hehe.

[MoonWolf]

Yep, you could do and don't loose any hills for production

[upsidedown]

I started in a position much like the Mongols there next to Qin on one game. Too tired to go see if I have a saved game but we were still 8-10 plots away with me being on the pennisula. I had one choice and it meant early war.

Your game trumps mine though.

[Risa]

Now this is REALLY close.

[Blake]

LOL so close they built an aqua-bridge to share water!

[Arrian]

I've seen quite of few of these screenshots lately... and I'm curious about the map settings that might trigger this, because I've played a lot of games now on standard settings (standard across the board, continents) and never seen anything like it.

-Arrian

[Diadem]

That screenie from Risa is really weird. The cultural influence looks wrong. How can they have such a weird cross-influence on those seafood resources. You'd expect it to be the other way around - or for both to be controlled by the same civ.

[GusSmed]

Risa's screenshot isn't even legal city placement. Ordinarily you can't place a city within 2 tiles of an existing city.

- Gus

[Silver14]

Originally posted by Arrian


I've seen quite of few of these screenshots lately... and I'm curious about the map settings that might trigger this, because I've played a lot of games now on standard settings (standard across the board, continents) and never seen anything like it.

-Arrian

The only 'abnormal' setting I have is that the map is set as 'tropical' so there can be large ammounts of jungle in the middle areas. I find that there is less desert on these types of maps and, once the jungle is cleared, better tiles for cities.

[Silver14]

Originally posted by GusSmed
Risa's screenshot isn't even legal city placement. Ordinarily you can't place a city within 2 tiles of an existing city.

- Gus

Maybe it doesn't count if its accross water? Something to look in to.

But yeah 1 square apart is too close unless it was modded from 2 to 1?

[MoonWolf]

Originally posted by GusSmed
Risa's screenshot isn't even legal city placement. Ordinarily you can't place a city within 2 tiles of an existing city.

- Gus

Across the sea you can

[Risa]

I'm not sure it is legal or not, either. I didn't edit that map, though. It is just a random standard, ice age, rocky terrain, middle sea level, 8 players map. I could provide the map generation seed, if I knew where to look for it.

[Risa]

Originally posted by Diadem
That screenie from Risa is really weird. The cultural influence looks wrong. How can they have such a weird cross-influence on those seafood resources. You'd expect it to be the other way around - or for both to be controlled by the same civ.

Yes, almost through the game those two seefoods are controlled by Germany. After all, Frederick is creative while Peter's not. The only wonder in those two cities is the Taj Mahal, completed at 1710AD in Moscow. It helps Russia to push the border back. Also, St. Petersburg (5 tile north, 1 tile west to Berlin) had reached influential level and spreaded it cultural south. As the result, by the turn of screenshot (or maybe several turns earlier), Russia's influence on western clam field reached 50%, finally winning that field back, while Germany still controlled the eastern field by 51% influence.