Pesky Settlers

[Jabutron]

What's the best way to keep settlers from repopulating a bare patch after you've annihilated your enemy's cities without being in a state of permanent warfare? After all, you went through all the trouble of beating them down, why would you want to let them (or some other civ) set up even more cities in the bare patches? (Of course, I'm keeping any Wonder cities, but destroying all others.)

[Robert]

killing them.

[Datajack Franit]

more settlers on the loose=more cities to raze

[Enigma_Nova]

Cancel Open Borders.

[Jabutron]

Cancelling Open Borders doesn't work, because there are no borders due to lack of cities with my culture.

Maybe I wasn't being concise enough, though:

When I wage war against my neighbor, I want to raze the cities I capture because I don't want to garrison them and take away from the momentum. Apart from bringing along settlers of my own (which might cause me short-term economic hell from new city maintenance costs), how to I stop the enemy (and other AIs) from building cities in the barren no-mans-land that I create? Without perpetual warfare, BTW. And my number of GAs is never enough to culture bomb the number of new cities I'd need to found to solve the problem.

So essentially I want to leave barren wastelands in my path, and have them stay that way. Any ideas, or am I tilting at windmills?

[johnmcd]

I know what you mean, I'd love 'Nationhood' or something to allow a non cultural border grab or renegotiations. It wouldn't need to be honoured by a nation unless they wanted to stay in your good books. Equally, wholly unpopulated land could be annexed to your empire in the style of Siberia or something. It would also allow a back door for the colonies of Civ III, which I confess to missing. Nobody could build a city on Gibraltar or Diego Garcia, but they are unarguably hugely important spots to claim ownership of and have basic facilities on.

Equally, if you went to war with another civ, your negotiated borders would immediately pop back to the cultural ones. There may be happiness penalties for giving away a tile that wants to be with you or limits on which tiles can be negotiated, at least 10% ownership anyway or something.

Such a system would allow you to maintain the fat cross of a city with little culture near a cultural powerhouse city or negotiate not a trade deal for oil, but permanent ownership of the tile without having to go to war (that may be a little far fetched though).

Well negotiated borders could remove the penalties for proximity too perhaps.

[Jabutron]

I liked that in CtP you could establish forts to gain control of areas without building cities, especially if you needed to connect cities together and can't build in non-ZoC areas.

In Civ3 I would create a line of MIs to block AI settlers (since I did most of my warring in the modern era), but Civ4 doesn't seem to be well suited to that strategy.

[Robert]

My answer was serious: KILL THEM!
There's nothing else you can do about other civs founding cities on neutral territory. (besides founding your own cities)

[Tattila the Hun]

Free workers?

(Atleast in Civ3 )

[Jabutron]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
Free workers?

(Atleast in Civ3 )

One free worker at least... better than nought.

[Cort Haus]

The pesky settlers that get on my nerves are the ones that come and found crappo cities in the unwanted nooks and crannies of my home empire.

Its funny that, post-patch, you cannot give a pile-of-poo of a city to an AI, but they'll quite happily come and not only build it, but bloody culture bomb it too - playing havoc with core resource tiles.

Yeah, yeah - you can capture the city but maybe not if it belongs to a needed ally, especially in a potential diplowin.

[Silver14]

IMO thats the only problem left with ICS in Civ 4. Give the AI some sense in where it builts cities. Its understandable when they plop a city down where there are resources of value but I've had them plop cities down in the crappiest spots that eventually flip to my culture where no resources appear, ever. I never used to build cities like mad in Civ 1 or Civ 2 it wasn't until Civ 3 that I would build cities everywhere to keep the AI from infringing on 'my territory'. Given that Civ3 corruption was supposed to end 'ICS' (which it failed) my ICS playing habits started there and not in Civ 2 or 1.

I don't accept open borders agreements in Civ4 until I've built all my cities and my culture has expanded to cover every square because they will tromp accross my empire to build that craptastic city in the tundra.

[Cort Haus]

IMO thats the only problem left with ICS in Civ 4. Give the AI some sense in where it builts cities.

Exactly. The AI needs to be spared from spamming useless cities for it's own good as well as for the player's enjoyment factor. It just needs to ask itself "would I accept this city in a trade?".

[Silver14]

Exhibit A

This is a prime example. If it were not for Atlantas culture then the AI city would have the horse resource, but even when they built their city Atlanta had enough culture and owned the resource. Later in the game Oil appears two squares to the left of the horse. So perhaps the AI knew the resources were there, but didn't take into account the strong culture being generated even at the time they built it? There is really no reason for this city other then to aggrivate the player. It will eventually flip to my culture and I will disband it.

[Tattila the Hun]

Could it be possible to ad a... thing, that would require a city to be at most x number of tiles from the latest built city. Kinda like in RTS's, where you cannot just plop a rocket turret in the middle of an enemy base.

Of course, it would prevent the human from doing the same...

I mean, civilization sprawls, does it not? One does not simply found Berlin, and then found the next city in middle east, cause there will be oil there... One would found Bonn or something little closer to Berlin, maybe in the same time shortening the route to the silk or whatever they have there. I'd like to see colonies, a basic improvement, takes the time to build the required improvement, camp or something, plus a fort, for protection, works just like in Civ 3, except that it would not consume the worker. Put a colony there, garrison it, and connect it to your trade network. Eventually, it might (or might not) evolve into a settlement, a real city, much like huts evolve into villages and towns. Or another city's culture envelopes it, and you need to get the resource with... alternative means.

And please, somebody make it so that pre-chemistry troops cannot tear away my roads and plant grass or bushes inplace... Those might not be even paved... Just a path, where enough cows have trampled...

Here's another, if big enough army marches from place A to place B, they form a road inbetween.