Really bad city placement

[Qwertqwert]

I understand the AI just can't think as well as the human (or think at all) but they sometimes seem terribly programmed. On the world map, I saw this city placment, about the worst starting spot I can think of, I mean m there are 3 tiles adjecent to that spot which are better to settle on, only 1 tile there is workable at all.

http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/6634/untitled116zb3.jpg

[Prussia]

You gotta love faulty programming.

It is alot better than Civ 3, though, when cities were founded by the AI purely just so they could make another city; not even taking into consideration the idea of "strategic advantage," or crappy stuff like that.

[Urban Ranger]

What I usually see is computer players making grabs at good city sites. Sometimes they found on bad city sites (such as those one tile fishing villages) but that's probably caused by some other weighing factor.

[Prussia]

You'd think that they would settle in the squares that were "Sid recommended," but maybe the programmers thought of that when making the game and deliberately didn't give them the benefit.

[gdijedi7]

Maybe the computer's just stupid, ever think of that?

Then again, sometimes I build a city, then find out it's not all it was cracked up to be.

[Snotty]

if Walsia expands its borders and mali has a high culture than you then he can push your borders back and put a city on the top left plains/hills tile, which is my favorite city spot there

[Dis]

terrible indeed. On the world map I usually place to try to get the wheat, sheep, and spices (or whatever those are). You can't fit the elephants into the city radius and get all the rest. But I can get it with the cultural boundary, just not in the city radius. Obviously they can't in this case because of the purple cultural boundaries. But that's the AI's fault for fonding a city so late.

All I know is sometimes they give me terrible recommendations with the blue circles sometimes. But sometimes the blue circle recommendations are spot on.

[Nugog]

That's so bad it's funny.

I see this sort of nonsense quite often - its just so funny!

[Swiss Pauli]

That's a pretty weak spot but I guess it would be recommended for a future oil grab.

[Prussia]

You can't really call the computer "stupid," technically it will always remain "smarter" than you, if you are using those terms.

[Will9]

The AI still has some of the old civ3 expanionist programing.

[Solver]

The AI built that city because of the Wine resource. Though finding one tile to the north would be much better with access to Sheep, Wine and Ivory, and potentially even Wheat.

[gdijedi7]

Originally posted by Prussia
You can't really call the computer "stupid," technically it will always remain "smarter" than you, if you are using those terms.

Really? Then how come I keep outsmarting it?

Some of it's moves are blatantly obvious. I could tell very easily, for example, when Catherine was about to sneak attack me, and I guessed force composition fairly well.

[sparkyal]

or maybe there will be other stuff there down the line. doesn't the AI know where everything is at all times?

In the gamr I just finished, the AI really could of build a city in a great strategic place to take advantage of moving ships from one acean to another without having to go all the way around (kind of like using a city as a canal). to me, that is where the AI really makes it mistakes.

sparky

[Prussia]

It's not the AI that's stupid, it's the programmers who were either too lazy or too smart to make it unpredictable.

Too lazy, for obvious reasons, but too smart, because would you really want to go up against an AI that does things so randomly you question why this game exists?