First Impressions (screenshots, etc.)

[alva]

Could it be that he reimproved it after ivory got absolete and that farming was more usefull to him?

[Harovan]

I don't know the cIV AI too well yet. In Civ3 the AI would never reimprove a tile, ever. Maybe in cIV it does. I will keep an eye on it.

By the way, I fell in love with an absolutely fun setup. Highlands map with dense, clustered mountains, large lakes. Playing as Mongolia of course. Boy that is fun! A labyrinth of valleys interrupted by large impassable mountain ranges. Guerilla warfare at its finest! Try to find Bin Laden in Tora Bora! Should make up for a fun PBEM or MP scenario too.

Now if I could only get X and Y wrapping on in this script (it's off by default)! If you're in a corner, you have a too strong strategical position, you don't need to watch your back. But in a toroidal map there is no corner.

Come on Sirian, can we get this please? Or tell us how to mod it.

[Nikolai]

Can't you use the Python map making program that was released the other day?

[Jon Shafer]

Sir Ralph:

Was the AI's city near the ivory low on food? The AI will often farm plots with resources if it needs food badly. Which might explain why you saw that situation.

[Harovan]

Yes it was low on food, most of its land was plains. However having a strategical resource hooked up should be weighted higher than being able to feed half a pop point more.

[Soren Johnson]

I am guessing that Ivory had gone obsolete for them...

[Harovan]

Whoa, Firaxis cluster encountered, both Soren and Trip.

So the AI does reimprove tiles after the situation changes? That would be great indeed.

[Solver]

I have definitely seen the AI changing terrain improvements.

[Jon Shafer]

Yes, the AI will redo plot improvements based on its current situation. This is why there's an "Automated Workers Leave Old Improvements" option.

If you have old saves you can go back and see what they were doing at the time - they may have had a Camp in the past or maybe not - we don't really know.

[Harovan]

This is nice to hear, especially since in Civ3 it did definitely not redo improvements. But then, there was not much reason to do so, since their yield never changed, except with railroads, which was required everywhere, anyway. In cIV you developers did a nice job to give a variety of possible improvements, the production of which in many cases even changes over time, so it is possible to provide cities with hand-tailored improvements. And it is even nicer to see, that the AI seems to use that as well.

[Addled Platypus]

learned several things..

thanks Sir Ralph

[Sirian]

More silence from Yin. Is that indicative of a compelling time period in his latest game?

"A couple more turns..."

[yin26]

Indeed! I'm having a lot of fun. In my current game, I'm pushing city production as hard a possible. I managed 8 cities:



However, I am concluding that this is not ICS but REX. Risks must be taken (almost lost a few cities to barbs), production is slowed, econ drops to negative forcing a scale back in science, etc. Also, it's really great that there is no more settler diarrhea on the part of the AI, either. The AI's expansion is aggressive but not obnoxious, and with borders that now actually mean something, holding back the AI expansion becomes a fun mini game.

If anything, however, I would make the cities actually LOSE a population point after creating a settler.

[Sirian]

Cities "lose" population by not growing while training workers and settlers. It's an elegant solution, because it balances out high-shield and high-food city sites, letting both or either produce settlers and workers efficiently. This really adds a lot of tactical options!

Dropping the population would require undoing the "no growth" thing, and also PREVENT creation of settler or worker from size 1 city.

I can see some up sides to the old way, but I much prefer this method now that I've had a lot of contact with it. It's also easier for totally new players to grasp! (Having to grow your city to size 3 in Civ3 before you could build a settler was totally unintuitive!)


- Sirian

[Solver]

The point is, even if you do manage such REXing to a limited degree, you're not really gaining much by that. You're forced to decrease science spending, you have more cities to defend (and if you don't the AIs will take advantage of it), your cities are smaller (less specialists), and you're not neccessarily gaining enough in return.