Stupid AI!!!

[Twelve Motion]

How do you guys deal with the AI making retarded cities in your land? For example they build a city in the 12 spaces of pure glacier in the middle of my empire. Or they make a city on the 1 space of coastland not in my culture... How do you make them stop? Or do you just not care? Because it bugs the hell out of me!

[punkbass2000]

Just build a city there.

[dmd175]

The AI seems stupid like this. But the AI "knows" the terrain of the map and all resources. Punkbass is right, build a city there. You might also try to use chokepoints to protect your territory, place a warrior or something useless on that 1 open tile on the sea, and being very stingy trading your world map/territory map. Once you let the AI know that there is open space, settlers will come! I never trade my maps and always try to block the AI from just passing through.

[Modo44]

Or, have enough culture around. I used to leave those spaces alone on purpose. Instead of building settlers to plug holes in the useless desert, I would rush a Temple and Library in cities around. A desert city can't really build much, so they got squashed by my culture, and would flip eventually.

[vmxa1]

I try to plan my builds and culture borders to prevent entry to my open spaces. If not or they have transports (galley) then I may have to sit a unit on the spot to prevent the landing.

IOW there are lots of ways to stop it and in the end, you may just have to capture a settler and be forced to add two more slaves to the crew.

[Modo44]

Actually, this can be used as an exploit. Leave some empty space, that the AI know of, and let them send Settler-teams, for free slaves. Of course, this would require a strong army. But hey, if you don't need to build workers in exchange...

[joncnunn]

What I do is simply use a few military units to set up a moving roadblock. This can be combined with workers that happen to be improving a tile in the AI's way.

It's kind of an exploit, with the AI having settlers moving back and forth for no purpose.

[Twelve Motion]

The "build a city there" philosphy I don't like, because there is a reason I didn't build a city in the middle of a glacier. I know the stupid chinese city or whatever that comes there will go nowwhere, but I don't like that unsightly blemish in my countryside! By the way a few questions on this.

What is the deal with "flipping" cities? I know what it means, when they convert to you, but how do you do it? Is there an equation? Do you need to have it surrounded on atleast 3 sides? or like whats the specifics of it?

Also can people build cities inside my culture borders?

[vmxa1]

Yes there is a formula for flip and some tools to calculate it. Basically it is about having more culture and denying acces to the city for it capitol or FP.

You can build a city in anothers borders as long as it it is at least one tile from the city, but it is an act of war.

[punkbass2000]

Originally posted by Twelve Motion
The "build a city there" philosphy I don't like, because there is a reason I didn't build a city in the middle of a glacier.

If you can put it on a coast it can be a reasonably valuable city and, unless it's placed such that it's one of the closest cities to your capital, won't be detrimental to your empire plus it snags the resources that might be on there.

[dmd175]

Originally posted by Twelve Motion
a reason I didn't build a city in the middle of a glacier.

True, these are not the best early city sites, and usually an all tundra city seems to grow only to about size 2 (2 food from city center and 1 food from tundra/forested tundra = 3 tiles worked = 2 + 1 + 1 food = size 2 not growing).

But, again, as other people have mentioned, civ3 purposefully puts resources into some of these less desirable locations. E.g. tundra can have oil, and I'm pretty sure uranium, aluminum, rubber (if you forest the tundra). Thus, grabbing some tundra in the mid game after your REX may yield a precious oil -- and maybe your only oil. Since you won't know this until the late IA, you should grab all available land, even stuff like tundra and desert if it fits the contour of your empire.

[punkbass2000]

Planting/chopping forests/jungles, etc., doesn't change the odds of a resource being there, IIRC. It's already there, as you can tell from the AI, it's just a matter of being able to see it. I think this is even true for when resources appear/disappear. A tile always retains its original terrain designation, though global warming might be an exception.

[Dis]

Originally posted by joncnunn
What I do is simply use a few military units to set up a moving roadblock. This can be combined with workers that happen to be improving a tile in the AI's way.

It's kind of an exploit, with the AI having settlers moving back and forth for no purpose.

I did this in my current game.

Makes me wonder if this annoys the AI. I know it's a computer. But later this same country who I was actively roadblocking, declared war on me!.

maybe the AI is more human than we think

[punkbass2000]

Was war declared while you were pulling this manoevure? The AI has a tendency to start declaring war when it can't build cities peacefully any more.

[Dis]

Originally posted by punkbass2000
Was war declared while you were pulling this manoevure? The AI has a tendency to start declaring war when it can't build cities peacefully any more.

yeah it was later after I was doing that maneuver. Eventually they gave up and withdrew their units. And then moved in offensive units. I know what that means. So I asked them to withdraw, and you know how that goes.