Slowing the mad land grab

[Willem]

Originally posted by SlightlyMadman
I've turned off cities for desert, tundra, and jungle, as stated above. In addition, I've set Engineering as the prerequisite for the Clear Jungle worker task.

Does anyone know if the AI will clear jungle, in order to build a city, once they can? I worry that it might give the human an advantage.

The AI will build a city first then clear Jungle. It can't preplan a location if that's what you mean.

[Optimizer]

For a more interesting game you can make the Settler really expensive (as said before) - like 100 shields, and allow a much cheaper Settler with Navigation or something. This will start a colonial boom in the mid-game.

[WarpStorm]

Originally posted by peterfharris


I have increased the pop cost of settlers to 3 (along with the huge shield cost and wheels). It helps a lot but I have also seen a civ that could not get its capital city province up to the required 4. That is unusual and I can live with that.

Until it's your capital city that can't

[Amesjustin]

My scenario uses a number of things to control this. First off I doubled the food that citizens eat. Workers require 2 pop to build, settlers 4.

To make some areas still able to have a booming population, Desert and Tundra terrains irrigate for a +1 food bonus, plains +2, and grassland +3. I made Coastal and Sea tiles have 2 food to represent the reality that coastal cities have a higher chance of thriving. Desert, Tundra, hills, and mountains have 0 food - plains, jungle, and forest 1 - Grassland 2.

I also have 84 resources - some of which are heavily food laden.

All of this slows the land grab considerably. Some civs will never grow at all until the industrial ages. This only makes the game fun if :
1. You are playing with at least 6 other Civs.
2. You are not one of the unlucky ones.

[The Mad Monk]

How about slowing down border growth due to culture? I've never seen the AI build a city within it's cultural borders, even when there's more than adequate space and prime real estate.

I've tried slowing border growth, and it does seem to make for more tightly-packed AI civs.

[Optimizer]

Slowing down border growth works fine for my AI civs. I've removed culture production from Colosseums and scientific buildings, and added Newspapers and Media stations which only produce culture and resist propaganda.

Another method is raising the cost of terrain improvements, especially irrigation, and also raising the food bonus of irrigation. This encourages you to develop the cities you have instead of expanding.

[Clay]

Rather than removing culture generated by structures why not increase the amount of culture needed to expand the borders? This way you don't have to go through and modify all the buildings that produce culture.