Need slaves?

[Purple]

Have you noticed that when you have a free space somewhere on the edge of "your" continent an AI ship will come and deposit a settler and an accompanying military unit in the area?

It's pretty easy to knock off the spearman (or whatever) and capture the two workers generated by the settler.

This will happen over and over again, sometimes with different civs, sometimes the same one. It's a great source of slave labor, which you can use to prepare the terrain for your eventual settlement.

The only thing you need to worry about is declaring war on a friendly civ. However, you can block the coast with spare units until the friendly ship goes away.

[albiedamned]

Have you installed the latest patch? What you say is definitely a good tip, but starting I believe with the first patch that came out, they modified the AI to not be so gung ho about founding cities in every unclaimed tile. It's much better this way, I think.

[Nakar Gabab]

They still do it. The trick is to raze another civ's city that's near a resource. The AI seems desperate to put a city in the same location - doesn't matter if it's the same civ, necessarily. I had a german settler/longbowman team sneaking through my territory towards saltpeter on a tiny peninsula the Russians had once occupied. When I plopped a defender onto the exact spot where the city had been, they turned around. So a little selective pruning could do the trick.

[Purple]

Playing ver. 1.21f.

I first noticed this behavior several games ago after the initial landgrab had run its course and I was ousting a minor civ from "my" continent.

After razing ill-placed AI cities, I was waiting for my new settlers to arrive on the scene, but transports from several different civs beat me to the area, one at a time, over the course of several game turns. Since I had quite a few cavalry in the region, it was easy to knock off the newcomers. The AI just couldn't seem to learn that this was going to fail, and they kept trying.

I don't remember whether there were resources involved. I wouldn't be surprised, as they do seem to key on them.

[candybo]

I would like it if the AI settlers weren't so gung-ho about settling tundra, with or without resources. Tundra cities suck, and that is the point of colonies, isn't it?