City building in MY land

[inca911]

Opportunist AI

Definitely an opportunist AI if you ask me, and I like games where the AI breaks the rules just like the human player! What I find interesting is this:

If you demanded that they leave on Turn #1.
What I have always seen is that on Turn #2 if you ask them to leave you can give them the Leave or War ultimatum.
Did you not have that option? If you did not, how many successive turns would you estimate that you demanded they leave?

[henry296]

Have you tried contacted the spearman and not the Settler? Not sure why it should make a difference, but I think non-combat units like Settlers and Workers it will not give you the option to ask them to withdraw or declare war. Maybe you should talk to the military unit?

Todd

[HunterAssasin]

There should be a rule where if another empire starts walking through your territory you should be able to attack them without war being declared. In my current game where I'm the strongest civ all the other ones still insist on sending settlers/defensive units through my territory no matter how much I tell them to get out, and sometimes it does take like 3 or 4 turns until they have to remove them or they declare war and when that does happen they just send them back in the next turn. I'm assuming if you can start killing all the people they send through your territory they would learn to not send all those settlers through your territory every friggin turn. It's really annoying to have to contact them every turn to demand they remove them and they still send them through your terrritory. Sorry for the rant it's just really annoying.

[Sevorak]

Report it as a bug.

Founding a city in someone else's borders should be war, according to Soren. If that is not the case for the AI, then it is a bug.

-Sev

[blc]

I've never tried this but if you have a worker available build a colony on the iron. This might stop him building the city and Iif he does and steals the colony that would probably force the war.

I get the impression that there are times where the AI tries to force you to declare war. They ignore your requests to leave your territory unless you give them RoP (at which point they do whatever they want) or declare war. Maybe the AI has noticed that this is an extremely bad time for you to start fighting a war and said (like any human player).

AI Thinking...
Hey, he's got 1 iron, in the middle of a war and I'm just as strong as he is. Hmmm what do I do now? Move in, build a city, steal the iron, cause a war and then hit him in the flanks, he'll be toast.

Just my thoughts.

[vmxa1]

Just so you know, I had a colony of long standing, but the English dropped a settler right next to it and built a city and then told me to get my calv unit off their land. I love it. I had taken so many cities from them in the three wars we already. It was coal and I did not really need it.

[blc]

But when they took the colony, no war got declared? I wonder if this is a wierd culture takeover. If the AI manages to get to one not culturally controlled square and builds the on it colony then it shouldn't start a war. Hmmm

[Grim Legacy]

Re: Opportunist AI

Originally posted by inca911
Definitely an opportunist AI if you ask me, and I like games where the AI breaks the rules just like the human player! What I find interesting is this:

If you demanded that they leave on Turn #1.
What I have always seen is that on Turn #2 if you ask them to leave you can give them the Leave or War ultimatum.
Did you not have that option? If you did not, how many successive turns would you estimate that you demanded they leave?

The human player can not break the rules like in this case has happened. After the initial request to leave, the second request is always: "leave or war" -certainly when *you* are tresspassing. You can't keep saying "yeah yeah" and not doing it with impunity. I think he hit a bug of some sort.

[xane]

I've learnt that Colonies are really just a stop-gap method.

After you build a Colony to get the resource in, you need to get a Settler up there ASAP and build a city either on or next to the resource tile. There is simply no other way to prevent the enemy making his way towards it.

A colony is exactly that, you hope to establish something there later ...

[Pizarro]

Don´t know if this tip will give you any help with your current problem but perhaps for future games. I haven´t experienced an AI-civ building a city within my cultural border yet. But they tend to use my territory like a highway to the first free square they encounter and found a city there. When i demand them to leave my territory the just say the will but then they keep on going in my land. To me it seems like this cultural-border thing doesn´t work as well as it should. I solve the problem by constructing my own borders. It works better if you have decided from the beginning where you want your empires borders to be. It is easier if you play on a scenario-map instead of a random one.
Build a lot of defensive units and move them to your borderlands. Place them square to square so there will be no empty space between them, preferrably on good defensive terrain like mountains, hills and forests. Then fortify your units there and you have constructed a border that will be hard to penetrate for the AI:s. I also use to build fortresses in those squares as soon as i have gotten the Constuction-advance. And when i have Engineering i transform any plain or grassland in the square to forest for better defensive value. This strategy works is a good one if you want to play defensively, build up your civ peacefully and dont want AI:units running around on your territory. As you start the game with Despotism and then probably change to Monarchy, you can afford the great number of units. When you change to Rebublic or Democracy hopefully your economy will be strong enough to cope with this. Nevertheless it´s worth the cost. It keep your rivals outside your territory and you can improve it peacefully.

[MarshalN]

Um, Pizarro, that's an expensive solution.

I think if I remember correctly (since that was like two days ago.... I'm not playing that game anymore) I was saying things like "get out or war" but they just called my bluff and since I don't really want a war, there's nothing I can do in that respect. I just think there should be some sort of limit on what you can do within someone's border, and building a city should be one of the things you can't do, not without going to war anyway. Otherwise the AI can just theoretically drop cities all over you!

[rah]

If they fear your military, they will respect your borders. Another cheaper option is building that solid wall of units out of captured workers. I usually have so many, I don't know what to do with all of them. Put a few fast response units in range behind them. Of course try to minimize the size of your border. If they take the bait, it's war. If they don't want war, there's nothing they can do. If they do want war, (it will happen) and the workers are a juicy target that they never ignore and you will get a turn warning of their intent and their units will end up spread out instead of grouped. Easier pickings. Many turns I just hit the spacebar on 20-30 slave workers because I have nothing to do with them. (there is a limit to how much pop-rushing building you want to do)

RAH

[Pizarro]

I know this strategy can be expensive but that depends on how long borders you,ve got. I never build this kind of borders along coastal regions for example and with that in mind inland lakes can serve as natural borders.

MarshalN: I fully understand if you dont play that specific game with the Indians anymore. This was just a suggestion for your or anyone elses future games. I fully agree with you in this cultural territory thing. It really should include hard restrictions for the AI:s (and yourself in their territory). If you tell a AI to withdraw his unit (even settlers and workers) from your territory
he should have no other option than obeying or cause a war. In Civ II trespassing units was relocated to the closest friendly city. In Civ III they just seem to ignore this and continue deeper into your territory, and that pisses me of. Because of that i started with this border-strategy, but yes, of course it can be expensive. It depends mostly on how long borders you´ve got.

rah: Agree partly with this worker thing. When a AI:civ decides to start a war against you he really does. If he concentrates his units he can punch trough your border defense. But with good defensive units in good defensive terrain (and with fortress) it will cost them a lot and give you the opportunity to strike back, perhaps with the neighboring border unit or try negotiations. Workers cant even defend themselves against an attacker and you can soon enough find enemy units outside your cities. With regular units you can at least delay them and probably throw them back on their side of the border.

Finally i have to admit that this border-strategy intends to keep AI-units outside your territory. With strong neighboring AI:s i have sometimes found myself obeying their demands for gold or tech in the beginning of the game in order to avoid war. But in the meantime my civ only gets stronger and in the Industrial era
i most often get the upper hand in negotiations.

[rah]

Originally posted by Pizarro
:
rah: Agree partly with this worker thing. When a AI:civ decides to start a war against you he really does. If he concentrates his units he can punch trough your border defense. But with good defensive units in good defensive terrain (and with fortress) it will cost them a lot and give you the opportunity to strike back, perhaps with the neighboring border unit or try negotiations. Workers cant even defend themselves against an attacker and you can soon enough find enemy units outside your cities. With regular units you can at least delay them and probably throw them back on their side of the border.

The only problem with that is that the AI has a tendency to avoid the tough defensive positions and will just find a weak point and go around. (unless a resource or luxury is involved) The workers strat (which i rarely use because my neighbors are usually scared so sh*tless of my military, that they wouldn't think of pissing me off) just informs me of their intent and buys a turn or two to respond. It does spread them out nice for counter attacks. And even if you lose and just nick them, They'll scurry back to their holes to heal. And it forces them to declare war on me, instead of me declaring war on them for encroaching.

[vmxa1]

blc there is no need to declare war in that case as no borders are violated. By definition a colony is outside of your city, if it is not you would only need a road. So the colony is out in no mans land, no city for any one. They drop a new city next to it, no violation, its borders now emcompass your colony, so your colony is dissolved. If you had a unit on it, that unit is in their borders. If the concept is your are really just a squatters, that is legit. If you where a legal owner of the land, then it would be any other story. If in the land rush days, someone claimed to own the land and you paid them to use it before the goverment annex the territory, you could expect compensation, since we have no one to pay, we are just squatters.