sth against AI's annoying city founding everwhere

[Willem]

Originally posted by Manstein3
One last problem for my game 'vision': how to increase food production in late Middle Ages and, most important, at industrialization/sanitation.
Is the second level of irrigation (forgot the name) of civII still there?
If not, maybe I have to link irrigation to sanitation (the idea I do not like to leave out irrigation most of the game) or get in another food resource to allow more terrain cultivation in later game stage.
Or is there a invention/city improvement which allows even more food output

The only option as I see it is through building Railroads. There's a flag for increasing food in coastal/ocean squares, (Harbour) but none for land squares. Personally I like the idea of Civ II's Supermarket improvement better, without the need for further irrigation.

[Manstein3]

The following is by Dreifels. He wrote it in the creation forum:
"The other point disturbing me a lot is, that the AI always one activity has extensive, no more strategic calculation (more stupid than in CIv2 or SMAC, wondering what the programmers had learned within the past years): setteling everywhere, independent what place.
This slows the game and makes it unnecessary difficult to play on a huge map, if the AI settles in North Ice Sea and in Tundra and on Sahara and so on. From my viw the fun is reduced if I play against an AI that only can settle and settle and settle.

So I changed the costs for building a settler and changed the food and resources you get on Desert and Tundra. To balance it I add the ability to irrigate a hill, reduced food and removed Fish in "Coast", but set it more to "Sea".

Horses and Game now give food and shield and commerce, as they had been the important resources on land in history (Leather, bones, meat). But on map they only are there, where they had been 5000 years ago. And there they have so much, that the AI is able to trade it. If there is one horse only, it never will be used for trading, it's not a surplus then.

Don't set fish only 1 field far from land in "Coast", the AI then builds a lot of stupid cities. Check the map that fish is 2 fields far from a possible building place. Means, a city can use it not before it has build an cultural improvement to expand its cultural distance from 1 to 2 fields. And in reality, the most fish is in sea and far from a coast, not nearby. You never get so much fish in an inland sea or at coast like in the offshore sea or the ocean.

Set lot of Game in forest or on hills, as the requirement for a citizen now is 3 food, and Gems and forest had been much more in history than today. (i.e. Spain: In history that all was forest, the todays situation of dry land without big forest is the result of extensive forest cutting to build the Armada in 13 - 15 Century. Same for England. Or West Europe. (Similar with the problem of today's firework in the Amazonas Jungle) So on this map *much more* forest and Game must be than it is today!

Remember that the original resources for us humans had been Fish and Game (Fish until today a main food resource for us is). All other (cattle, wheat had distributed later with the industrialisation and science as a main resource for food.
So on a map which should be similar to such starting conditions as they had been 5000 years ago, there hasn't to be a lot of wheat, but in some reagons lot of cattle (Bisons).

I carefully set always ocean where it was possible 3 fields far from land. So the land borders now are
coast = 1 + Sea = 1, up from 3 = Ocean. This stops the AI to travel over the ocean between Africa and South America.

The result of these new settings will be, that the AI no longer makes so much worthless cities allover the coast and not in the Sahara and not in the iceland tundra.
All is slown until Government is minimum changed to Kingdom and the food production is increased. The AI now will take more efficient city places and over all create not so much settlers for stupid places."

[Manstein3]

One option to increase food production in industrial era, and before that, in Middle Ages, is to use special resources which are invisible but there. So you can place it on every green/plains field and make it available when industrialization or feudalism is invented. The map is not overcrowded with special resources then, but you have your progress in using certain land areas which ancient civs could not settle.
a mod resources.pcx file with 24 or more resources is available in the creation forum.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Manstein3
One option to increase food production in industrial era, and before that, in Middle Ages, is to use special resources which are invisible but there. So you can place it on every green/plains field and make it available when industrialization or feudalism is invented. The map is not overcrowded with special resources then, but you have your progress in using certain land areas which ancient civs could not settle.
a mod resources.pcx file with 24 or more resources is available in the creation forum.

Interesting idea, I'll have to keep it mind. I'm trying to raise my food requirements to three, and rasing my irrigation bonuses for Grassland etc. It's going to mean a huge difference between Despot and Monarchy. A normal grassland city won't grow past 2 until the tile restrictions are lifted, 3 with a Cattle/Wheat bonus. And it will be impossible for the AI to build in the desert. It will slow things right down until Monarchy. I had to drop the population cost of the Settler though.

[Captain]

very interesting ideas!

Is there any way to create a "supermarket"-like city improvement that would boost food production?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Captain
very interesting ideas!

Is there any way to create a "supermarket"-like city improvement that would boost food production?

The only option for making more food is in Coastal/Ocean squares, the same thing the Harbour does.

[Captain]

oh...
well that kindof sucks.
hope they patch it soon so that you can have the supermarket.
seems like the left a lot out of the editor anyways so with all the changes they'll probably make for the new editor, this shouldn't be hard to implement.

here's to seeing the supermarket again (and not all those ugly railroads everywhere)
cheers!

[Willem]

Originally posted by Captain
oh...
well that kindof sucks.
hope they patch it soon so that you can have the supermarket.
seems like the left a lot out of the editor anyways so with all the changes they'll probably make for the new editor, this shouldn't be hard to implement.

here's to seeing the supermarket again (and not all those ugly railroads everywhere)
cheers!

I prefer the supermarket idea myself, rather than the railroads. It doesn't make much strategic sense either. If I have to have railroads all over the place, as soon as an enemy unit gets on my network, he can go anywhere he wants to. However if I use them just to connect my citites, I can at least have a unit fortified right on top of a line, and so stop them from moving around my territory. I don't think they thought that one through enough.

[Manstein3]

does not the enemy in my land have fewer moving points, in railway too?

Another argument against railway is that you can build them everywhere..
so you have to calculate precisely to prevent cities on top of the Kilimanjaro, so to speak...

[Willem]

Originally posted by Manstein3
does not the enemy in my land have fewer moving points, in railway too?

Another argument against railway is that you can build them everywhere..
so you have to calculate precisely to prevent cities on top of the Kilimanjaro, so to speak...

Well you could be right, I haven't reached that point yet. I keep coming up with some new ideas to try with the Editor and having to start over. I've been playing this game for weeks, and I still haven't made it past the Middle Ages. It sure would be nice to have a cheat mode so I could test these things, rather than having to start from scratch everytime!

[Syzyon]

BlueO, I have tried changing the rules along the lines you have done yourself. It makes for an interesting and different game, but the same problem is kind of still there. The AI still doesn't understand that it can't place cities anywhere. So it still sends settlers into the desert and founds cities there, which obiviously starves to death at once. Leaving a trail of defensive units from the site trying to make sense of their situation. This makes the AI waste lots and lots of settlers trying to found cities in exactly the same places and drains them of resources. It seems we need a new hardcoding of the AI's expansion.

[BlueO]

Hmm, yeah, I noticed the ai will put sucide cities in the same spot over and over. But only from the single city AIs that can't expand beyond its first city.

For the AIs that have many cities, they seem smarter in placing cities. They still put settlers in suicide spots, but they won't necesseary choose the same spot over and over.

When the ai is big enough, it'll slow down its expansion strategy, so I don't think the changes will affect the large ai that badly.