Territory Lines NOT MAKING SENSE

Ravenloff · October 9, 2003, 11:25

I've been playing AC and ACX for years now, and one thing has ALWAYS bothered the hell out of me.

If I am on the same continent as another player, the terriotory lines start creeping together until they finally meet usually at the outer edge of city grids. However, I've noticed lately that I'm getting this type of scenario.

Santiago and I are rushing for land. I've managed to stay ahead of her and am flanking her with cities and claiming more and more territory. I have a base with population 3 that's been there for at least 10 turns or so. She plops down a city right on her side of the border between us...and suddenly, my city's grid is cut in half, her new city getting a complete grid within her border.

WTF?

I am UNSURPASSED, have more tech, have a larger military. There is no reason I can think of that this should happen.

Any ideas?

Chaos Theory · October 9, 2003, 14:16

I can't think of a reason either. You should stomp on her city to teach her a lesson

Seriously, base locations and terrain (land vs sea, on same continent) alone determine territory. If she dropped a city four tiles from yours, then the territory line would go straight through the middle, except it can't. I don't know what determines who gets the extra tile.

Territory lines can most certainly reduce the number of workable tiles for cities, but if you're that close just probe-rape her and take her cities.

gwillybj · October 9, 2003, 23:42

The newest base is supposed to get the extra tile - ymmv.

Vev · October 10, 2003, 01:58

If it is a friendly land grab war, you can use crawlers to 'claim' use of the land before the city is placed.

Chaos Theory · October 10, 2003, 02:44

Or plant fungus on tiles the enemy has already begun to use, to starve out their cities

Main_Brain · October 10, 2003, 06:46

Or use Formers to Divide the Continent beforehand

Ravenloff · October 10, 2003, 15:34

Thanks for the feedback, however it doesn't really get to the heart of the issue. And, btw, when is the last time you had a "friendly" land grab going with an AI faction?

My point is this...minus the cultural factor included later in both CTPII and Civ3, the stronger faction/city should retain their territorial integrity. It just doesn't make sense that a small city from a weaker faction should be able to arbitrarily move my borders.

Mongoose · October 10, 2003, 17:06

It was intentionally done that way. I read an interview with Brian Reynolds once upon a time. In it, he said (paraphrasing, and subject to memory loss) that changing borders by the placement of new bases...creating new facts on the ground, I believe he called it...was designed to create conflict on the borders. In BR's game view, if you don't like what that does to your base's radius (or the effectiveness of your echelon mirrors, I suppose) you can either grit your teeth and take it or you can seek to create new 'facts on the ground' by seeking to acquire or to destroy the offending rival base through military or diplomatic means. I wish there were a diplomatic demand available...'Dismantle/ Abandon Base X, or else!'

Jamski · October 10, 2003, 18:29

Yeah this has lead to war in a number of MP games I played. People get mad when you start taking "their" land away from them without a fight

-JAm

Lazerus · October 10, 2003, 19:34

or transcend and remove all her cities with the blink of an eye.

Datajack Franit · October 10, 2003, 20:15

Just equip your air units with X-nerve gas pods (atrocity), attack and see things will...change

Chaos Theory · October 11, 2003, 04:15

Isn't there a diplomatic option to demand that an enemy cede a base? I know you can trade bases for bases.

johndmuller · October 11, 2003, 05:14

It is definitely annoying when another faction, particularly a human controlled one, poaches your territory by pushing new bases right up to the border, and sometimes the games notion of how to settle up the odd tiles in the middle is far from 'fair', even given gwillybj's rounding errors to the newbie rule. Trying to figure out exactly where to put bases so that you can equitably divide up a shared continent with a pactmake to create a particular desired boundary can be most challenging.

OTOH, when the poaching shoe is on the other foot, it is kind of fun to lean on someone else's border

. It seems that the longer I play, the more comfortable I am with really close spacing, so it doesn't really bother me if some of my bases are only 2 tiles from another base, and if you're willing to go that close to your neighbor, you have nothing to worry about, they won't be able to push back.

Some of the sneakier subtleties have to do with how your borders cross over waterways sometimes - only if the landmasses are connected somehow - but the game doesn't care if the connection is on the other side of the world, as long as there is a direct land connection, it will propagete the borders over the water, and once your territory has a foothold over there, you can quick drop a base there and you're in business.

Sea boundaries are also a PIA sometimes, as it apparently gives a sea base an extra ring of tiles in their sphere of influence at sea, so that your land base may be prohibited from producing from a sea tile that is just outside the other persons base radius (so that they can't produce from it either), even if it is in your base radius, as the land bases only seem to have sufficient primacy in the sea 1 tile away from the base center.

Terraforming has some funny things going on too, like you can usually plant fungus on someone else's tile without the game objecting, but if you try to raise or lower your terrain and it would affect your land neighbor's, you may have to choose vendetta, but if it would be filling in someone's sea tile (and maybe sinking their ships or seaformers), that doesn't seem to be a problem IIRC.

Too bad the game doesn't allow for specifically negotiated boundaries, although I could see it would be challenging to get the AI to do that.