[Suggestion][AI] Stop the city spam

from Elemental Forums

Playing a huge map with a ton of ai players.  Come up against a huge team (capitar?), and they are city spamming!!  They have one city next to every resource.  even resources that are close enough to each other that I wuold build in the middle and save myself the trouble of building another pioneer.

It seems that the AI doesn't predict (or is noto patient enough) to build cities that will expand their influence by 2nd or 3rd level to include the resources on the map.  I wuoldn't suggest looking forward to lvl 4 or 5 cities to get the influence big enough, but lvl3 and certainly lvl 2 is quick to achieve, and will allow better bonus buildings to help with production.  rather than spamming lvl 1 cities.....

Prime example.  I would have used one city, to lvl 2 or 3 (2 definatley, 3 depending on food), and I would have had the mountain pass blocked, AND had 2 map resources under the cities influence.  1 bigger city is a better line of defense than 2 lvl 1 cities that the AI built.  Especially considering i was able to go around the front city (biulding placement restriction stopped them from building through the pass/toward each other) and take the back city which was less defened.

Besides, isn't there supposed to be a mechanic implemented that means having more cities COSTS more?

5,908 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I too think the AI builds cities too close together. I think the easiest way to fix this is to increase the rate of Z.O.C. spear so we don't need to build cities so close together to grab resources.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

The problem is simple. Huge Empires doesn't increase the costs (see how Civ4 handles that for example). So an AI player who can solve all city/unit tasks in like no time has no problem with that. Humans tend more to build fewer citys that are strong.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

The game's name should be changed to Spam A Lot.

City Spamming, it's not just the AI that spams cities, the gameplay requires it, want to capture a remote resource, spam another city, need a harbor near a shore hex, spam another city, want to limit other player access to a part of the map, spam another city, etc, etc.

Creatures Spam,  creatures over spawn in remote area's in long games.

Resources Spam, they over spawn all over the map, just research and wait for resources to start spamming, weren't resources so pose to be rare?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

This was a big problem for me. I went to war with a kingdom only to find out that they had a cities in cities. These ended up being slums which wouldn't expand because of the proximity to each other. I found that I would capture three cities, and have to raze two of them to make room for the biggest one to grow. This also brings to a point how aggressive the AI is. As soon as your army is the least bit smaller, they want to rip your head off and go bowling with it. This is just silly, because even if I have a weaker army, my sovereign is powerful, and doesn't seem to be factored into the equation - he's well capable of taking out an army by himself, which he did... he captured all their cities alone, because they aren't well defended.

So the AI City spams - gets a power rating thats something absurd for owning ghettos and can't defend any of them because his army sucks. The game ends up looking like Elemental: Urban sprawl surpreme edition once it gets to the late game.

 

When I think of this problem I have to really ask the community here a pressing question. Are we sure the developers aren't from NJ?

 

 

 

 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Flinke, reply 2
The problem is simple. Huge Empires doesn't increase the costs (see how Civ4 handles that for example). So an AI player who can solve all city/unit tasks in like no time has no problem with that. Humans tend more to build fewer citys that are strong.
End of Flinke's quote

This is true, but the cost is largely irrelevant when the only reason you need cities is to snatch up resources off the map and to bring in more resources. Without snatching up the resources on the map cities are only good for troop production in Elemental as by themselves they don't produce much of anything except for a little bit of taxes. It's the rate of Z.O.C. spread that controls how close together you need to build your cities. If the Z.O.C. was larger you wouldn't need as many cities and they would be far more important. It's very fixable without the need to rebalance all the costs. The simpler a fix is the faster the Devs will be to fix it.

In this case as well Z.O.C. spread affects the game's pacing, so balance is an issue.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

The slow ZOC spread does make city spam useful in the current iteration of the game.  ZOC expands on turn 15 (or so), then turn 30 (or so) then it starts taking FOREVER to expand again (upwards of 70 turns).   This is due to the pitiful growth of your cities (and that's not including the reduction in population for building  troops!!).   The first tech to increase population increase is at least 4th on a tree in the civics tech!!  and it only increases it by 1, and it needs lvl 2 city!

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

I don't think it would be that hard to fix.  Just add some sort of maintenance fee per city that increases exponential as cities are founded.  That would stop early game spamming because it would eat up all your money.  The downside is that this creates a limit to the size of your empire.  So to counteract this they could add another function called, for lack of a better word, "legacy".  As cities age there legacy would increase would inversely affect maintenance.  This would encourage a more thoughtful application of founding cities and would help discourage spamming cities.  Or you could just make npcs more aggressively attack weak cities.