22-03-2000 08:00									#1
	Desperately Seeking ... Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Everyone:

... help on how to prevent AI nations from building cities too close to each other. This happens quite a bit during later stages of the game; for example, the Zulus will build City ABC then, ten turns later, establish City XYZ three squares away.

It angers me because the city radius come right up to the actual city square of the neighboring city. And it looks aesthetically odd.

Is there anyway to prevent — or reduce — this from happening? Or is it hardcoded into the program and we're simply stuck with the end result?

CYBERAmazon

(P.S. Right now, I have to always activate the "cheat" menu, put a barbarian unit in the offending city, then destroy said city.)

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Resistance is futile. Lower your shields and disable your weapons. You will be assimilated into the Borg Collective.

	22-03-2000 08:16									#2
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

I don't know. What I do want to know, however, is why it matters? Let the other AI civs mess up their cities; I don't see why you care.



[This message has been edited by adaMada (edited March 21, 2000).]

	22-03-2000 09:51									#3
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AdaMada:

I care because I happen to be a Civ II fanatic who enjoys his games. Coincidentally, I seek the strongest challenge the AI can offer and despise seeing it shoot itself in the foot.

CYBERAmazon

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Resistance is futile. Lower your shields and disable your weapons. You will be assimilated into the Borg Collective.

	22-03-2000 14:19									#4
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

The ai will always try to overlap it's outer perimeter if terrain allows.So you could try playing rugged maps since the ai won't build on hills or mountains and will irrigate forests first.This would probably make the ai even less competitive though.

	22-03-2000 17:50									#5
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Are they ever, ultimately, going to be competitive anyway?

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finbar
Mono Rules!
#33984591

	23-03-2000 01:54									#6
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Smash:

**sigh** I suppose I'll just have to be satisfied with spotting the offending cities and destroying them as quickly as possible.

In regards to terrain which the AI builds on, I've seen cities set on forest terrain ... never hills, mountains or desert, though. Not even oasis squares.

Thanks for replying, Smash.

CYBERAmazon

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Finbar:

Hmm ... yes, the AI can be competitive. It acts strange, though, when it has the upper hand. Recently, I was playing the Amazons and Russia had massed its forces on my borders across southern Europe. I paid them nearly 1000 in gold for a cease-fire, which they promptly broke by nuking my capitol, Themiscyra.

Then they proceeded to hammer Sparta and Delphi into defenselessness with bombers and armor. But they never took my wide-open cities! I'm like, but didn't complain **L**.

Suffice to say, the game ended with the Amazons and Zulus — in alliance with each other — controlling the entire planet. And Moscow was nothing more than another city in my continent-spanning empire.

So, yes, the AI can be a good foe. Albeit a weird one.

CYBERAmazon

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Resistance is futile. Lower your shields and disable your weapons. You will be assimilated into the Borg Collective.

	23-03-2000 03:46									#7
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Mmm. Not taking the cities, as you cite, is pretty much evidence of the AI's limitations in my book. They're also, I've found, incapable of strategic battle - they don't fortify units in choke points to control key areas, they continually hurl underpowered units in kamikaze attacks against vastly superior defences, and so on. In short, the computer AI lacks what it can't, obviously, have - imagination.

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finbar
Mono Rules!
#33984591

	24-03-2000 15:50									#8
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

>They're also, I've found, incapable of strategic battle - they don't fortify units in choke points to control key areas, they continually hurl underpowered units in kamikaze attacks against vastly superior defences, and so on.

Which nicely balances the big
"Kill him, he is organic!" - factor of the computer AI. Of course I would prefer to see better AI and better diplomacy.