01-04-2002 23:47									#1
	ToT No-limits Question and another 'Dumb AI story' Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

I'm in the middle of a ToT game (Original - Gigamap - 7Civs - Raging - Emperor). A few oddities have cropped up - I've attached a .zip with 3 saves if anyone wants to look.

First off, in 1650 I completed the UN Wonder (this might give you a hint as to why I don't play Deity on ToT a lot ) . As is my wont, I check on the locations of the other civs (using the 'Find City' command) when I get UN, along with their tech level and number of cities.

Lots of fun surprises at that point as usual (the Vikings have 40 cities in 1650! I love Gigamaps ). However, for a 120 x 250 map, the Civs are all pretty close together. The Japanese, Carthaginians, Indians and Celts were all within trireme range. The Vikings are just past the Indians, and only the Egyptians are on the 'other side of the world'.

Now, I know the computer generates start locations based on terrain, but I also thought that the idea was to keep some distance between Civs (thus the polar starts I read about happening on small maps). Why waste all that space and put 6 civs on less than 1/3 of the map area? Is the initial Civ placement based on a minimum number of squares and beyond that number, a Civ can be anywhere? Are start locations situated like that to facilitate trade or interaction? Does anyone know?

Also... for a dumb AI trick, check out the Celt technology level... 20 cities or so and all they know is Alphabet! Seems the barbarians got the Celt capital early on... and they can't build a palace without Masonry... and I guess the oh-so-bright AI decided that without a capital, why do research? So now, there's a 20-city empire in 1650 populated by Warriors and Settlers, no city bigger than size 2. They routinely get beat up by the big bad barbarians, who have 2 big former Celt cities already The good news is, I haven't seen a single Trireme out of them... that's one cheat I was tired of!

Anyway... I was amused!

STYOM

Attachment: dumbai.zip
This has been downloaded 2 time(s).

Last edited by Six Thousand Year Old Man on 01-04-2002 at 23:54

	15-04-2002 19:26									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

STYOM, your question on civ starting location is a good one.
I don't see many ways to learn more but to make some tries.
All that I know is that you have to have a few space between civs at the beginning. But the more unpredictable, the more fun
And I don't know if the gigamaps don't screw some calculation process