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Pretty much what it says - I'm about 90 turns in to a game and none of the AI majors have expanded beyond their first city. One of them has acquired a second city by conquering an AI minor, but the rest of them are still sitting at one. They all control vast amounts of territory, and they've built some rural assets scattered around, but no new cities.

The AI doesn't build new cities or zones.

The AI is in serious need of an overhaul in this game. It's barely alpha grade. There is _so much_ that it can't/doesn't do.

With how quickly mines run dry at the moment... I'm not sure I can blame them? I keep finding myself expanding to control as much land as I can even if it's barren. Mountains and water features are always nice for access to infinite water but is there a reason to build more cities? The only reason I have ever found was to build additional research buildings after maxing out my main city. I have never even been close to filling all the tiles around my main city with farms and solar panels.

ORIGINAL: stm.vol

With how quickly mines run dry at the moment... I'm not sure I can blame them? I keep finding myself expanding to control as much land as I can even if it's barren. Mountains and water features are always nice for access to infinite water but is there a reason to build more cities? The only reason I have ever found was to build additional research buildings after maxing out my main city. I have never even been close to filling all the tiles around my main city with farms and solar panels.

Players have an administrative penalty outside of 6 hexes from the city itself.

ORIGINAL: Atomikkrab

ORIGINAL: stm.vol

With how quickly mines run dry at the moment... I'm not sure I can blame them? I keep finding myself expanding to control as much land as I can even if it's barren. Mountains and water features are always nice for access to infinite water but is there a reason to build more cities? The only reason I have ever found was to build additional research buildings after maxing out my main city. I have never even been close to filling all the tiles around my main city with farms and solar panels.

Players have an administrative penalty outside of 6 hexes from the city itself.

Also more cities means more slots for artifact buildings, more space for industry and heavy industry, higher population growth which means more recruits, as well as redundancy so your faction isn't eliminated from the game if an enemy manages to seize your capitol.

I honestly assumed the AI not building cities had to be a bug and am a bit surprised that is isn't, hopefully that's a planned feature in a future update.

ORIGINAL: coyotebongwater

Also more cities means more slots for artifact buildings, more space for industry and heavy industry, higher population growth

Does it mean more population growth? I think the population growth is some fraction of your population, and since creation of cities doesn't create more population it doesn't really affect population growth. And since higher level buildings are more efficient you are generally better off having a bigger city to support higher level industry anyway.

I build cities in areas far away from other cities or where assets are far away from cities. I'm not at a point where I can recommend this as a strategy, it's just something I'm playing around with. The additional cities can house assets that help your logistics and industry such as creating more logistics points, mining from soil demineralization plants, and production from industry-type assets and energy assets. The extra cities do seem to thin out the available population a bit, requiring bringing in colonists.

Given that part of the victory conditions are relative population values, it seems odd that major regimes would not build cities.

Likely another reason for the player always winning the game.

Yeah, the reason I posted this in Tech Support and assumed it had to be a bug is that it results in some ridiculously lopsided numbers, especially in the late game.

Attaching a screenshot. I've got a couple games with this issue but picked a screen of this particular game because there's a roughly equivalent AI faction I can compare myself to. The AI major in second place on this victory screen has, like me, conquered one AI major and one AI minor. They control nearly as much territory as I do, and, since much of my land is heavily mountainous, almost exactly the same amount of usable territory as I do. They have less than one quarter of my population. It's completely absurd.

They also do not expand zones, so two of their three zones are two-hex enclaves surrounded completely by their main mega-zone.

Given how 'idiosyncratic' the AI's decision making on building new infrastructure is, I wouldn't be to keen on it building new cities. Cities can't be easily destroyed.

As mentioned above, the AI doesn't use the same administrative strain or logistic rules we do, so it doesn't have the same reasons to build cities.

Ideally the AI play style would mimic more that of humans. More logical as well as aesthetical Zones and some new Cities when a Zone gets to large. Its on my to-do list.