Being able to steal a city for free with a single passing scout if the city has zero population continues to feel like an exploit and not in the spirit of the game. This is especially easy to do against peaceful independent people, but can be done fairly easily against aggressive independent people and even against other players if you use surprise wars in the early game.

There are two solutions to the zero population city stealing problem.

1. Do not allow the AI to upgrade an outpost to a city until it has 1 population (peaceful independent city AI should attack anyone attempting to burn down their outpost though)

2. Force the AI to keep at least one unit/army on top of their outpost/city until it has at least 1 population.

Personally I feel the second fix is by far the better one, but if the first fix is easier to implement then it could work as well, but might lead to some slow starts from the AI.

Agreed.  This does feel like an exploit.  Taking cities versus founding your own saves a ton of influence in the early game, and then this just makes it wayyy too easy.

Although I agree with you that it kind of feels like an exploit, its the only viable way to defeat the AI on humankind difficulty. If you play on humankind difficulty you will understand, the amount of influence the AI generates per turn is ridiculous. They can literally pop up a new outpost every 3-5 turns and a new city every 10 -15 turns on normal speed. They spread like cancer and start to unleash massive legions of troops to bully you with. On humankind difficulty if you fall behind in the first 2 Eras its basically GG, you will never catch back up or even pose a threat to the AI for the rest of the game.

Pachuco wrote:

Although I agree with you that it kind of feels like an exploit, its the only viable way to defeat the AI on humankind difficulty. If you play on humankind difficulty you will understand, the amount of influence the AI generates per turn is ridiculous. They can literally pop up a new outpost every 3-5 turns and a new city every 10 -15 turns on normal speed. They spread like cancer and start to unleash massive legions of troops to bully you with. On humankind difficulty if you fall behind in the first 2 Eras its basically GG, you will never catch back up or even pose a threat to the AI for the rest of the game.

I never had these kind of problems on humankind difficulty, I even did a transcendence run on it and it was fine to be behind until electricity or sometimes power lines even. BTW, what map setting do you use? Your struggle might be related to a small map with many competitors. I usually have an opportunity to settle 2-3 outposts in Neolithic and 1-2 outposts in ancient.

Pachuco wrote:

Although I agree with you that it kind of feels like an exploit, its the only viable way to defeat the AI on humankind difficulty. If you play on humankind difficulty you will understand, the amount of influence the AI generates per turn is ridiculous. They can literally pop up a new outpost every 3-5 turns and a new city every 10 -15 turns on normal speed. They spread like cancer and start to unleash massive legions of troops to bully you with. On humankind difficulty if you fall behind in the first 2 Eras its basically GG, you will never catch back up or even pose a threat to the AI for the rest of the game.

Hard disagree from me as well. I exclusively play on Humankind difficulty and often randomly select which culture to play as each era leading to EXTREMELY suboptimal builds and I can still finish in first place more often than not, exploit or not. I typically play largest map size but with all other setting randomized so I sometimes have a lot of land and sometimes virtually none.

I am ambivalent about this.

But I just want to add a point. I play on huge maps - and you really don't want more cities. I spend most of my time sending my armies around destroying independent redoubts, encampments and if I'm late cities. If I'm one turn late and get to the camp right when it turns into a city, my scouts march in and burn it down next turn. If I couldn't do that, I'd have to send full armies around.