[1.0 Bug] Epic AI failure: Queen Procipinee still has 0 settlements by season 256!

Got to admit that the game was easy

I have same thing happening in my game
Medium map, 4 opponents - other three all have settlements but Procipinee standing around with initial units 2 steps away from basic 3/3/0 settlable tile and 3 moves from a large amount of choice tiles

Had the same thing happen with Gilden in my game. After I took the time to conquer the world (could have won in every other way about 100 turns earlier), I didn't get a victory screen. I thought it was a bug until I explored a corner of the map, where gilden happened to be just hanging out.

Had same with both custom and vanilla factions. It appears that they just never bothered to settle, and instead their AI is completely non-functional, only in specific games.

I wonder if the AI only settles if it has a spot that meets its AI defined requirements for a settleable spot for its initial settlement.

If this is the case, there should be an additional caviet: If the AI has not settled by turn 10, total priority is for the AI to find the closest location and settle.

That or make a requirement for map generation that the starting point must always match the AI requirement

Is it possible that in some of the games the AI could have settled but monsters or ruffians destroyed their settlement but the sovereign and their army was still alive?

AFAIK, and from my own observation, the AI sovereign regains the ability to settle when they have lost their last city. Also, I have seen with my own eyes an AI faction, with no cities due to a critter rampage, use a sole surviving Pioneer to create not a city, but an outpost, before finally settling a spot far away with their sovereign many turns later.

I can confirm that a Sovereign without cities can always settle a "first" city.

I can also confirm that I encountered a Vanilla Faction (Gilden) sitting in the corner of the map without any settlable spots due to the Win-the-game-quest-location blocking all tiles. I do not know why Gilden didn't move away from there..

Erm, this is a pretty damning bug, I must say. I haven't purchased LH yet (kind of on the fence), so you can count me out until this gets resolved.

I don't know what part, if any, difficulty levels play in this, my observations are all from Normal/Challenging modes. I only play with custom AIs, and watched the beginnings of a lot games with the map revealed during beta. They always eventually settle, but I have seen them take several turns to finally pick a spot. Sometimes they will just sit for a turn or two, I guess chugging down a last shot of courage or something. Other times they'll beeline a goodie hut before settling, while ignoring others. This can happen even if you move them to an optimal tile before their first turn.

I have not experienced this as of yet. What difficulty level are you playing, I always play on challenging or hard and have never seen this.

Same as you

I have seen this but its been a while.  However I noticed that whenever you look at AI starting cities they almost invariably have really high stats and got to thinking that if the areas surrounding where they start don't have a spot that meets some min req they won't settle and then get stuck because they can't follow their predetermined script order for settling.

I think this must be what happened to me in a ridiculous game the other day in version 1.0. After 250 turns Altar had not been encountered by any AIs and had not been declared defeated either. I couldn't find their sovereign anywhere though. I've never seen it happen before or since.

Well, I bought the game and have now encountered this exact issue. Yithril hasn't settled a single city, and judging by the faction power of two other forces on the map, I'd say they haven't settled their first city, either.

I hope this gets addressed soon.

judging by the save game the threadstarter provided, i think in this case the proximity to the wildland may have been the problem. i don't know how AI evaluates settling spots, but there may be some function that tells them to not settle too close to a wildland. maybe also with a condition -if faction power is below a certain score, don't settle in dangerous zones [next to wildland, within X tiles of a strong/dangerous lair etc].

i've noticed similar behavior with AI before. sometimes there are nice spots guarded by strong or dangerous lairs. AI won't settle them while they can't handle the guardians. if you remove the lair, they'll happily settle the spot within a few turns. don't know if all AI act like that - could also be related to AI modifiers/personalities (and probably also AI difficulty - on higher settings they tend to expand more aggressively in my experience)

I have not seen this. Are we all sure this is a non-settlement issue in every case? The AI does get its cities wiped by monsters, forcing sovereigns to wander and then re-settle.