So I started up a new game and my capital was on floodplains (3 tiles) plus a rice, plus TWO gold mines.

And then my second city had a cow, a bronze, and ANOTHER gold mine.

So unlike my usual games where I can't keep up in tech to save my life, I'm actually the tech leader in the early game (on Prince). I can't take credit for it, it was all a gimme. This game is a fraud.

Don't feel guilty. Like my dad always told me in regards to poker, it's not the cards you're dealt, it's how you play them that counts.
Besides, on your next start, you'll be stuck in a desert wasteland on a nine-square island!

http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/7717/civ4goldstart6rf.th.jpg (http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4goldstart6rf.jpg)
And no, this is not worldbuilder.

That's no starting location either. The generator never places a desert, desert hill, tundra or ice in your starting location. I don't even think they place mountains. You have two desert hills and a desert there.

And that's not that great of a location. Excellent for commerce sure, but excellent would include at least one food tile, hopefully two to balance out that unhealthiness you'll get from working those flood plains.

podraza,
Enjoy! If you feel real guilty then play your next game on an Archepeligo > Tiny Islands map to atone for your sins :lol:

The generator never places a desert, desert hill, tundra or ice in your starting location. I don't even think they place mountains. You have two desert hills and a desert there.



Sure it does. Try playing on Ice Age, or Arid, or Rocky terrain, start about 200 games and then get back to me.

Use a map script like smart maps and things can get even more varied.

Yep. I reckon you might have been better putting two or three cities round that area to snag just a few of the FP's each. It would take a while to work all those tiles with just the one city, as the health would be a problem.

I wish there were an option to choose between a "random" start, where anything can happen, and sort of a "generic" start. The generic start would come with, say, 1 food resource and 1 hammer and/or 1 commerce, but nothing else. No 5 goldmines and 2 fish.

Because otherwise, I feel too tempted to just regenerate the map. Now I did not regenerate the map to get this particular start, but now that I know such starts exist, what is to stop me from regenerating over and over until I get awesome starting locations every time? I don't want to be a cheater. But how to resist?

Never feel bad. Every time I get my first two cities in awesome locations, I end up not having another decent city location for the rest of the game.

While there shouldn't be any guilt (this IS a game), I usually restart when I get starting spots like the one you describe. If I wanted to PLAY two difficulty levels lower, I would have SELECTED two difficulty levels lower.

why restart when you get a good start, it's luck and only helps.
I enjoy getting good starts, it can give that kick start you need to get an advantage over the AI :)

I couldn't believe this starting location I just got:eek:
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/25/civ4screenshot0000mj9.th.jpg (http://img100.imageshack.us/my.php?image=civ4screenshot0000mj9.jpg)

Never feel bad. Every time I get my first two cities in awesome locations, I end up not having another decent city location for the rest of the game.
Agreed. Almost every time I start a game and automatically rejoice at my starting location, I am staring at the screen several turns later, trying to figure out where to put that second or third city.

My last start had four flood plains, a rice, cows and three hill in the fat cross. 6 tiles to the east was three flood plains, two gold hills, three hills and pigs. Sounds nice, but the surrounding area was all jungle with limited resources. Good start, but slow expansion.:(

When I get those really, really good start locations, I move my settler around so multiple cities can split the resources. Early game you'll be limited to 6-8 pop even at Prince and there's no way to make good use of more than 2 or 3 food resources. In Birdman's case, even with cottaged floodplains you'd need 9 citizens just to work the tiles and the food surplus would support 3 more specialists. If I had 4 gold hills, I'd split those too for similar reasons but that's never happened to me.

You think the AI would feel guilt at having a great location and give YOU a break?

You think the AI would feel guilt at having a great location and give YOU a break?
Good point sir, good point:goodjob:

I've been carrying on another thread about this game over the in the strategy section, but I'll repeat part of it here. There ended up being some fine print in the contract. I get to start with 3 goldmines, but also next door neighbors Alexander and Montezuma.

Its been a much tougher game than I originally anticipated.

I recently had a brilliant start, though not in the sense of most of the above posts. Playing one of my first games on Prince (or Monarch? The difficulty level smack in the middle), I started on a continent with Hatty and Peter. The brilliant part is this - they were cut off from me by a single peak blocking the only land adjoining our sections of the continent. I got unimpeded expansion with no threat of early war, plus the benefit of contact for trade routes, spreading my religion and tech trading. Lovely!

My last start had four flood plains, a rice, cows and three hill in the fat cross. 6 tiles to the east was three flood plains, two gold hills, three hills and pigs. Sounds nice, but the surrounding area was all jungle with limited resources. Good start, but slow expansion.:(
Civ 4 is always slow expansion, unless you get 4 goldmines for your 1st city.
PS newbert, That may be a better start than the rest!

My best start ever was a river on the main city, 6 floodplains, 5 plains/hills, 3 of which had gold (only 2 accessible in city radius), a wheat and a sheep. Needless to say, I found myself researching Civil Service at 1500 BC.

I've been carrying on another thread about this game over the in the strategy section, but I'll repeat part of it here. There ended up being some fine print in the contract. I get to start with 3 goldmines, but also next door neighbors Alexander and Montezuma.

Its been a much tougher game than I originally anticipated.

:) Yeah, whenever I get one of those "too good to be true" starts I'm immediately suspicious--there's always a "catch". I played a recent game where I started next to a river with a flood plain or two, a gold, a cow in the cross . Nearby was another gold or two, stone, marble, and copper. Needless to say I got off to a roaring start. What I didn't know until later was there was no iron and no coal anywhere on that landmass. Oh, and all (! never saw that one before) the coal on the map was owned by Elizabeth--on the far side of the world and thick with Redcoats. It was a long, hard game that I finally took a culture win on.