What do you do when you end up with bad surrounding land?

spindaslayer

Chieftain
Joined
Jun 19, 2016
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The game seems pretty good about making sure that your capital location is good, but every now and then you end up with immediately surrounding land of plains and tundra. My first instinct when I realize this is to beeline bronze working/animal husbandry, hook up copper/horses and take out a neighbor, even if they're a little far. I figure that the increased maintenance from distance is worth it for getting access to some better land, and I can settle the near land later when my economy is in a better state. (Some people advocate for regenerating the map, but that seems like cheating to me :p)

But sometimes this doesn't work. Sometimes you don't have strategic resources nearby. Sometimes your civilization doesn't start with the right techs to make a rush viable, and maybe your leader is very bad at recovering from economy crashes (looking at you, Tokugawa). Perhaps the nearest civ really is too far away for a rush to make sense, or maybe it's someone like Hammurabi/Sitting Bull/Mansa who are all really hard to take out early.

What do you guys do in such a situation? Do you suck it up and settle the land anyway, or are there other options I'm not considering? Perhaps building wonders to get a lead could be an option here if you don't focus on expansion.
 
Your first instinct of taking your neighbours' land is pretty good!

No strategic resources can be a hindrance, especially if - like Iron - you are already very committed to a certain strategy before you can discover the lack of the resource. But generally you will be able to use at least one of the following: Horse Archers / Axes + Catapults / Elephants + Catapults / Crossbows + Trebs. That's already some very strong options any leader can use.

You are right that if the AIs are too far away for a viable rush you need other options. Some wonders are really strong here:

Pyramids only needs some good food tiles to produce commerce, without caring much for the surrounding land (Representation specialists, maybe also with settled specialists).

Great Lighthouse can give you a lot of commerce on its own and needs almost no strong tiles (except hammers to build it).

Oracle can give you a great medium-term research boost which you can use to expand your empire.

The Great Library + National Epic combo allows you to bulb your way to something like Liberalism or Engineering even if your basic commerce is pretty bad.

For more information on the various ways to get commerce besides cottages I recommend the very exhaustive guide by Seraiel:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=548667
 
What do you do when you end up with bad surrounding land?
On Immortal and below in a worse case scenario like no strategics you can get by just fine with Archers and Catapults.

I made a big stink about this many many years ago in regards to Map Balance. It's always been my opinion that preset maps/map pool would be much better (like in Starcraft). This is especially true in MP games (which I do not play due to map imbalance). Take 2 people of identical skill and the person who has 1 gold, double wet corn, and a plains hill bronze will absolutely destroy someone who starts with nothing more than a plains hill cow. Oddly enough the overwhelming majority of people on this forum feel differently (in regards to a set map pool).
Some people advocate for regenerating the map, but that seems like cheating to me
This would actually be my first choice. It's my opinion that ANY start (yes, even the worst one you can find) on Immortal and below is winnable. Having said that I won't even play poor starts on Settler or Warlord. If I'm going to put in a lot of hours into a game I typically prefer a better start so I can achieve my desired victory condition in the quickest time possible. At least the potential for it. After all, every game plays out differently which is where I find the real fun of it all.

To make sure you don't cheat I'd suggest playing with Locked Modified Assets. Strong maps and Weak maps have no relevance on cheating, correct play, good micro, sound strategy, proper fundamentals and game mechanics, etc, etc.

Ironically, the better the start the more visible a skill gap becomes.
 
I made a big stink about this many many years ago in regards to Map Balance. It's always been my opinion that preset maps/map pool would be much better (like in Starcraft). This is especially true in MP games (which I do not play due to map imbalance). Take 2 people of identical skill and the person who has 1 gold, double wet corn, and a plains hill bronze will absolutely destroy someone who starts with nothing more than a plains hill cow. Oddly enough the overwhelming majority of people on this forum feel differently (in regards to a set map pool).

If you're playing with strangers and the only satisfaction you get out of playing is winning then I understand why you think this way and I would agree 100%.

We MP with the same group of people and after playing awhile it's quite obvious who the better players are and who the weaker players are. If we played equal 'set' maps, the same people would always win and the weaker players would get frustrated and stop playing. This way a weaker player can get better land and actually win every now and then. (rarely but it does happen) The hope that they can win keeps them coming back. And playing with a group of trusted friends is worth the downside of occasionally losing due to really crappy land. And in the end, it really doesn't influence how good of a player your friends consider you.
 
If we played equal 'set' maps, the same people would always win and the weaker players would get frustrated and stop playing.
Imo this would only happen with a poorly structured MP platform. You'll see I have lot's of bias towards SC ^^ (my favorite game of all time). All you need are two game types. 1st, an open or practice game type where anyone can play each other and even then the host has the option to check out the stats of their would be opponent and could ask them to leave, or ban appropriately.

2nd, a League based game type based on prior games and skill level. SC uses Bronze > Silver > Gold > Platinum > Diamond > Master > and Grand Master (top 1%). Most games I play are strictly MP. Actually, I normally stay away from single player or campaign games as a whole. Goes to show you how good Civilization is in my eyes.
Perhaps the nearest civ really is too far away for a rush to make sense,
If the land between your 1st target and yourself is too bad to comfortable settle then focus on fewer cities and vertical growth and make a move when you're in a stronger position.
 
If you're playing with strangers and the only satisfaction you get out of playing is winning then I understand why you think this way and I would agree 100%.

We MP with the same group of people and after playing awhile it's quite obvious who the better players are and who the weaker players are. If we played equal 'set' maps, the same people would always win and the weaker players would get frustrated and stop playing. This way a weaker player can get better land and actually win every now and then. (rarely but it does happen) The hope that they can win keeps them coming back. And playing with a group of trusted friends is worth the downside of occasionally losing due to really crappy land. And in the end, it really doesn't influence how good of a player your friends consider you.

Agreed! Having a random aspect in a game helps the weaker players come back to the game more often (and the better players to stay on the top of their game even against weak opponents). Board games are designed with that in mind, but also more serious games like backgammon, trading card games, poker, and others... Heck, Civ4 is full of random elements, starting with the combat system.
Some rare games try to avoid luck-factor as much as possible (chess for example), but this results in much more predictable outcomes.
 
Yeah, one of our dear friends (rip) was really awful at the game despite any attempts on our part to mentor him. But he really enjoyed it when we all got together to play. The few times he actually won were some of his most enjoyable moments. To us that was more important.

But having said that, I respect league players and their skills. We just played it as more of as a thing to do while we drank and enjoyed each others company. And the better players usually knew if they had won due to better strat or better land. (at least most of the time)
 
My best advice to you (hopefully others will agree with me), would be to post a one city challenge game (OCC) over in the strategy and tips side of the forum and let other people play along with you. Learn to focus on leveraging a single city to a win. Then you should develop the skills to leverage bad land around your capitol city.
 
On Immortal and below in a worse case scenario like no strategics you can get by just fine with Archers and Catapults.

I made a big stink about this many many years ago in regards to Map Balance. It's always been my opinion that preset maps/map pool would be much better (like in Starcraft). This is especially true in MP games (which I do not play due to map imbalance). Take 2 people of identical skill and the person who has 1 gold, double wet corn, and a plains hill bronze will absolutely destroy someone who starts with nothing more than a plains hill cow. Oddly enough the overwhelming majority of people on this forum feel differently (in regards to a set map pool).

As rah said MP with the same group of people is a whole different experience of the game (and the most fun addictive if yop ask me). Being able to talk and discuss, rant, etc, about past , or current, games is beautiful.
My last MP game I started with horses 12 tiles away, copper 15 tiles, iron 11 tiles (researched be 1000 BC while being under ancient siege in the hands of my evil neighbour pal Mansa -Skirmishers-). To make a long story short, I had no luck whatsoever in this game, and finally retired by 1AD.
After everything ended I realized It was my first retirement in aprox 40 MP games with these guys, and never before with such awful luck.
RNG is one of the things that makes cIV so good IMO. It gets to take out your most deep thought and interesting/innovative ideas upon the course of so much varied game-sets. I never ever regenerate map.

This is why Spindas, feel free to go for the boldest strat you can manage to think. In 4 it might just work fine (if the level of difficulty suits your gaming experience, of course). Taking the neighbour is quite fine, as stated, getting to build up some few but powerfull cities for the time being is also clever (much buildings, wonders, NW, etc). Some civs will clearly do better under these conditions you describe: financial near coasts, industrious, starts with misticism for an early religion if you can get it, philosofical, extra happiness and health yields with UB, to name a few.
My advice would be you concentrate , if food is good enough, to get two good but one supergood city out of the capital´s "better" land for a start.
Feel free to try us out for more tips and enjoy.
 
In civ6, this problem will be reduced significantly by the "unstacking the cities" feature.
You can now put a district or wonder on a crappy tile.
Civ4 had way too many useless tiles and it only got worse with global warming. I miss the terraforming option ftom older civ versions.
 
on my way from noble to prince i ended a bad random game: random map, basic resources, random leader, etc.

justinian pretty good! =) nice coast start, 3 clams+ 1fish+ 3hills later 2 horses but i ended with 4 "cities" and i use the "" because they have no resources 60% of their land was tundra, and my 4th city have iron and copper but was unable to produce like...from 21 tiles i ended 4 water tiles+lh 2 mines of course and 1 grassland farm
my second city was the best of the bunch... 1 farm+3cotagges+ extra 1fish (whiping like mad)

my second was a coast city aswell and have only 2 tundra horses meh.... and a share clam from my capital....
the rest of the land was raw tundra+ice and a iron on a coast far far away, no resources, no nothing, i endind using hederiraty rule for the happines...

gonna try find if i save to upload a pic
spoilers: i rage quit
 
We MP with the same group of people and after playing awhile it's quite obvious who the better players are and who the weaker players are. If we played equal 'set' maps, the same people would always win and the weaker players would get frustrated and stop playing.

Skill/play ability is transient, and when you add more people than 2 you get diplo aspects too.

I've never liked the line of thinking about "better player" being constructed in people's minds as if it's some immutable truth. People aren't better than other people "because they're just better". If players

1) play a game a long time
2) get frustrated from losing often and
3) don't improve in skill significantly

There is a problem with their rationality, and it's not something a game group (or other activity groups) should make concessions to enable.

Basically, perpetual intermediacy is ok. You can't become an expert in every task/hobby/ability. I have no problem in theory with a player who has 1500 hours in a game but isn't very, very good at it. The person plays the game and enjoys it. That's a good thing.

I do have a problem when this person wants to adjust the play environment in a group of people (or expects the game to do so) so he has a chance to win, to the detriment of the players who have chosen against perpetual intermediacy.

In essence, how different is letting someone win on freebie resource spawn different from simply declaring them the winner at random on occasion, or giving them an "I win" button they can use once every 10 games? Either way, they're winning and it's not happening because of their choices in the game, so there is no reason to prefer one method of "winning" to another if victory is not determined by player execution and choices.
 
Well, in the game I roughly described above my pal rival "evicted" me from the game because:

A - He had chosen Mali and counted with the good old Skirms regardless of resource
B - He started 10 tiles away from me (Brennus) and decided to attack about 2800 BC
C - He had a tremendous luck (details apart)

Part of these he got because of his own decisions, after playing for 10 years he got substancially better at the game (try&error maybe, but not your´s perpetual intermediacy this guy).
I even expanded under full siege, only to be attacked by a third party who actually and eventually defeated me. Still I had a good chance to migrate to some far away isolated subcontinent, but could´t pull it off. What a comeback it would have been. as Mansa ended up in pretty bad shape and will probably have a very hard time recovering under so many frightening neighbours.

So, this is what I advocate, nice unbalance (RNG as it is presented in many aspects of the game) within good Gauss distribution is the best design.
 
In essence, how different is letting someone win on freebie resource spawn different from simply declaring them the winner at random on occasion, or giving them an "I win" button they can use once every 10 games? Either way, they're winning and it's not happening because of their choices in the game, so there is no reason to prefer one method of "winning" to another if victory is not determined by player execution and choices.

Pride. Even with better land you still have to do some things right. It's just that the margin for error is a lot greater and you're still going to need the rng on other things too. The guy will think he played a good game (even if it was just good for him) Let them embrace the illusion. Especially if they're a friend.
 
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