Gold, imbalanced?

I'm not trying to thread jack. This relevent to the gold bit, at least to me.

Spoiler :


Hammy - 8 to 10 tiles North.
Mehmed - 8 to 10 tiles East.
SB
Inca
Izzie - My best friend.
Pericles

Trying for 3 city challenge cultural. Building wonders in 3 cities sorted by GP type. The artist marble wonders are pressing Hammy hard in a city 4 tiles north of my cap.

 
Getting gold, gems and/or lots of floodplains are really lucky starts, but you could be equally unlucky and end up with a jungle-choked peninsula or a tundra wasteland.
 
I'm not trying to thread jack. This relevent to the gold bit, at least to me.

I'm very intrigued by this. So you are saying that a) good starting BFC is an indicator that there are other civs close by, and b) the leader you have influences the choice of AI leaders?

I'd love to know more about both of these things.
 
I'm very intrigued by this. So you are saying that a) good starting BFC is an indicator that there are other civs close by, and b) the leader you have influences the choice of AI leaders?

I'd love to know more about both of these things.


Exactly.

Spoiler :


Budweiser has achieved an 1824 Cultural 3CC Victory. Standard, Emperor, Pangea.

 
The quality of your land at the start has a direct correlation to the distance of enemy AIs. This is scripted and supposed to be fair. You wouldnt want all capitals to be equidistant with the same proportion of starting land available. Look at how close London is to Paris and Amsterdam compared to lets say Moscow to Berlin.

I can almost look at a starting BFC and tell how far away my closest neighbor is.

If you dont feel like putting up with the hassle of one map, just re-roll.

You say it is scripted. I would be very interested to see evidence of this beyond empirical assertions (which are trash). If you can show me any real evidence that start location distance depends on resource quality, I'd be very interested to see it.

Regardless, if the starts were meant to be balanced they failed in epic fashion, but before we even get to that, I have to call out this start distribution weighted against starting tiles...
 
Gold is mathematically better than other resources in the early game, unless you're financial. It produces 3.5 x commerce as much as a riverside cottage and an extra food/hammer. A copper mine produces twice as much yield over a normal mine.

For every gold mine, you can switch 3 riverside cottages to non-riverside mines and gain 7 hammers, thus it can boost your production by up to 8 yield early on. There's a lot of ifs in there, and of course it's not as impressive once you have towns, but the potential leverage is outstanding.
 
Sometimes gold is the only thing that makes games with financially challenged leaders winnable. I play random civs/leaders on fractal and having gold is life-saving when I draw some one like Tokugawa. It's not unbalanced, just more powerful in certain situations.
 
I thought the question was whether gold in the capital BFC is imbalanced, not whether gems are more imbalanced...

I don't like either. Gold/Gems in the capital BFC shoots you way ahead of everyone else. It can easily ruin a good game.

In a PBEM game I'm playing right now, I got a plains hill gold in the capital BFC. Even though the other human leaders were financial, I shot way ahead in tech early on. Combine this with the fact that I'm the more experienced Civ player among us, and this kind of takes some of the fun out of the game (I regret not asking to reroll the map).

If gold/gems just didn't spawn in (human players) capital BFC, I think it would be a lot more balanced.
 
You say it is scripted. I would be very interested to see evidence of this beyond empirical assertions (which are trash). If you can show me any real evidence that start location distance depends on resource quality, I'd be very interested to see it.

Regardless, if the starts were meant to be balanced they failed in epic fashion, but before we even get to that, I have to call out this start distribution weighted against starting tiles...

I did some digging, but I dont have all day. I'd rather play civ.

Sirian may well know the answer. But, it may also be a non-disclosure issue.
 
I did some digging, but I dont have all day. I'd rather play civ.

Sirian may well know the answer. But, it may also be a non-disclosure issue.

I don't think there's too much in IV that's truly a ND issue. People can see how the AI interfaces almost in its entirety...it would seem a little strange to *only* hide start algorithms!
 
I don't think there's too much in IV that's truly a ND issue. People can see how the AI interfaces almost in its entirety...it would seem a little strange to *only* hide start algorithms!

The only thing I found was articles talking about the scripting, but that is just adding variables to the start routines which would be hard coded in the generation program itself. I'm not sure you can access those, they belong to Firaxsis.
 
You say it is scripted. I would be very interested to see evidence of this beyond empirical assertions (which are trash). If you can show me any real evidence that start location distance depends on resource quality, I'd be very interested to see it.

Read the 2007 thread on the startsite procedure -- the guy who did it did some testing and discovered that back then, the evaluation of startsite values (used in step 8 of the procedure) is very sensitive to proximity. This should mean, other things being equal, that sites that are close to others should be rated lower, thus being more likely to trigger step 8 improvement. Of course, whether or not that is still true in 3.19 is not tested. But I think it is likely that proximity is still used in the evaluation; why would they take that out completely?

(You can find that thread via my update http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=359383; it is linked at the top. In particular see post #16.)

Regardless, if the starts were meant to be balanced they failed in epic fashion

Hyperbole. Yes, they didn't get it perfect, but a solution that generates good games 90+% of the time is a far cry from "epic fail".
 
Hyperbole. Yes, they didn't get it perfect, but a solution that generates good games 90+% of the time is a far cry from "epic fail".

No...you're missing the point.

In a lot of cases, close starts are preferable, because they mean 1) not isolated and 2) potential for early rush with a strong start enabling it...while bad starts cause 1) difficulty expanding due to limited commerce with 2) difficulty rushing with long distances and 3) moderate-to-high levels making actually competing for large tracts of land against bonus'd AI virtually impossible, so that you have to concede far more land than you would with a good start that's closer.

In other words, the logic applied here was flawed from the start, and badly, which is indeed an epic failure. A deity map with 4 rivals is a lot harder than one with a crowded map...but you get a harder start with 4 due to "more room"?! That 90% theory is just that...a theory, and one that stands on pillars of the "straw" and "air" variety.

But I'll definitely check out your link...original one is before my time lol :p.
 
I have to agree. When I read what Budweiser posted above, my first thought was "so if I'm isolated, I get a bad BFC too?", which is adding insult to injury to say the least.

Nonetheless I'm fascinated by all this, especially the thought that what leader you pick influences the leaders you face.
 
I checked out the referenced thread. The only incidence of distance factored in to starting BFC consideration was entirely theoretical by one poster, who assumed it to be the only explanation to the differences in start quality...which were and probably are shameful.

It's funny how about 3 years ago somebody identified issues with how civs spawn relative to each other, and yet even today a decent chunk of games have one civ get to 25+% land without a single war or overseas city. A primary cause (a civ spawns already blocking gobs of land) was identified AT LEAST THREE YEARS AGO, and yet this was never, ever addressed!

Of course, neither was selecting and un-selecting units, which is probably still my biggest pet peeve in this game. Good or bad features are always debate-able. The controls effing working is not debate-able, that is a pitiful, atrocious flaw in a good game...that has gone unfixed for half a decade and numerous patches and expansions :sad:.
 
I for one don't want too much balance. Knowing how to translate a good start into an impressive win and turning a bad start into a chance at winning whatever victory is available takes different skills in my opinion and I like the variety of challenges.

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Desert hill gold for 2:hammers:7:commerce: isn't too impressive unless we have food to waste. Yes, it allows a fast tech rate... but other resources allow a head start of expansion which can be even more valuable if you know what you are doing.
If we have other components of a good start, gold can push things over the top... but it certainly doesn't do so singlehandedly.
 
I for one don't want too much balance. Knowing how to translate a good start into an impressive win and turning a bad start into a chance at winning whatever victory is available takes different skills in my opinion and I like the variety of challenges.

*

Desert hill gold for 2:hammers:7:commerce: isn't too impressive unless we have food to waste. Yes, it allows a fast tech rate... but other resources allow a head start of expansion which can be even more valuable if you know what you are doing.
If we have other components of a good start, gold can push things over the top... but it certainly doesn't do so singlehandedly.

The needed balance is in relative AI land distribution, not the human's starting BFC.

Some maps, especially those with > standard amount of land, can create nigh un-winnable situations where the AI can put up >10 units per turn even on immortal, probably 20+ on deity, all because another AI fed him double the cities.

I would gladly trade any chance of ever getting gold, gems, or any other luxury resources in the capitol BFC to be guaranteed to avoid an AI that is fed double land pre-war. Hell, I'd be willing to take some of the biggest woofer starts the RNG would allow to guarantee that kind of screw job doesn't occur.

You might not notice it because you play standard scripts a lot, but when they have 30-40 cities and you have 6-8, and it isn't YOUR expansion that granted those cities, things can get damned frustrating, and occasionally impossible unless you diplo/culture abuse.
 
Not nearly as much as it is in FFH, that's for sure. Oh the dwarves be loving it.
 
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