Stuck on your own continent at the start

Often nowadays I get stuck on my own continent with no other civilizations on it at the start, even though I play continents most of the time.

Now I'm asking myself it that's actually something that benefits me or if that hinders my growth and general progress in the game.

Advantages I can think of:
+ I have a whole continent to settle (excluding city-states) and don't have to worry about someone else complaining about me settling to close to them
+ No need to worry about an opponent with a strong military being directly next to me (especially relevant, since I rarely ever build infantry units at all)

Disadvantages:
- Trading opportunities usually come much later
- less options for trade routes (especially no science benefit - which has in my at the moment only succesful deity win made up up to 40 % of my total science output)
- Need for naval units for more exploration, sometimes even astronomy (often I only meet all the other civilizations after someone has founded the World Congress)

Did I forget anything? Should I in the end be glad that I'm on my own continent, or would that be something disappointing?

I kinda love isolated lands. You don't need to recruit soldiers. And, if there is some CS', you're so lucky. because, you can trade with them and after you can handle some enemies, you can explore the world.

Of course this is my opinion and you should know that; I love peaceful games, like; trade, earn money, keep your population happy, use diplomacy etc. So, if you love war, you may bore easily in those kind of maps.

Don't waste your caravans on CS or other players. FOOD FOOD FOOD!! GROW GROW GROW!!

Add to the advantage of a known isolated start: No need to have the first build be a scout either as if there isn't competition on your landmass, your starting warrior will reach all goody huts on your land mass before any of the AIs.

Trade routes: If this start is coastal, then unless you are on deity a Food cargo ship is better than an ultra early trade route anyway.

Hum, having an interior start that's also isolated would be bad as you wouldn't get full advantage of internal routes and in addition it would take until you found a coastal city for you to go out and meet people.

Technologies become cheaper as you meet other civilizations which have researched them.

joncnunn said:

Add to the advantage of a known isolated start: No need to have the first build be a scout either as if there isn't competition on your landmass, your starting warrior will reach all goody huts on your land mass before any of the AIs.

Trade routes: If this start is coastal, then unless you are on deity a Food cargo ship is better than an ultra early trade route anyway.

Hum, having an interior start that's also isolated would be bad as you wouldn't get full advantage of internal routes and in addition it would take until you found a coastal city for you to go out and meet people.

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Thanks. Although I don't know if I'm isolated right away, so by the time I know I probably will already have trained a scout and might have founded my capital in the middle of the continent. The latter happened in my last game, and so I ended up not exploring much at all, and only finding one of the three civilizations on the map, not meeting the others until the World Congress. So in doubt a coastal start is usually better, even when the interior one has a lot of advantages?

i would prefer not to be isolated most of the time.

Its a little harder to win the leadership of the World Congress. The sooner you meet everyone, the better your chances. Not a real big problem really.

So long as you have good coastal sites and a few CS to deal with, its not too bad to be isolated.

On high difficulties, isolated starts are really problematic as the early beakers from trade routes really helps you out. Without the extra science, it will be extremely hard to get off the ground.

arand86 said:

On high difficulties, isolated starts are really problematic as the early beakers from trade routes really helps you out. Without the extra science, it will be extremely hard to get off the ground.

Click to expand...

That's a Deity only problem. On Immortal you are fine not making contact with another AI until turn 80 if you have a coastal start and so are able to build food cargo ships; I just did that in my last game.