Island Starts on Deity

I'm curious what people do when they find themselves on an island with room for just the starting city. Assuming single player on Deity.

Personally, what I seem to do is lose. The big drawback isn't so much the lack of room to expand, since one of my standard strategies involves mostly colonizing islands. The problem is no access to the barbarian villages, which means no free 100+ gold if I'm not playing Mongols, and no way to grab villages and horse rush if I am playing Mongols.

The extra 15 turns (minimum) required to build that first galley to ship warriors across to the mainland is a huge handicap. I've done OK now and then with island starts that were slightly bigger, big enough to have a couple of friendly / barbarian villages. That usually yields something that will speed up the jump to the mainland, gold if not a free galley.

Sometimes it's even worse. I just abandoned a Mongols island-start game where there were no habitable islands on my side of the continent. The mainland areas near my starting location were all swamped with French and Egyptian culture, and hence not viable either.

- Gus

Urg. That should be island "starts." No way to edit the thread title that I can see, either.

- Gus

Gus_Smedstad said:

I'm curious what people do when they find themselves on an island with room for just the starting city. Assuming single player on Deity.

Personally, what I seem to do is lose. The big drawback isn't so much the lack of room to expand, since one of my standard strategies involves mostly colonizing islands. The problem is no access to the barbarian villages, which means no free 100+ gold if I'm not playing Mongols, and no way to grab villages and horse rush if I am playing Mongols.

The extra 15 turns (minimum) required to build that first galley to ship warriors across to the mainland is a huge handicap. I've done OK now and then with island starts that were slightly bigger, big enough to have a couple of friendly / barbarian villages. That usually yields something that will speed up the jump to the mainland, gold if not a free galley.
2 Forest = 4 hammers, so 8 turns for a galley...unless you work on balanced...


Sometimes it's even worse. I just abandoned a Mongols island-start game where there were no habitable islands on my side of the continent. The mainland areas near my starting location were all swamped with French and Egyptian culture, and hence not viable either.
Just "attack them" to enter their territory, make them spend gold on units while you'r safe on your island


- Gus

Urg. That should be island "starts." No way to edit the thread title that I can see, either.

- Gus

Click to expand...

I suggest making 2 barbarians (1 to explore island, and 1 for the cap), then make a galley.
Load 1 warrior in the galley (2 if the island is really small), and explore while your cap grows and makes a few settlers.

If you have 4 settlers, have your galley load them up and settle on the close islands and 2 on the mainland (settler pumps).

Just continue as usual, but you won't have to fear losing your cap fast
(I'm assuming you are new because you said it takes 15 turns for a galley, and that's indeed that way with balanced )




Have fun playing Civrev!

Padma: thanks. I'm still not clear how to do that myself, since "edit message" doesn't seem to let you change the title. Obviously I'm missing something.

Sniper: No, I'm not new, just stupid. For some reason I did the division incorrectly. My standard Deity strategy involves shifting to forests-only at game start and then cranking out warriors until I'm reasonably sure new ones won't pay for themselves with destroyed Barbarian villages.

Typically this is 4-6 warriors, depending on how central I am. I then grow, research Alphabet, rush a library, and then tech to Irrigation (for the pop boost) and Mathematics (for a defensive Catapult army, which can usually defeat anything the AI sends at me), followed by colonization of back areas or islands. Most games I just turtle and out-tech the enemy until I've got artillery and can wipe them out.

Despite the fact that my standard Deity approach works for most starts and most civs (all but Mongols, for obvious reasons), I've been exploring alternate ways to play to see if I can improve my game. To that end, I've been reading the strategy articles in the sub-forum, and I notice that usually they ignore the possibility of an island start. GGrayson's Arab article being an exception.

Granted, island starts are relative rare, but it seems like a significant case that throws a monkey wrench into most strategies.

- Gus

I can't help you with your island starts, since I only play the DS/iPhone version, and then not often, and not at Deity.


But:

Gus_Smedstad said:

Padma: thanks. I'm still not clear how to do that myself, since "edit message" doesn't seem to let you change the title. Obviously I'm missing something.
- Gus

Click to expand...

Once you are in the 'Edit Message' box, click the 'Advanced' button. That will bring up the full-page post editor, where you can edit more than just the basic text.

I would probably go for a single city challenge and try to win that way. Single city challenge on Deity= fun.

Deity One City Challenge is a bit over my head in CivRev. Particularly since you never have a special tile in your starting radius unless you're India.

- Gus

You don't need a special tile it just helps. You can also build a courthouse or whatever as well. Maybe try it with Japan or Greece as they are kinda easy to do it with.

Small islands are tough to start from.

Against the AI, you should probably do this:

Build a galley, it's done in 3200BC, build a warrior, it's done in 3000BC.

Explore a little bit with the galley, try to get a warrior on the mainland to get gold and huts. Grow your cap to 3 population spending 5 turns on 2 grass. If the mainland is close to your island, build another warrior or two, and load it back on the galley and try to get to more barbs.

Get a settler out of your capital as quickly as possible. If you are not close to 100 gold, then don't worry about using your gold on the settler. If you are close to getting your 100 gold, like, if you have 60-70 gold, then spend turns on gold, or sell units, or techs to the AI if you can.

Your main goal is to get off the island. Remember, in most games, your cap is going to be one of your worst cities (if you are not using the Greeks, French, or Egyptians), so it's ok that it sucks all by its lonesome.

You need to find spots with at least 1 grass, and 2 forests. 2 grass (or fish), and 2 forests is better. Basically, you need somewhere to start producing more settlers that has better access to land you can settle quickly.

If you can get Irrigation, then it's not a bad idea, but Code of Laws is where you need to go. Get Alphabet, Writing, and then Code of Laws. Once you get to Code of Laws, keep expanding. If you don't have gold, then:
2 pop cities: spend two turns on two grass, then 5 turns on 2 forests, to produce a settler
3 pop cities: spend 5 turns on 2 forests one grass to get a settler.
*In both of these cases, the next turn, your city will grow back to 2 pop. In the 3 pop city, you'll be at 2 pop with some food banked, and can produce more settlers right away without working food.

With gold, put more emphasis on food than hammers, and produce settlers faster by rushing them as soon as you have at least 8 food banked in a 2 pop city, or a few hammers banked in a 3 pop city.

You should still be able to get about 6-10 cities without gold by 0AD, which is more than enough to beat Deity, but you should keep expanding more if there are good spots out there, or at least till you have 10 cities.

If you are still being slow compared to the AI, get to Navigation asap and get to islands with whales, and keep expanding, and tech in those island cities as well.

Remember, no building buildings till you are done or pretty much done with producing settlers. 2 cities or 3 cities is almost always better than a single city with a building, especially early on in the game when a building will have a little effect in a city with low population.

Now, if you are a more aggressive civ, like the Arabs, Zulu, or Aztecs, you could just try to get few cities on the mainland, and start spamming units, or get an army on the mainland without a city, but with an island start with no barbs and no room to settle, the Arabs are probably the only civ that can do this without settling more cities.

In the end, island starts only set you back in the early game, maybe 10 turns or something like that. Sometimes starting on a crappy island forces you to build the galley early, and then you find an artifact earlier than you normally would, and you can use that artifact to your advantage to get you back in the game quicker. Most island starts have an artifact pretty close. If it's 7 cities of gold, then it's pretty simple to get more cities. If you get Knights templar, dont use the knight to rush captials, just use to to get barbs, huts, and newly settled cities. School of Confucious is easy to take advantage of, but sometimes you want to wait till the Medieval era to use a GE for 100 gold instead of 50. A scietist could get you to Code of Laws or Navigation faster, an artist can flip a city, a builder means you can get the Great Wall, Collosus, or East India, an humanitarian kinda sucks for an island start, but can really help when you settle a few more cities and are still exapanding. Angor Watt is nice, since you will get the Great Pyramid, and can switch to Fundamentalism if you need to go aggressive, or 90% of the time you should choose Republic and begin expanding asap. If the English are in the game, Agnor Watt will give you the Great Wall, which is really nice, since you can just expand without defending, until someone else obosletes it with Engineering, which for the AI, shouldn't happen before 250AD at the earliest.

I recommend not restarting the game if you get an island start. It's more enjoyable to start with nothing, and find a way to win. After a few times, you'll see it's not always hard, and you'll learn things that you wouldn't by just having a normal start. Learning to play island starts really helped me play games where I didn't have much gold, or a good starting spot, and taught me how to play from behind, which is pretty rare against the AI.

That's an excellent response, and exactly what I was looking for.

The Angor Watt always gives Great Wall if the English are in the game? That's the first I'd heard that. I've never been able to make sense of how it decided what you're going to get.

There are some mechanics that are pretty well hidden like that. For example, I didn't understand the tech back-filling rules until I read Morte's German guide. I knew I got older techs for free in the past, but it was unclear what triggered that.

I've been thinking a fair bit about settlers recently. As I see it, a new city has three costs: the cost of the settler, the cost of its defense, and the food cost of regenerating the population. Usually we can lump the food and hammer costs together since you can switch tiles and most tiles produce 2 of either. So it's about 20 + 10 + 10 = 40 units if you're in Republic, or 20 + 10 + 30 = 70 units if you're not.

Mainly what prompted this was your comment in one of your articles about how rushing a library is a mistake. If you're pre-Republic, the correct comparison isn't 1 library = 2 settlers, it's more like 1 library = 0.6 setters. Still, I've come to see that it's not a good idea until you've got a city that is using all its food tiles, all its hammer tiles, and is still producing 6+ science with the extra population. Or as a side effect of tiles that produce food (i.e. Japan, Egypt, Spain with whales).

- Gus

Gus_Smedstad said:

.

I've been thinking a fair bit about settlers recently. As I see it, a new city has three costs: the cost of the settler, the cost of its defense, and the food cost of regenerating the population. Usually we can lump the food and hammer costs together since you can switch tiles and most tiles produce 2 of either. So it's about 20 + 10 + 10 = 40 units if you're in Republic, or 20 + 10 + 30 = 70 units if you're not.

Mainly what prompted this was your comment in one of your articles about how rushing a library is a mistake. If you're pre-Republic, the correct comparison isn't 1 library = 2 settlers, it's more like 1 library = 0.6 setters. Still, I've come to see that it's not a good idea until you've got a city that is using all its food tiles, all its hammer tiles, and is still producing 6+ science with the extra population. Or as a side effect of tiles that produce food (i.e. Japan, Egypt, Spain with whales).

- Gus

Click to expand...

Interesting thoughts on this, but it's not very accurate. It's not just about comparing the straight up hammers and gold, and then the total tech output, it's a lot more than that. But, either way, more settlers will beat a library pretty much every time, even with civs that have growth from the sea in the early game.

40 hammers will take too long in the early game to hammer out in a city (other than in Athens with the Greeks, which is one exception to the rule of not building an early library). So, you're spending 8-10 turns building a library in a city if you put it all on hammers, but you are not growing in this city. It simply takes too long to hammer one out, so this usually means your spending somewhere around 80 gold to rush the library if you want it in a timely fashion.

Also, you have to defend this city, which you left out of the equation comparing the two possiblities. A flip, a spy, or someone taking your city will make the damage even worse.

The most important factor is the fact that you have to expand, and the best time to do the bulk of your expansion is in the early phase of the game. The more cities you get out pre-republic, the more you'll be able to easily expand in Republic. 3 cities is about the miniumum you want to have before republic, with 5 being about right for me. If I can get more, great.

But, with 20 hammers, or 40 gold in the ancient era, plus banking 8 food, you can have a city at 2 pop and another settled at 2 or 3 pop, depending on if you settle it still in the ancient era. So, you either have 4 or 5 total workers compared to probably 3 workers in the city with the library. Spending another few turns on food and then rushing another settler, you'll have 5-8 workers, or even more, dpending on how quickly you get your 100 gold. 5 cities, all 2-3 pop is superior to 2-3 cities with one having a library in the BC years, especially in the ancient era. Having more small cities makes it way easier to outexpand the other guy.

The early techs don't mean much, the 20 beaker techs don't give 1st to research bonuses. Masonary is a 30 beaker tech that will give you a free wall, but it's usually in your cap, and doesn't really do much for you, as walls are rarely useful. The defensive boost is ok, but not great.

Techs like irrigation, currency, construction, code of laws, all give nice bonuses, but it's not make or break if you don't get them. Plus, with more small cities vs. 1-2 cities with libraries, I usually still outech the other guys to the early bonuses.

More cities means easier defense, no question. Sometimes you can play stupidly and spread yourself too thin, but this is bad play and decision making. You should be able to stop attackers more easily than the other guy with less cities, because you have more workers.

The game has a flow, and by putting unnecessary priority on an early library, you'll stagnate compared to the other guy who has focused on expanding their empire, and can be way more flexible. You really aren't sacrifcing much to build more settlers, and with each new city settled, the more possiblities are open to you. Tech is only a part of the game, and it's easy for people to put way too much importance on teching, because of all the great bonuses you get, and the abilities it affords in advancing your civilization.

But, there are other equally important things to do, especially in the early game, namely claiming more of the map, taking cities, getting gold, exploring, etc. You can turn production, gold, growth, culture, or units into more power. A library only gets you more beakers, and some overflow gold.

This has been discussed many times, and no experienced top player will recommend rushing the early library. I do every now and then, but it's when I'm lazy and I have more than 200 gold in the Ancient, or more than 250 gold and want to still be able to receive the free market bonus from currnecy (which you will not get if you get Currency from 250 gold milestone).

I see this all the time online, especially Japanese players. They will have 2-4 cities, and they will all have libaries. They might jump to an early tech lead, but often we are equal in tech. But, I start pulling away, and then just leave them in the dust. These aer some of the easiest games.

It is a "rule of thumb", sometimes there are exceptions to this, but it's pretty rare. I recommend playing the first 40 turns over and over again (4000BC-0AD), and try to get 10 cities settled in the first 40 turns. Then compare how you did in that game compared to how you do when you don't expand that much and place more emphasis on buildings.