Small continent, great start location

Where would you put your capital (the starting Settler unit can take 2 steps AND settle in the first turn.



Place your cities.
The rest of the continent looks like this, there's no fresh water, and no whales in sight:

For the capital, I would go with on the coast on the middle one of the three cattle, that way you get all of the cattle plus the fish, and the Iron. That horse is not that far away to have access to when you get The Wheel.

As for cities, since I do not like to have any overlap, I would put one city to the southeast of that mountain hear the sugar cane. I would put my third city on the Gold deposit, and figure on using the Ivory for the Statue of Zeus.

You did not say if you were playing a Sea-Faring civilization.

Go 2SW and settle on the plains next to the two fish and two of the cattle. You'll get ALL of the cattle in your capital's radius!

I'd put a second city next to the horses; it can share the cattle for a while or work more coastal tiles for commerce, depending on your needs.

Other cities: 1S of the gold hill, 1SE of the ivory, 1NW of the tobacco, and 1NE of the sugar.

I'd move the settler 1SW and build right beside the central cattle. A cultural expansion will bring in both the fish, all cattle and iron inside the capital along with saving a turn(over elephantium's plan in the beginning) . The second city will be on the hill between gold and ivory enabling lots of Commerce for early research and Shields for the SoZ. The third city will be 2SE of the start near the 1st sugarcane getting horses and 2 bonus resources into territory.

timerover51 said:

For the capital, I would go with on the coast on the middle one of the three cattle, that way you get all of the cattle plus the fish, and the Iron. That horse is not that far away to have access to when you get The Wheel.

As for cities, since I do not like to have any overlap, I would put one city to the southeast of that mountain hear the sugar cane. I would put my third city on the Gold deposit, and figure on using the Ivory for the Statue of Zeus.

You did not say if you were playing a Sea-Faring civilization.

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I'm Ottoman, (Scientific/Ind)

Damn, with the setter- and worker-farms you can get out of that, you can take over the mainland before the AA is over.

I'd put my Capital right on top of the Horse. It will expand into one cow and two Sugars, ideal for a size six capital which can then expand into the sea for 6-12 then boom exponentially after universal irrigation. The Capital should always be about Gold IMO, particularly on islands where border-crunching AI isn't a priority.

It's a shame you have to lose a cow to get access to the south seas, but my second city would be on the right-hand side lower cow, the third city two squares away on a diagonal with the lower fish and my fourth city would be 2 squares north on a diagonal with the upper fish, my fifth on top of the Gold, 6th to the left of the Tobacco diagonally north of the Bonus Grassland, 7th top right, 8th on the Desert and 9th diagonally right of the right-hand Sugar. Later in the game I might think about putting a 10th on the central Hill as the other cities push out into the ocean.

I would move two tiles southwest and settle at the coast between the fish and with all cows in my extended city range.

Is there a world seed number?

Given the starting visibility, I'd have agreed with Elephantium and gone 2SW. Given the full-island screenshot, although I'd still agree I'd want a Settler/Worker-pump there -- but maybe not my cap. Having seen the whole island, I think this is where I'd put my cities:



Or possibly this might be better, at least initially, to maximise city numbers before I broke out from this island:



My criteria were:

• Central capital for minimal corruption in a decent first-ring
• All land-tiles exploited
• Maximum Grass left free by planting on Plains/Desert where possible (Electricity is a long way off...)
• All food-bonuses left open (in the second dotmap, all Plains-cities should -- I think -- have access to at least 2 food-bonus tiles while they're growing)
• All towns CxC to CxxC from their nearest neighbour(s) (the Plains-town 1S of the southern mountain could be disbanded later)
• All coastal towns should have room to grow to Pop12 (or beyond) after building Harbours and 'Ducts (and Hospitals?)

this does not look too appealing to me. while the capital in 2SW offers 5 workable cows after only 10 turns after foundation, it would require 3 towns built PLUS a cultural building in the 2nd town in your suggestion, while leaving the capital only with one single food ressource! i do not believe that lower curruption will pay off for that within the length of a game...
t_x

generally speaking, i do not think this is such a great start at all. i would prefer only 2 cows and fresh water any time! moreover, you cannot get a full ring and even for a Kind of ring around the capital and in order to get all prime tiles worked you would need to settle on one of the cows (what i would do).
t_x

timerover51 said:

For the capital, I would go with on the coast on the middle one of the three cattle, that way you get all of the cattle plus the fish, and the Iron. That horse is not that far away to have access to when you get The Wheel.

As for cities, since I do not like to have any overlap, I would put one city to the southeast of that mountain hear the sugar cane. I would put my third city on the Gold deposit, and figure on using the Ivory for the Statue of Zeus.

You did not say if you were playing a Sea-Faring civilization.

Click to expand...

I'm the ottomans, and yeah that'd make a nice settler/worker factory.

Atishay Jain said:

I'd move the settler 1SW and build right beside the central cattle. .

Click to expand...

funny how everyone seems to play it differently.

Kirejara said:

I would move two tiles southwest and settle at the coast between the fish and with all cows in my extended city range.

Is there a world seed number?

Click to expand...

don't have it, and it's a slightly modded game (see my 'expanded' thread)

tjs282 said:

Having seen the whole island, I think this is where I'd put my cities:

Or possibly this might be better, at least initially, to maximise city numbers before I broke out from this island:

My criteria were:

• Central capital for minimal corruption in a decent first-ring
• All land-tiles exploited
• Maximum Grass left free by planting on Plains/Desert where possible (Electricity is a long way off...)
• All food-bonuses left open (in the second dotmap, all Plains-cities should -- I think -- have access to at least 2 food-bonus tiles while they're growing)
• All towns CxC to CxxC from their nearest neighbour(s) (the Plains-town 1S of the southern mountain could be disbanded later)
• All coastal towns should have room to grow to Pop12 (or beyond) after building Harbours and 'Ducts (and Hospitals?)

Click to expand...

I was too thinking about the capital/corruption thing.
You need a culture building to get to the 2 extra cows though, but on the other hand, you need Construction/an Aqueduct to need the extra cows (given they were for the one city and you didn't want to waste a cow.)

I forgot to note that in my game you cannot settle on deserts, but that's alright. I placed my city south of the desert, and the other city on top of the tobacco.

To be honest, I never plan for 12+ size cities, as it's quite late in the game.

templar_x said:

this does not look too appealing to me. while the capital in 2SW offers 5 workable cows after only 10 turns after foundation, it would require 3 towns built PLUS a cultural building in the 2nd town in your suggestion, while leaving the capital only with one single food ressource! i do not believe that lower curruption will pay off for that within the length of a game...
t_x

Click to expand...

it looked quite above average to me. And 'appealing' implies you have a choice...

i only related it to the thread title
t_x

Betwixt the cow and the horse is where I would put my capital. I would not plant any city on a poor cow.

no need to be sentimental about it. planting a town onto the last cow would practically get the production of 12 otherwise unworked core tiles into your pockets... it would not be the first town i would build, but i would not forgo esp this commerce and for sure eventually build it.
t_x

I agree with templar's assessment: the lack of fresh water and the lack of space (and only one lux) makes this a rather "average" start position. Certainly not "great".

I would simply settle in place. Three cows is more than enough for one city, and it would still allow a somewhat decent ring around the capital.

1N as indicated by tjs282 would indeed offer a "better" ring around the capital, but it would mean no food bonus during the first 10 turns! I don't think this would be competitive... When settling in place, I reach size 3 on turn 12, and 4-turn growth after that. That means size 6 on turn 24, and 2-turn workers as well as 4-turn settlers are possible under despotism. In tjs282's suggestion we would reach size 3 on turn 17 and only 7-turn growth is possible under Despotism. That means size 6 on turn 38 and no worker/settler factories are possible in the capital!

Moving the capital to the coast would be bad in this situation. And there is no reason for this either: with so much food and production we will have an early second settler, and consequently the scouting curragh can set sail early enough.

Btw. am I the only one who plays with the grid switched on? I really dislike the map without the grid.

walletta said:

I really dislike the map without the grid.

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Same over here! I always get confused/unoriented, when looking at screenshots without the grid...

I went many years without using grids, but as soon as I found the button for it I have since always used grids.

As another poster said, I'm not sure if I'd want my capital to be my Settler factory, which is my main problem with starting at the obvious square next to the Fish and Cow. The reasons for this are very difficulty level dependent but for the medium difficulties:

1. Most of your technology research value comes from your capital in the early years and to keep changing your capital's beakers plays havoc with your tech planning/rate - such as completing a Wonder before you hit the Philosophy jump and Anarchy. I've lost many a Wonder while in Anarchy.

2. On a restricted city-size map such as this, putting all your cows in one basket seems like a big waste when you could have 3 cities taking advantage of that mass of meat, and losing all that gold-flush coastal waters in the long-term seems like a double-waste.

3. Once my first Settler is out from my Capital I tend to just build Wonders at my Capital, (see number 1) and the 11 production you can get from just 5 worked squares on the Horse spot, even in Despotism is plenty for bashing out The Colossus, The Mausoleum, Zeus, Lighthouse or any of the lighter AA Wonders really.

I've tried using 2nd or 3rd cities for my Science or Production centres but even just a loss of one or two Shields/Beakers makes it more impractical for the task - when we're talking about small island maps.

Re: Having a central Capital whereby all your coastal cities are then an auto-ring... now... I might be wrong here, this is just my experience... but I've found that on these island maps it's much worse for your wider empire if you have landlocked Capital. Further to that, I'm not sure that even on the initial island you have any great benefit from having a central Capital rather than anywhere on the coast. For an island map like this one it would probably be better, in the long-run, to have your capital on the north of the island so that you can get low Corruption firmly onto both islands.

A lot of this will depend heavily on your difficulty level and desired victory condition and whether you are maxing for HoF or having an aesthetically pleasing relaxation game etc etc (the HoF would likely be ignoring Wonders for example).

walletta said:

Btw. am I the only one who plays with the grid switched on?

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No, you're not. CTRL-G is always the first thing I press, after starting/loading a map, because my installations never seem to remember this preference. (I did add 'GridOn=1' to all my .ini files, as I believe was/is recommended in various threads on CFC, but it doesn't seem to have made any difference. Probably I did something wrong).

I really dislike the map without the grid.

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Here we differ though. For me, the grid is rather a necessary evil. I find it ugly and intrusive, but pretty much essential to gameplay.