So sick of being screwed by starting position

AlextheGr8

Warlord
Joined
Jan 2, 2012
Messages
180
I'm so tired of my starting position being the worst out of all the civs. I always am never around any important resources, no matter what map I select. In the early game, no horses, then later no iron, after that of course, no oil or aluminum anywhere near me. But it's always abundant near all the other civs. What gives? What setting works best to give me resources? Abundant? I usually just play with standard and 12 civs on a map. Would like to know a good setting.
 
I'm so tired of my starting position being the worst out of all the civs. I always am never around any important resources, no matter what map I select. In the early game, no horses, then later no iron, after that of course, no oil or aluminum anywhere near me. But it's always abundant near all the other civs. What gives? What setting works best to give me resources? Abundant? I usually just play with standard and 12 civs on a map. Would like to know a good setting.

If you want a fair setting, try Strategic Balance. It'll pretty much guarantee you 2 different luxes and 1 of each strategic resource in reasonable distance around your starting positions. Heck, it even tends to be 4 horses + 6 of all the others.
 
I'm so tired of my starting position being the worst out of all the civs. I always am never around any important resources, no matter what map I select. In the early game, no horses, then later no iron, after that of course, no oil or aluminum anywhere near me. But it's always abundant near all the other civs. What gives? What setting works best to give me resources? Abundant? I usually just play with standard and 12 civs on a map. Would like to know a good setting.

Well...I know what you mean...some of the starting positions are rather....well, ..."bland"... And then there always seems to be some critical resource that is in short supply later in the game....it seems to me that when I play aggressively and decide early on who I'm going to target first with an overall view of dominating my continent, it seems things go much better.... "Turtling" does not seem, at least for me, to work very well, though I do try to get some of the earlier wonders built as soon as I can....

Though I'm not afraid to start a war early on if I think that particular AI is going to be problem anyway...you know stealing workers, killing off their scouts, grabbing settlers... I don't usually try to take a city unless I think I have a good edge ...such as if playing as Atilla, I find a battering ram ruin, then, if there is a close enough "victim" and I have a unit ...maybe only a scout.... nearby I'll try attacking....

The way I look at it is that humans have such a terrific edge just being human, that the AI has to be given lots of help or the game would be just plain boooring....;)
 
I do several things to improve my games (i hate getting molested by lousy, time-wasting starting positions too):

Go with abundant resources. I almost always get at least 2 of one lux and 1 of another with that. No guarantee about the strategic resources, but at least your luxes don't suck. Go strategic balance like Koiran suggested, if you absolutely have to have those.

Mods: I also use 'Maps - Rotate Start Position (v.7)', from the Steam Workshop. It allows you (on the first turn of the game) to cycle through most of the start positions available to the civs in the game (never all of them, dunno if that's a bug or what), and start with any of them you like. If you have ten civs in your game, then you're many times more likely to find a starting spot you like, without having to restart so much.

Mods: 'Reseed!' (That's the name of it). While you no longer need its main function anymore, since they added a 'restart' feature into the base game, it has two things I dearly love still- a 'reveal entire map' button, so you can scroll around and see if your starting site really blows or not, and a 'reveal strategic resources' button, so you can see if your location has any or not while the map is revealed. Once the game starts, you turn Reseed! off, and the fog comes back. So, unless you have a photographic memory, there's still a fair bit of mystery and exploration left after using it.

Cheats, sure. But it's single player, you can do whatever you want. If you want better starting sites and more games that don't make you tear your hair out and curse the hours of wasted time, then go for it. And if you've ever spent ages before trying to find a decent marshy area for William to start up in, you'll thank me profusely, later.
 
I'm so tired of my starting position being the worst out of all the civs. I always am never around any important resources, no matter what map I select. In the early game, no horses, then later no iron, after that of course, no oil or aluminum anywhere near me. But it's always abundant near all the other civs. What gives? What setting works best to give me resources? Abundant? I usually just play with standard and 12 civs on a map. Would like to know a good setting.

If you want to ensure horses & iron; that's strategic balance.

Abundant instead is: all the existing sources provide 50% more. (Iron is normally either 2 or 6; with abundant that is 3 and 9.)
And some more luxuries & small strategic deposits on the map.

But you can win games without either horses or iron.
The archer line is very good at keeping you from being overrun.
And you can build siege weapons without resources along with Muskets/Rifles/Inf.
 
I'm so tired of my starting position being the worst out of all the civs. I always am never around any important resources, no matter what map I select. In the early game, no horses, then later no iron, after that of course, no oil or aluminum anywhere near me. But it's always abundant near all the other civs. What gives? What setting works best to give me resources? Abundant? I usually just play with standard and 12 civs on a map. Would like to know a good setting.

I'm afraid I don't don't understand. If the AI has good resources and you don't, why don't you simply take them lol? :lol:

But in general, when this happens to me, I just build cities earlier and faster than I usually would. Instead of going into the Tradition tree, I go into Liberty and get the settler (and later worker) bonus. (You'll want to come back to tradition later.) I also keep my cities small, (numerous) and along rivers. If you do this, you must have a large army. (Other civs will be pissed at your land grabbing.) Also, the river tiles produce the extra coinage you'll need to upkeep said army. All the while, you should be connecting stuff with your workers. Once you have enough "good" land under your control, you should be focused entirely on (defense and) infrastructure: connecting your cities, luxuries, strategic resources, and etc. And building mines! They're always useful. Also build buildings, but watch your budget. No money, no army.

Side note: don't forget your libraries. You will fall horribly far behind if you neglect this. (Later you can build the NC in your city with most the food.) But I usually build 1. granary 2. library 3. monument, and you can build whatever you like after 2 really. But for my first 4 cities these are must haves. The monuments are relatively cheap, and 'Legalism' under Tradition will build you 4 amphitheaters for free and no maintenance.

But yh, when you start off in a bad spot, think of ways to overcome it. Get creative. :king:
 
Thanks for the tips, trying strategic balance now, if not, abundant. It's more difficult to beat the AI and take resources early on when they have swordsman and horsemen.
 
Composite bows/crossbows are the answer for swords. Spears and pikes are the answer for horses. Pretty simple, although crossbows are admittedly well off my usual tech path.
 
The problem is that I suffer from early game lack of happiness and gold. While the AI gets cheats so they aren't affected. I'm trying to tech up early to keep ahead of the 1 or 2 always expanding and war mongering AI that will win the game. Not be caught up in small little wars that never end and keep me back in tech, money, and happiness.
 
Why dont u use world builder and create your own map and set a start position where u want to start. and put resources wherever u want and get mutch happiness. can get gold to
 
Idk, choosing Legendary Start option on a new game will mostly give me a good start. Even when also choosing No Start Bias at the same time. <-- I mainly choose that one on a huge continents map just in case Egypt is on a different continent than mine and no one manages to kill him. So he goes ahead and gets his desert start and builds Petra (and Saladin Mal'eh if you use that mod) becomes god-like and forces me to dominate when maybe I wanted to turtle. Or Celts/forest, etc. But yeah usually Legendary Start gives me enough of a good start and often times an awesome start. One time it gave me both a snaky river + 6 gold hills :crazyeye:


ed: oops, realized you were talkin bout strategic resources and not just lux/food tiles. Normally I don't associate strategic resources with a "Start". But yeah normally I get screwed on at least aluminum, if not aluminum + uranium.

Normally I use a "1/2 rule" to ensure that something in my territory will have most of all the strategic resources. If I own at least 1/2 of the land mass I started on (I play large land masses, not islands or w/e else), I'll usually only end up being screwed out of 1 of the strategic resources. Usually it's going to be uranium and I'll rely on allying a CS, or, locating the closest city or territory with it and either found a city or start a war over it. But, if I were playing a proper cultural game and miss out on some strategic resources, then I consider this as part of the price of playing a cultural game with few cities. And this also bolsters the argument to choose border expansion perks in your religion or things like that- usually people hate that religion perk but it can save you from an untimely war often times.
 
The problem is that I suffer from early game lack of happiness and gold. While the AI gets cheats so they aren't affected. I'm trying to tech up early to keep ahead of the 1 or 2 always expanding and war mongering AI that will win the game. Not be caught up in small little wars that never end and keep me back in tech, money, and happiness.

One thing to try would be water maps: That will avoid those little wars in early game.
Another thing is to ignore little wars as much as possible. Instead of responding to war by mass buidling units to the exclusion of everything else; just send your ranged units to the threatened city; cash rush walls, and continue building up the rest of your empire.
 
I'm on an epic game right now, Pangea map. I really love the layout, makes the AI civs stop spamming everything with their settlers. Especially when I set raging barbarians. More evenly matched because you have to go hunt down resources in other smaller islands. Playing vs 11 other civs on domination only, beat a few already, on turn 1500! Time to attack Persia and then India to be far and away the leader.
 
I agree with you that some starting locations suck, but I believe eventually you need to address this through your game play. I always loathed never having coal and usually next to no iron no matter how wide I went. I seemed to cover half the map and still lack something.

So- instead I have gone the other way and settled just a few cities (as is the most loved approach here). Of course, you will have fewer resources but I found you will be able to create more wealth to gain those resources through allying CS's or trading with the enemy (so to speak). Someone will always have an excess of something you can trade- for a price. Make sure you sell all excess luxury goods you have to obtain gold - and ensure the AI has less.
 
My current OCC - no horses or iron. :mad: Yeah thats awesome.

Could use the resources to sell off and get a bit more $$$.

I better have both oil and aluminum or I will snap.
 
Mods: 'Reseed!' (That's the name of it). While you no longer need its main function anymore, since they added a 'restart' feature into the base game, it has two things I dearly love still- a 'reveal entire map' button, so you can scroll around and see if your starting site really blows or not, and a 'reveal strategic resources' button, so you can see if your location has any or not while the map is revealed. Once the game starts, you turn Reseed! off, and the fog comes back. So, unless you have a photographic memory, there's still a fair bit of mystery and exploration left after using it.

Thanks for the tip on Reseed! Does it let you restart anytime though? I don't understand why the actual game only lets you restart on turn 1 when you can just go and reload initialsave and restart anyhow if you aren't on turn 1 anymore. I could have used the reveal feature too the one game when I wanted to be Egypt with the capital on the coast with adjacent desert and a mountain within two hexes :D
 
Thanks for the tip on Reseed! Does it let you restart anytime though? I don't understand why the actual game only lets you restart on turn 1 when you can just go and reload initialsave and restart anyhow if you aren't on turn 1 anymore. I could have used the reveal feature too the one game when I wanted to be Egypt with the capital on the coast with adjacent desert and a mountain within two hexes :D

No, it only lets you restart before you make your first turn. Restarting is different than reloading a save, as it completely redoes the map and everything on it. For whatever reasons inate to the way Firaxis made the game, that can only be done before turn 1 is completed.
 
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