Gold, imbalanced?

Important as the starting BFC is, many is the time I thought I had an unbeatable start only to discover that the surrounding terrain was abysmal, or that the AIs had something even better.

I call this the "good start curse." Any time I get a really good start, I end up getting absolutely destroyed. This game had me completely surrounded on all sides, with Alexander bribing the Germans to war with me by 1000 BC. I even replayed it because it was the best I had in a long time... but it was not to be... :(

 
I call this the "good start curse." Any time I get a really good start, I end up getting absolutely destroyed. This game had me completely surrounded on all sides, with Alexander bribing the Germans to war with me by 1000 BC. I even replayed it because it was the best I had in a long time... but it was not to be... :(
That is indeed a nice looking start. Then again, the Celts are always slow to get moving, but gold should counter that (when they eventually make it to mining...:sad:). The downside is that there's not a huge amount of food to work those gold mines.

Do you have a save? I'm sure there are a few people who'd like to give it a go.
 
That is indeed a nice looking start. Then again, the Celts are always slow to get moving, but gold should counter that (when they eventually make it to mining...:sad:). The downside is that there's not a huge amount of food to work those gold mines.

Do you have a save? I'm sure there are a few people who'd like to give it a go.

The grassland corn made it easy to get that gold online.

Sadly, no, I don't have a save. I'm pretty OCD about keeping my computer free from clutter, and old saved games are often the first things to go. Sorry. :(
 
I call this the "good start curse." Any time I get a really good start, I end up getting absolutely destroyed.

I'm the opposite. I get a good start, and I completely destroy the game. For me, I've always thought of it as the human is far better at maximizing what they have than the AI is, so good starts should always be in our favor.
 
You may not have been able to see the rice, but settling one to the right would have been fairly useful.
 
Hey mate, check your autosave directory for this 4000BC save, we can probably help you out and I'm curious to see where this game goes.

That game was like 30+ games ago. I play about 2-3 a week in my spare time. It's gone, sorry.

It probably would have been an easy win if I was playing a lower difficulty setting, but the situation really wasn't winnable at the difficulty setting I like to play at.

Aside from the obvious second city to the right, there were only two other decent city locations, and both weren't great. Sitting Bull starts about 8 tiles E/NE, and Bismark was even closer to my exact W. Alexander was about 7 tiles away from the city directly north to get Wine & Copper, and there was someone else I forget right next to the city I get NW if I rush it before Sitting Bull gets there. Even then, the city N of the capital had a lot of desert, as you can see in the pic.

With the early DoWs on me from Alexander, the choice became expand hard N and get Copper, a crap expansion, and build military before the axe fell... or expand hard to get 4 cities and pray. Like I said, it's my "good start curse." Give me Tokugawa in a jungle with hill sheep & clams and I'll dominate in no time.
 
Obviously, the initial BFC has an enormous impact on the difficulty of a paricular game. But so has many things, not the least the surrounding terrain and AI distribution.

Are gold(and gems) overpowered? Yes, if you were comparing two otherwise equal games where one has gold on a hill, and the other has wine or something, the gold game will be a fair bit easier.

Is it a problem? No. You want to play a game to familiarize yourself with a particular difficulty level and don't want to have a biased start, you should just regenerate. Still many unknown factors, but it will definitely let you have some control of the game quality.

It is a nice feature of civ games that there is much variance in how games play out. Competing against yourself is really not a matter of game balance. Competing against others is easily facilitated by playing the same start (XOTMs) or Mapfinder (HoF games).

It is only a problem if you think the game settings should define the difficulty with almost no variance. Frankly, that would be boring.

What IS a problem is fake difficulty (like some events) and randomness that does not improve the gameplay experience (like barb galleys)
 
That game was like 30+ games ago. I play about 2-3 a week in my spare time. It's gone, sorry.

It probably would have been an easy win if I was playing a lower difficulty setting, but the situation really wasn't winnable at the difficulty setting I like to play at.

Aside from the obvious second city to the right, there were only two other decent city locations, and both weren't great. Sitting Bull starts about 8 tiles E/NE, and Bismark was even closer to my exact W. Alexander was about 7 tiles away from the city directly north to get Wine & Copper, and there was someone else I forget right next to the city I get NW if I rush it before Sitting Bull gets there. Even then, the city N of the capital had a lot of desert, as you can see in the pic.

With the early DoWs on me from Alexander, the choice became expand hard N and get Copper, a crap expansion, and build military before the axe fell... or expand hard to get 4 cities and pray. Like I said, it's my "good start curse." Give me Tokugawa in a jungle with hill sheep & clams and I'll dominate in no time.

Alex will hate sitting bull from turn 0. That start should have been EASY, since you could ignore the idiots at the extremes of peace weight and chariot rush Bismark to oblivion. Scale up to HA's using the gold and probably even alex falls...SB is peaceful ---> game over, you have too many cities for the remaining AI to have hope. Chariot rush is just about impossible on deity but below that BFC horse chariot rush is NASTY.

IMO a bit sad that even now you didn't so much as mention it :(.

Edit: Rushing alex is an ironic option also. His UU > chariots, but with BFC horse you can cut any hope he has of ever getting them unless he has capitol BFC copper, and even then it wouldn't necessarily be a gimme for him. I did exactly this to shaka in Immortal University Napoleon, going on to win rather awkwardly with cavalry/arty EVENTUALLY.
 
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