Can you win without your starting settler?

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fmlizard2

Prince
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Apr 6, 2011
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I was screwing around the other night and I decided to see what would happen if I got my starting settler captured on purpose. Strangely enough, my civ did not end there. My starting warrior continued to roam the planet, even though I could not research or build anything without a city. I could not accumulate gold or culture either - even when I popped a :c5gold: ruin.

My question: Is it possible to win after losing your starting settler?

Obviously, it would only be close to viable on low difficulty levels. The challenge would be to acquire a settler or a city using only your starting warrior, not building or teching anything. On very low difficulty levels, you can get a settler from a ruin. Totally doable. But tossing this provision out, is it possible?

Stealing a settler would be out. As I understand, all stolen settlers just turn into workers.

I was thinking that theoretically you could hit a few upgrade ruins and get a rifleman or something from your starting warrior with a ton of luck, then use it to knock over a CS, make it your capital, and go from there. Obviously way behind, but in theory a good player could catch up on Settler or Chieftain or something.

Germany could also theoretically do it using their UA. Turn enough barbs to be able to overrun a CS, sack it, and start your empire from there.

Any other ideas? Anyone ever try this?
 
fmlizard2 said:
I was screwing around the other night and I decided to see what would happen if I got my starting settler captured on purpose. Strangely enough, my civ did not end there. My starting warrior continued to roam the planet, even though I could not research or build anything without a city. I could not accumulate gold or culture either - even when I popped a :c5gold: ruin.

My question: Is it possible to win after losing your starting settler?

Obviously, it would only be close to viable on low difficulty levels. The challenge would be to acquire a settler or a city using only your starting warrior, not building or teching anything. On very low difficulty levels, you can get a settler from a ruin. Totally doable. But tossing this provision out, is it possible?

Stealing a settler would be out. As I understand, all stolen settlers just turn into workers.

I was thinking that theoretically you could hit a few upgrade ruins and get a rifleman or something from your starting warrior with a ton of luck, then use it to knock over a CS, make it your capital, and go from there. Obviously way behind, but in theory a good player could catch up on Settler or Chieftain or something.

Germany could also theoretically do it using their UA. Turn enough barbs to be able to overrun a CS, sack it, and start your empire from there.

Any other ideas? Anyone ever try this?
Click to expand...

Well, ruin upgrades are capped at 1, so at most you get a spear... Germany could do it, maybe Genghis could capture a CS?

Aztecs+Polynesians have a better starting Warrior, and Greeks/Persians get a better spearman if they get upgraded
 
I managed to conquer a CS with Mongolia on turn 12 by abusing the New Random Seed option and save-reloading. Forced my first ruins to upgrade me to spearman, then save-reloaded my way to optimal battle outcomes against the first CS I ran into. Mongolia is by far the best civ to do this with as a 30% combat strength bonus far outweights anything the other civs can manage at the warrior/spearman level. Germany might be the exception but in 4-5 tries I couldn't get any barb units to convert without a settled city. I bet you could pull this off without save-reloading (possible exception to get a spearman promotion from a ruins) with upgrade saving for insta-heals and leveling up on some barbs first.
 
Barth said:
I managed to conquer a CS with Mongolia on turn 12 by abusing the New Random Seed option and save-reloading. Forced my first ruins to upgrade me to spearman, then save-reloaded my way to optimal battle outcomes against the first CS I ran into. Mongolia is by far the best civ to do this with as a 30% combat strength bonus far outweights anything the other civs can manage at the warrior/spearman level.
Click to expand...


well done, any solution to this is quite impressive.

it can probably be done with any civ by gimping settings in your favor a few ways: set the speed to marathon, difficulty to chieftain, promotion saving on, then earn 30 exp through barbs after hitting an upgrade ruin and use the instant heals appropriately to capture a city. it'll take longer to get started than reloading obviously, but it should be doable.

greece's hoplite is only marginally less powerful than a mongolian spearman (9 vs 9.1). persia would be a contender just for faster recovery after each barb exp earning mission.
 
Yea, I was a bit too hasty when I said Mongolia was by far the best since Hoplites are nearly identical to Spearmen + 30%. And I think the game still calculates your happiness even without a city since I got a GA around turn 35ish on one of my attempts, so an 8 strength Immortal + 10% combat strength would also be nearly as good and, as you mentioned, have an easier time farming barbs for experience. I also appear to have been wrong about Germany as I was finally able to convert a barb without a city, and 2 full health warriors might be able to take down a CS even without any spearman upgrades or promotion saving.
 
I've upgraded a scout to a crossbowman once through 2 huts. That must be a recent change...

On the subject of the OP, I have gotten settlers from goodie huts, so I'm guessing you could rely on RNG to get going that way. I like the idea of taking a CS better though, it'd be fun to mess around with for a challenge occasionally!
 
i tried this out on marathon with germany, and it would autofail with my opponent gaining a domination victory on turn 11 maybe every time if i deleted my settler. i don't know if not meeting the opponent prevents this, or if it happens every time. anyway, clicking one more turn i was able to continue and successfully win (capturing the opposing civs capital) pretty easily after converting two camps, though it does take a while. a huge map, one opponent, 0 cs would make it easy, especially if your opponent catches an early ruin for archery so barbarian archers start spawning. you can potentially capture one of those and ruin convert it to a crossbow.
 
vexing said:
i tried this out on marathon with germany, and it would autofail with my opponent gaining a domination victory on turn 11 maybe every time if i deleted my settler. i don't know if not meeting the opponent prevents this, or if it happens every time. anyway, clicking one more turn i was able to continue and successfully win (capturing the opposing civs capital) pretty easily after converting two camps, though it does take a while. a huge map, one opponent, 0 cs would make it easy, especially if your opponent catches an early ruin for archery so barbarian archers start spawning. you can potentially capture one of those and ruin convert it to a crossbow.
Click to expand...

Hmm, in my trial, I DoWed Mongolia on turn 5 and let them steal my settler. I didn't delete it. I carried on until about turn 20 when I just did the re-roll I was going to do anyway. I didn't get an official loss until I let my starting warrior get taken too.

I have yet to seriously try to pull it off. Just the one game in which I wanted to see what would happen. I also wonder if a person did the take over a city approach, if that city would count as a capital and you would still be eligible to win by domination, given that you never founded a capital. The kind of super-edge-case logic that keeps system architects up late at night :)
 
qalsip1977 said:
I've upgraded a scout to a crossbowman once through 2 huts. That must be a recent change...
Click to expand...

If you walk over a ruin with an archer and you have researched archery, you can actually get a crossbowman. 1 tech(upgrade) ahead only maximum.
 
Tabarnak said:
If you walk over a ruin with an archer and you have researched archery, you can actually get a crossbowman. 1 tech(upgrade) ahead only maximum.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know I have gone from archer to crossbow before. I would assume that theoretically, one could drive a tank over one and get a Modern Armor.

For this scenario, you could never research or build an archer because you can't found that opening city. Sounds like from the game mechanics you are stuck with a Spearman or one of its UU derivatives.
 
iggymnrr said:
How about recapturing your starting settler?
Click to expand...

For sure you can recapture it. But yeah that would be too easy lol

I guess we must read ''definitively'' losing the starting settler.

EDIT : About crossbowman upgrade with no cities, forget it, you can't research archery. Hmm yeah, since you start with a warrior, you can't have an archer at all like fmlizard2 pointed...unless you can ally a militaristic CS...?!?
 
discover el dorado with germany... ally with militaristic cs with 500 gold... get units from the cs and barb camps and have a small army to take out cs cities and perhaps civs
 
Tabarnak said:
About crossbowman upgrade with no cities, forget it, you can't research archery. Hmm yeah, since you start with a warrior, you can't have an archer at all like fmlizard2 pointed...unless you can ally a militaristic CS...?!?
Click to expand...

i explained one way to do it: germany converting a barb archer.
 
crazy thing is I just did this little crazy trick (disbanded settler, then found el dorado on turn 5, goody hut for spearman)... now time to build an army!!
 
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