Captain_Wozzeck
Chieftain
I posted this on /r/civ a little while ago and it didn't get much discussion. I'm curious to know if there are others who agree with me.
TL;DR: Are start biases that put you on the edge of the map useful on Deity?
So yesterday I had a very frustrating game. I was playing as Germany, on Pangea. My starting location was in the middle, and I had 4 close neighbours. My start was a mixed bag, I stole 2 workers from Babylon, one from a CS and found one in a barb camp. However, my luxuries were calendar and trapping based, so that made the start a bit slow.
As Germany, I was pretty happy with my barb recruiting, I had 3 archers and 4 warriors by about turn 60-70 epic game pace (can't remember the exact turn, but I had just settled my second city, capital was at 4 pop).
Anyway, none of this helped when I got DoWed by the Netherlands, and an absolute sea of comp bows, spearmen and couple of swordsmen made short work of my capital. Maybe with mining luxuries I would have had a better start and got early comp bows, but as I said I need calendar and trapping.
Now I know what you might be thinking, couldn't you have bribed him to attack someone else? Here's the problem, I'd already spent my lux and gold dissuading the Ottomans from attacking after they turned up with a great general on my borders! So I had really no resources left to bribe the Netherlands. I felt utterly powerless, like my first ever game on deity.
So after that game I spent some time thinking about why I was so screwed, and I realised that when you are in the middle of a Pangea, with 4 neighbours (North, South, East, West), there is a much higher chance of this happening. When I think back to the other games I'd played recently, they were all with civs that were on the coast (Portugal, England, Ottomans) and so free of neighbours on one side, or close to tundra (Russia, Sweden), which tends to put you on the edge of the map. This is actually really useful, as it's much easier to keep 1 or 2 neighbours happy than 3 or 4!
I think this also makes life much easier for a domination victory as it means you can start war on one front, without worrying about another one opening up behind you. Much easier to snowball pushing in one direction without having to defend the other flank at the same time.
So, perhaps this is something to think about when evaluating the usefulness of civs on Deity. There already other reasons to like coastal starts (better trade routes), and it's probably my favourite start bias. Tundra starts can obviously be poor terrain, but on epic pace you can afford to move a few turns without hurting the game too much.
So, this experience has made be value coastal starts much more! In addition, I think it reveals a hidden advantage to the tundra start that can offset some of the disadvantages.
TL;DR: Are start biases that put you on the edge of the map useful on Deity?
So yesterday I had a very frustrating game. I was playing as Germany, on Pangea. My starting location was in the middle, and I had 4 close neighbours. My start was a mixed bag, I stole 2 workers from Babylon, one from a CS and found one in a barb camp. However, my luxuries were calendar and trapping based, so that made the start a bit slow.
As Germany, I was pretty happy with my barb recruiting, I had 3 archers and 4 warriors by about turn 60-70 epic game pace (can't remember the exact turn, but I had just settled my second city, capital was at 4 pop).
Anyway, none of this helped when I got DoWed by the Netherlands, and an absolute sea of comp bows, spearmen and couple of swordsmen made short work of my capital. Maybe with mining luxuries I would have had a better start and got early comp bows, but as I said I need calendar and trapping.
Now I know what you might be thinking, couldn't you have bribed him to attack someone else? Here's the problem, I'd already spent my lux and gold dissuading the Ottomans from attacking after they turned up with a great general on my borders! So I had really no resources left to bribe the Netherlands. I felt utterly powerless, like my first ever game on deity.
So after that game I spent some time thinking about why I was so screwed, and I realised that when you are in the middle of a Pangea, with 4 neighbours (North, South, East, West), there is a much higher chance of this happening. When I think back to the other games I'd played recently, they were all with civs that were on the coast (Portugal, England, Ottomans) and so free of neighbours on one side, or close to tundra (Russia, Sweden), which tends to put you on the edge of the map. This is actually really useful, as it's much easier to keep 1 or 2 neighbours happy than 3 or 4!
I think this also makes life much easier for a domination victory as it means you can start war on one front, without worrying about another one opening up behind you. Much easier to snowball pushing in one direction without having to defend the other flank at the same time.
So, perhaps this is something to think about when evaluating the usefulness of civs on Deity. There already other reasons to like coastal starts (better trade routes), and it's probably my favourite start bias. Tundra starts can obviously be poor terrain, but on epic pace you can afford to move a few turns without hurting the game too much.
So, this experience has made be value coastal starts much more! In addition, I think it reveals a hidden advantage to the tundra start that can offset some of the disadvantages.