Regarding Rerolling

[Vitruvius]

Do you reroll?
Do you reroll right off the bat, or after a few rounds of exploration?
What is the most important factor that makes you want to reroll?
What makes you want to stop rerolling and commit?
Do you consider rerolling a kind of cheating?

 

[GhostSalsa]

I consider it a reflection of a low threshold for declaring a game lost. I play on immortal, favor weaker civs, and don't steal workers, because it leads to a more competitive late game, but also means most of my starts are clear lost causes early on.

But I also just hate a lot of starts. I like mountains and hills and sea resources. I don't want a flat capital surrounded by plantations. I hate plantation tiles. I don't want a coastal start with no resources. Flat cities are stupid-looking and I don't want to spend 3-- turns looking at a stupid city. Reroll.

 

[GoStu]

I'll reroll if I feel my start position has left me with a real disadvantage. There's a few reasons I'd feel that way:

- Continents start, total isolation. (No trade routes mean I'll never balance a budget).
- Terrible flat tundra start, with no way out in sight. I.E.: only route blocked by hostile neighbor.
- Terrible Jungle start (not much bonus food, no production to speak of, no end in sight).

Jungle and Tundra can be made to work, but it's absolutely possible to be utterly screwed there too.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Never. And repeatedly.

Theoretically never. For me the fun of the game is playing whatever hand you get dealt. I even like the challenge of playing out of a difficult start.

But . . . after I've played a long game through to the end, I go through start after start as I'm beginning my next game. No start pleases me. It's not that I'm looking for a better start. Like I say, I'm happy to play out of a difficult position. It's that being at the start is frustrating to me. I miss my battleships from the last game.

I take a deep breath, say "I'm playing this one out to the end regardless," roll a new start and then I start playing that one. I just have to be really ready to start and then I'll take whatever the game gives me.

 

[Jaybe]

Never have I rerolled. I have had a couple tundra starts since Civ5 release that I quit after several turns. Rerolling may not be cheating, but I would call it probably short-sighted.

I also almost always settle where my settler starts. If my capital doesn't seem ideally located, perhaps it will improve with border growth; and 2nd/3rd city locations may change the situation dramatically.

 

[KmDubya]

I like the challenge of playing the hand that you were dealt. Occasionally I have restarted a game that I lost in order to try a different strategy.

If the starting terrain is poor then you have an incentive to expand quickly with liberty.

If you are hemmed in with aggressive neighbors can you crank out units and take their cities? I had a great game as the Dutch started on a peninsular and was blocked by the Huns, no room for another city. I had horses so went for chariot archers to bomb his city and horseman to take it.

I've had games where I was alone on an island until caravels.

I like random civs with random everything. Sometimes you are in the tundra but with a lot of iron, sometimes in a swampy jungle.

Overcoming a poor start is rewarding for me, re-rolling until you get the perfect multi-salt start just seems to take the challenge away. Now my experiences are at emperor level so I can afford to be non-optimal in my choices. I would imagine that at diety deviating from the one true path (tradition >> rationalism) would result in a loss as would having a poor starting location.

 

[lokithepunishr]

I don't reroll, but I will start a new game if I get a bad tundra or desert start, but only after 10 turns or so, once I've made sure that the start is terrible. Although I only use random civ, and mostly on no start bias, I will only restart if the start is terrible, a bad start is nice for a challenge but a terrible start is just not good enough for me on immortal or deity, which I struggle to win with if I have a decent start. I've never understood the jungle start hate, I find it very easy generally because of the quick growth and science ability, but maybe that just works into my playstyle?

 

[Walter R]

Not very often nowadays, would be most likely if I'd mis-clicked something critical. I was very tempted to in current game as I spawned on a landmass big enough for several cities (5-6) but had only two luxes (spices + 4 silk)...and then trireme exploration showed me that I was entirely isolated from other civs. But I didn't and I've quite enjoyed the rest of the game, though harder work initially to catch up on tech. Oh and it was my favourite start terrain too (not) - jungle!

 

[qemist]

Do you reroll?
Do you reroll right off the bat, or after a few rounds of exploration?
What is the most important factor that makes you want to reroll?
What makes you want to stop rerolling and commit?
Do you consider rerolling a kind of cheating?

Well obviously it is cheating if you try to claim credit for consequent wins. Otherwise do what you like. If I have specific strategy in mind I want to try, then I reroll if the start does suit it. Otherwise I take what I'm given.

Reloading is a different kettle of fish.

 

[Plumfairy]

The only time I reroll is if I get a start with lots of unforested non-hill tundra. Blech.

 

[Whiterussian]

Since my play time is limited (Family...) i can only play so many games. Therefore i want to make the most out of it. I hate putting 100-200 turns into a game and then realise i can't make up the "bad" starting position. Therefore if my start has too much tundra or desert or water or whatever i reroll.

BUT i give myself usualy a max. of 3 chances for a reroll. (instead of reroll untill you get a perfect start..)

 

[joshua43214]

If I am playing a random civ, I just go with what I got most of the time.

If I picked the civ ahead of time, I always reroll if the start bias failed. Inca with no hill/mountains, Japan with no sea resources, William with no marsh, is a mark of bad programming. I program mathematical models, I am sure I could program a simple logic test to ensure the game used a good bias - it is ridiculous that the pros over at Firaxis where not permitted to do this.

 

[brasswire]

I try not to re-roll and I don't like doing it, but there are circumstances that I will.

Tundra will make me re-roll. I like to have a nice, big capital so a Tundra/coastal start without a lot of deer/fish is enough to make me re-roll.

Also, being the only civilization on an island will do it for me. I just don't find the game fun if I have to wait that long to meet another civilization.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

On DEITY:

If it's a dense jungle start, reroll (unless I'm playing Brazil/there are a ton of bananas/spices nearby after I move once or twice)
If it's a tundra start, reroll
If it's a coastal start with only a couple of sea luxes and that's it, reroll (unless I'm specifically trying to improve that part of my game)
If there are no good hill settling spots, reroll
If there are only 1 or 2 luxes within 6 spots (after a little exploration), reroll

ALSO: if I can't mug a worker within the first 20 turns, or fail in my attempt, definitely reroll.


ON IMMORTAL:
Same as above except I'm willing to muscle through without an early worker mugging and am more tolerant of coastal starts. I frankly love being able to settle on the coast for future Cargo Ships, but it seems like half the time they plant you on the coast and there's not much there.



I wish I could relax the worker-bit on Deity but the difference between no mugged workers and 2-3 mugged workers is humungous.

For what it's worth, I rarely play the OP civs -- so I don't start with that advantage.

Do I think it's cheating? Not if I admit it! And not on Deity, where the AI is cheating like crazy. It's not as though I'm rerolling until I get that salt+wheat+hill-next-to-mountain start.

 

[Teproc]

I never reroll, but I frequently abandon games after 100 turns or so.

 

[TheGrumpyBuddha]

I would also like to say that I don't know if I've ever seen a pro post a Youtube video where there were fewer than 4 or 5 luxes nearby, + at least one or two worker muggings relatively early on -- but we all know that sometimes you just don't get those setups. I fear that a lot of the supposed "benchmarks" that get thrown around here (like Education by turn 105) are more like best case scenarios -- more like an idealized target than something you should be meeting or surpassing on a regular (or even irregular) basis.

 

[BigChiefLizzy]

I'll restart 3-4 times max for the reasons others have already mentioned (lots of tundra, coast with no sea resources etc... desert I'll try if I think I have a chance at getting Petra).

I do sometimes think though, since if I restart I do so in the first few turns, how many times have I restarted the game and El Dorado or Fountain of Youth were only a tile or two away unseen?

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

Never. And repeatedly.

Theoretically never. For me the fun of the game is playing whatever hand you get dealt. I even like the challenge of playing out of a difficult start.

But . . . after I've played a long game through to the end, I go through start after start as I'm beginning my next game. No start pleases me. It's not that I'm looking for a better start. Like I say, I'm happy to play out of a difficult position. It's that being at the start is frustrating to me. I miss my battleships from the last game.

I take a deep breath, say "I'm playing this one out to the end regardless," roll a new start and then I start playing that one. I just have to be really ready to start and then I'll take whatever the game gives me.

Holy smokes! There is some one else who does it. I'd say never, I've played my share of bad starts but I'll start a dozen or so new games in between my actual games. I've even rerolled good starts for no particular reason at all, it's funny.

It's not so much that I miss my end game from the last game but I hate starting out new with one city and taking a while to develop. I really like the midgame where everyone's still somewhat competitive and infrastructure is built. Those late medieval early renaissance wars can be so fun.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

It's not cheating, it's the result of bad map scripts that give players horrible things like half ocean-half mountain a-la-Chile, 100% jungle, 0 food in first ring, or coastal with 50% useless water tiles.

 

[Erelich]

The only situation where I will consider rerolling is if I'm playing a Civ that relies heavily on certain strategic resources and there are none nearby (Mongolia with no horses = instant restart) otherwise I just work with whatever I'm given. I've only just started playing on Emperor difficulty though, so getting a poor start isn't the end of the world. I can imagine getting a good start is more important on higher difficulty levels.