BtS archipelago high seas tropics monarch

[Dave Hartwick]

OK, tester post, please bear with me. As I suspected, taking a screenie caused a serious slowdown on my so-not-a-gaming-PC, so I'm going to avoid doing them where I can. It's like going for a run at a pig farm.

Anyway, here goes:

Spoiler :

Sample shot of the (seemingly likely) set up. If anybody has a fun option to suggest, please do so. Otherwise, nothing much to see here.

The sample save is just to assure anyone concerned that they can load a game I'd generate.

 

[silk1976]

loads ok here. No mods seem to be present, and it allows me to have BUG loaded.

can we play on this map????? 2 clams, a corn, a banana and an elephant all in the BFC?!

Why can't I roll up these kinds of starts!

(ok, now I really have to go to work. Enough fooling around this morning)

 

[Dave Hartwick]

I played that start for a while. Willem's on the same island and lacks iron...

 

[nocho]

Right now I'm at work so I'll try to load the save this evening, but I guess it will work fine. Otherwise I'll just reconfigure my PC until it works . Ok with the setup, just give us a cooler name than HP_Administrator, please! "King HP_Administrator, ruler of the waves" just doesn't sound right...

 

[Arlborn]

I played that start for a while. Willem's on the same island and lacks iron...

Well, if you already played then we can't play that start, we'd have to rerroll, which is fine, this was only a test right? I will check if my PC loads it.

 

[silk1976]

Dave -

As a new Civ IV player, we'll excuse you in this case, letting such a prime looking starting spot (especially on Monarch!) go to the trash by playing on it.

It wouldn't be fair for us to give you too much $#!^ about it - because in time, once you get into a swing of crappy starting rolls, you'll be able to kick yourself, which will be punishment enough

 

[Sengir]

You can change the name after you started (either via option or via Alt-D?? (not sure about the exact shortcut). I think King HP_Administrator has a nice ring to it though

I agree we should restart if you have allready played, will check whether it loads as soon as I have access to a civ-comp.

 

[Arlborn]

The save works fine for me.

 

[Sengir]

Save works here.

 

[Dave Hartwick]

I just realized that I'm going to be busy for the next 24 hours, or at least away from my so-called gaming computer. I'll be able to reply from work, though.

So I went ahead and made up the starts:

HighSeas1:

Spoiler :

HighSeas2:

Spoiler :

HighSeas3:

Spoiler :

HighSeas4:

Spoiler :

HighSeas5:

Spoiler :

I've emailed the saves to my work address, so if we can get a call on which map to take, we can get this ball rolling within, say, 12 hours. I hope I'm not jumping the gun or anything and hopefully everybody's happy with the options.

I'm especially interested to find out why you like a particular start. Me, I like number 4, because I'm a greedy glutton of a man. Gems are nice, too, though. Food isn't everything.

All of these saves are on the same settings as those in the spoiler box in the tester post.

That earlier save file was just a tester, though, and on the incorrect difficulty setting to boot. Thanks for checking compatibility. I figured it'd be all right but it's wise to check.

 

[Sengir]

Start 1: Nice start, 3 hills for production crabs for food; move settler 1W to make room for another city on the east coast to grab the clams. Move warrior 1N to check the tiles first though.

Start 2: Also three hills, but no food. Move warrior west to check for seafood on that side and settle there if seafood is available. Not a really good start.

Start 3: Ouch. One resource (plus hopefully something in the fog) It's in the utter south, with tundra showing in the fog (probably a deer in the fog, or silver).

Start 4: That's a whole lotta food. Not to much prod though (but there might be a hill in the fog). Also land in sight for more settling goodness.

Start 5: We start with mining so gems will be hooked up quickly. Good start overall.


Personally I think 4 and 5 are really strong, 1 is good but not overly so, 2 and 3 are definately subpar. Depending on the comfortlevel of the players on board I would go for 1 (most players comfortable with at least Prince, some Monarch). Or 5 (most players trying for Prince in solo). 4 has so much food that I wouldn't know what to do with it

 

[Arlborn]

4 is the typical super-coastal-food start. It might end up to be to easy for a SG.


I like 5. Problem is that we can't reveal what is in the fog short of moving the settler or settling, which wouldn't make sense. But I've seen again and again that production is specially important for a arch map(I might be wrong) and that start isn't too bad on the production side.

There might even be another sea food resource in the fog, but the problem is the same, we can't see it.

I really like gems though.


Start 1 seems to be very balanced too and start 2 isn't half bad either, but nothing truly special there.


Start 3 is the worst I believe.

 

[nocho]

Nr 1: Ok-ish start but nothing great. Maybe a bit food-poor longterm, though that applies to nearly all starts. Like Sengir said probably best to move settler 1W for another city on the east, but move warrior 1NE first to see what's there.

Nr 2: Yikes! Only 2 calendar resources for food, jungles nearby. Nogo!

Nr 3: Only corn, but that probably means there's metal or horses in the bfc. I think there's a minimum of resources each start has and it's definitely higher than 1. Somehow I think this one might have the biggest island of the 5 starts. But you never know, of course.

Nr 4: Good food, think there must be another hill N of western clams, read somewhere that each start always has 3 hills minimum. Room for city on southern tip on E wine sharing clam and rice with capital. Maybe consider move capital 1N of current settler position also on wine (maintains all the food) to have 2nd city on forest 1S of rice.

Nr 5: Gems rock of course, but clam+cow is not much food longterm like 1st start. Have a feeling this island is tiny...

I did some rolls with these settings yesterday and the chances in any case are quite big that we end up with an island with room for just 2 or 3 cities.

Preferences? Probably 4 and 3. 3 is a bit of a gamble but I think something nice must show up, either metals/horse or some extra resource in the 2nd ring east or north. Or both

My 0,02$...

 

[Sengir]

You are right that 3 probably has hidden resources, but the main thing is that it is in the extreme south. While there is room for another city southwest of the settler, it would be tundra heavy if not outright icy. Wouldn't mind playing 4 though.

 

[silk1976]

Not knowing how to read into initial maps all that well yet (people talking about super high food starts, hidden resources, etc - I dont know crap about that level of detail).

That being said, my current line of thinking is that high food rules for a capital, because in the beginning having high pop is very flexible. Most production in the early game comes about via whipping, and high food helps rebuild from that. Once a library is built, you can run a couple science specialists, etc.

Lack of in a capital doesn't bother me so much, because another city can be founded to be a production city, which would ultimately produce military units. Also - I dont give a hoot about 'hidden' resources near a capital. I'll be looking for oil in 1600 AD, not 4000 BC. The only potential hidden resource I care about in the early game is metal. But with an isolated start - we probably wont be doing an axe rush or anything that requires a quick buildup of military might.

So - all that is a reason I'd say start #4. The fact it has wine is a bonus - especially as it can be hooked w/monarchy as opposed to calendar (needed for sugar, dye, etc). There are two hills for some production, but there are forests for chopping workboats

 

[nocho]

Well food is king, so 4 is surely the safest bet, maybe even too good as Arlborn suggests, although personally I've got nothing against good starts! My point about hidden resources is not as much about any strategic/military advantage, it's more about the extra tile value any resource yields. Apart from that I think there must be at least one more directly visible resource (hopefully food) in the BFC, now in the fog. Can't remember ever having had just one visible resource to start with. Anyone knows more about this? That said, number 3 remains a gamble.
Anyway, I'll go with any of the starts, al long as it's not number 2.

 

[nocho]

BTW just tested the save and works fine for me too.

Let's see what Loki Strikes and dualmaster have to say about the start and let's get this thing going!

 

[silk1976]

Agreed - lets get a concensus. I'm certainly no master at this (hell, I usually go with the first roll in my single player games, and settle in place) - so all input is valued.

Rereading my post, I see it may have been a little bit ascerbic RE: hidden resources. My apologies, nocho. Didn't mean it that way. It was more of a stream of conscious thinking in my thinking that didn't make it through the 'online civility' filter.

 

[nocho]

Oh please, no need to apologize for anything! Some inoffensive straight talking shouldn't harm anyone

 

[Dave Hartwick]

Both Arlborn and Sengir have spoken against start 3. Nocho has spoken strongly against 2. Let's take them off the table to simplify getting to concensus. Nocho likes 3 as a gambler's start, so if duelmaster or Zero Strike like it, we can put it back on. It'd be good to eliminate some choices, though, so let's tentatively strike 2 and 3 off the list.

Silk and I strongly favor start 4 but haven't ruled anything out. Nocho likes it, too. Sengir doesn't mind it. Arlborn has expressed the reservation that it may be a little too easy.

We've had some expressions of interest in 1 and 5 for various reasons and general agreement that they're fine for starts.

As Sengir pointed out, in addition to all that food, number 4 also has visible coastline to the NE and SW, which will help assure that we're not gimped for room to expand in the pre-astronomy times.

I don't like start 1 in that aspect, although it looks like the island goes for at least a little ways in two directions. Unfortunately I had the view zoomed in too far on the screenshot, so there is a possibility of a bit of visible coast somewhere. 5 is even worse in that it looks very much like a pennisula.