Can I do anything interesting with this immortal start?

First, an anecdote to balance out some of the Civ 5 hate around here these days.

Wow. I have to say that once you get into Civ V.... it really is a good game, and I was one of the people not so pleased with it upon release. Heck, the night I got it I sent my wife out with the girls for a night on the town so I could lock myself in my room and consume hour upon hour of Civ without interruption. She left at 8 PM. I was calling her by 11 PM asking her to come home or let me meet her out or something because I was so bored. She told me "Carnage04, sit down and read the manual or something. You know half the reason you are mad is because it is new and you suck at it." That isn't an exact quote as my attempts to get her to call me Carnage04 have been met by her with looks of deep concern and possibly a bit of fear and regret.

Yeah, she was right. Once I started to understand the nuances of this new version it is a great deal more interesting. I feel it is a bit easier than Civ IV as I still consider myself quite bad at the game, but I can now beat it on Emperor 90% of the time. I have yet to get an Immortal win. It took a LONG time for me to get to that same place in Civ IV. Still....I think once we have an expansion or two Civ V could end up being the better game. Anyway, I was starting to give Immortal another go tonight and I ended up with this map. Future home of the Drunken Siamese Empire. Honestly, I am not sure how to attack this, or if it even looks like a starting point worth playing from.

I thought it was interesting in two ways. The most obvious being the amount of wine scattered around the area. The other being the eight horses that can easily be accessed by my capital. Notes: (There are desert hills on the eastern side of the map and Copenhagen has nearby incense, so I could be looking at more cultural resources over there. Dublin is the CS on the bottom of the screenshot that is cut off. I have met Japan but have not located them yet.)

Obviously I have some financial concerns. The lack of Rivers in my very immediate area is very problematic in that regard. I was thinking that it may be fun to try to take China and try to make a cultural juggernaut out of Siam's Cultural CS bonus, Wats, and the potential for quite a few earlier game Monastery cities. Anyone have any advice based on this screen shot? Should I begin thinking of rushing China? Should I prioritize popping out settlers and settling near those wine regions and getting to Theology fast? Am I simply in too bad of shape financially out of this position?

 

It looks like a promising start to me. You have a near-monopoly on wine, which means lots of gold eventually coming your way in trade. The nearby coasts on either side make it an easily defensible location. There's one of each kind of CS very nearby, making for alliances that further secure your defenses. China is one of the easier civs to rush because it tends to start out slow, and you have the horses and/or chariots. But you're also very well primed for a single-city library/NC start, after which you can expand into the monopoly, set up a solid core, and then make up your mind how much more you want to expand (if at all). Given my own preferences, I'd be tempted to go for a small-civ non-warmongering approach.

 

The first thing I notice there is that you have a nice choke point there. Buy that one tile directly to the west to keep the AI from sprouting cities south of you. That should buy you some breathing room until they can embark (just don't give them Open Borders). Then you can focus on pushing north.

What size map is it?

 

hellboy - Normal Size, Continents, Everything else standard. That choke point is an excellent idea. Would I dump my first city northward or should I be less aggressive and settle behind that point?

Txurce - Oh! I can't believe I didn't realize how easy to defend that land would be. That is a definite bonus.

 

Build north - if possinlt on the end of the river - to get the wine and establish a border with China. The gamble is whether to build right away with a REX start or to go the NC route and hope it's still there. A scout may give you an indication of what China is likely to do. Then a third city later on to get the wine to the SE.

 

It's time to start posting starts as saves.

When S&T is at its finest, there are people shadowing games . Without madscientist, the ALC king, aelf, Rusten, ABCF, etc transitioning to V, we need some new blood to step in.

 

Shadowing? Does that mean they played the game alongside and gave advice? I wouldn't mind doing that.

 

Yes. There were entire threads dedicated to inviting the community to post (in spoiler tags) entire game writeups with screenshots. Dalamb still runs Noble's Club in Civ IV strategy and tips for a reference.

But players would frequently post easy/hard/interesting starts in just a regular save format, and put screenshots + summaries up for those, with people shadowing them as well (also in spoiler tags).

I'm trying to get the sdk on my computer to see what I can do now in terms of worldbuildering starts to get a series going, but in the mean time shadow games should be easy enough with a 4000 BC start file from the OP.

 

I would do it, but I forgot to save the initial start.

Perhaps I will see if anyone would like to Shadow my next game.

 

If you haven't started two new games, the starting autosave should still be there.

 

This is actually a pretty good start. You have two 21 tiles and a lot of nearby wine you can sell. If you like, go National College first (this is actually a good strategy after the last patch), I would found the first city on the wine to your east and sell it to the AI, then on the wine to the south-east. Get Copenhagen as ally ASAP (unless they're hostile and you can find a more friendly MCS)

 

I'm presuming any saves would have to be posted in vanilla, given that mods like thals are pretty much being updated all the time, and people would have to have the correct version of the mod?

 

Two questions:
Did you play this game any further?
Did you find the save?