Dealing with dirt starting positions

[Exsanguination]

Generally, when I start a game I'd like my capital on a river and in the vicinity of a bonus resource. Sometimes you don't get this. What tips do you have when you get one of these positions? this basically is the sole reason I haven't gone past turn 5 in any game for the past month. I get such crappy starting positions.

The great part is, though, I recently started making a mod, and everytime I test out things with the mod I get starting positions with like 3 cattle, or on gold, or with tons of luxuries. But once I start a real game, I get dirt.

 

[Tweedledum]

So you get a hopeless starting position
Isn't that what the "New Game" option is for...!?

 

[Marzipan]

Yes starting position seems to have a big impact. I wonder if we'll ever see a scoring system that takes starting position into account, allowing you to play as a small fish and still win a histographic victory by doing well with what you have.

 

[Nuke on a Stick]

I play with what I get. Being a third world hellhole has it's own charm, don't you know?

Honestly, starting position(my capital) often influences how I go through the game. I have a paradise as a capital area? I'm going to go the enlightened civ route, going full blast on culture and winning in a peaceful way. Am I stuck in an unhabitable expanse of desert? Fine, I'll play as a warmonger though the ages. By the end game, win or lose, the world will glow green.

That alone makes each game different.

 

[Rob Lindsey]

I guess you could trek until you find a better site. Big waste of valuable turns, though. No, like the others I tend to play with what I get, unless moving one square would make a huge difference in production or food.

I just figure that there must be something good out there in this world, so if my tenth city is double the size and produces triple the amount of shields of my capital city, it doesn't really bother me. And if you really, really want a fantastic capital, just build a palace in your new favourite city.

:soldier: :soldier: :soldier: :tank: :tank: :soldier: :soldier: :soldier:

 

[BillChin]

Bad starting positions seem more common with the Mac version. There was one old thread where a Mac player reported numerous starts that were unplayable (e. g. starting on a four tile island). Every PC version start that I have seen is winnable on Monarch level, though sometimes it is a long road.

Bad starts are more of a problem on huge maps because the band of bad terrain is usually wider than on a smaller map. One way to cope is to build cities close together, nurse the few decent tiles, and prepare for a relatively early war to claim the good land from the enemy. See the many threads about war for tips on how to proceed with this option.

 

[sealman]

should play with what you get. the computer does not get to restart if it is in a losey position. (then again, the ai cheats
)

 

[Jason Fox]

Unless I'm boxed in by mountains and jungles I'll play with what I get.

I also rarely move more than one square to settle the first city but almost always have to move that one time.

 

[Marzipan]

It's happened to me at least once (in a game that I played through to the end) and I see it happen to other AI civs all the time - starting on a smallish island. It's fun to play like this sometimes to see if you can survive til the end, but you know there is no way to win except a diplomatic victory.

Here is a way the score could be weighted based on starting position:

Compute the sum of shields, commerce, and food of each square of the raw map divided by the distance the square is from the civ's starting location. Add up all of these values for every square on the map for each civ (sounds like a lot of work, takes the computer a second hehe). Take the highest value, normalize that to 1.0 and weight the other civ's values accordingly. Then each turn when the score is computed, divide all score computations by this factor (since it is less than 1, dividing will result in a higher score). Have a game option for historgraphic score computation, default is 'normal', the other choice is 'weighted based on starting position'.

 

[Exsanguination]

Originally posted by Tweedledum
So you get a hopeless starting position
Isn't that what the "New Game" option is for...!?

I restarted 30+ times yesterday and I got nothing but dirt. I don't mind playing crappy starting positions, but its when theAI gets those nice, juicy ones. Which almost always happens.

 

[Switch625]

If you are truly desperate for a decent start position, use the editor to create a scenario w/map and "customize" a start position. Yeah, it's kind of slimy, but at least you'll get a game. The drawback is, you'll have to keep hitting restart until you get your "custom" start position.

I do this sort of thing the first few times after I "move up" a difficulty level, just to get a feel for game play at the harder level. I knew it was time to stop when the last game I played (I'm on my first regent game without the training wheels) I had built sixteen great wonders in my capital city before the game ended. The capital had a per turn culture value of 107. Oops.

 

[Nuke on a Stick]

I play on regent now, but when I started playing civ3, I worked up the levels by playing the standard earth map, since I had a layout already in my mind. It helped me, for whatever reason.

 

[The Last Conformist]

An annoying variant of the bad starting position it the good starting position, complete with grasslands, cattle, luxuries and a river, that's surrounded in every direction by open ocean and dense junge. When/if your scouting units find the other side of the jungle (several screens away), you can count on running into the Zulu, Aztec or other psychotic AI civ who figures they'd like som jungle warfar. Sigh. Let's restart on a cool and dry world ...

 

[Tassadar]

on original version i always start on river with some luxuries around. With 1.17 i got bad position most of the time; extremities of a penesula sourrounded by water, i never got a river. Then i went back to 1.16 my first start; a river, 1 cattle on grassland, 1 golden hill on river + 2 hills on river,+ several good tile around.

My conclusion use patch 1.16, regular map size, regular continent.