Did the Great Cartographer die?

[ellgieff]

There for sure should be posiibility to select type of your start in SinglePlayer game, cause a lot of restarts are killing me also. To those, who say: "Play as is" - if I want to test new strategy, I can not do it on bad start.

I don't really understand this. If you want to actually test a new strategy, a bad start is the thing you want - because that will actually test the power of the strategy

 

[Optional]

I can understand the issues put forward in this thread, but I don't think you can blame the cartographer. The maps haven't even changed with BNW.

I think there's a couple of other factors that are closer to the root of your problem:
*Start positions get more quality checks than ever, they're more 'cooked' than in previous versions of civ. But perhaps because of that, surrounding terrain can look relatively weak, and then if you come across a nice spot again, that place is nice because it's someone else's start position...
*Civ 5 uses global happiness, so you need to be more careful about putting in a new town. More isn't always better. If the new spot isn't good then it's not worth settling. This was different in at least Civ III as well (sorry, I haven't played Civ IV; you'll need to judge that for yourself).
So because of this, expanding isn't much encouraged.

Err... there's not more war in BNW than before. There was lots of war in vanilla, less in G&K, and BNW is by far the most peaceful version of the game as yet. Forward settling is much less likely to get punished now.

I don't think there's an awful lot you can do to make your game experience better, though. Playing on average settings is best for keeping the amount of awkward terrain down. You could go into the files to mod-lower the amount of desert and jungle that the maps are dealing you, I personally find those percentages a bit high and have lowered them slightly, but I doubt this will make a huge change for you.

 

[Jewman]

I love the every map I get on continents/Pangaea and i can't remember the last time I ever played a game without legendary start.

 

[dexters]

I think it's all in the head; looking for a 'better' start often translates into aborted games because you may get your perfect 1st city then run into trouble on your 2nd and 3rd.

I used to have so many aborted games (on Civ3 mind you) that it became impossible for me to 'play' the game because I would finish 1 game, try to start the next and never find a start that I 'wanted' and I ended up losing interest in playing altogether.

In Civ5, I give myself the option to restart a game if the start is somehow really horrendous, but more often than not, I often just play what is given.

Play like that and it shall set you free.

And make you a better player. Part of Civ is working with variables that don;t go your way.

 

[Funababbitt]

I can understand the issues put forward in this thread, but I don't think you can blame the cartographer. The maps haven't even changed with BNW.

I was surprised and doubtful about this but had no counter to present. I did notice that there seems to be a pretty broad consensus about lousy placements at the start that make the start of BNW the slowest ever. I have however just spent a little under an hour on a game, thinking I had a playable map. It took that long to discover that my "natural territory" consisting of what appeared to be a long isthmus proved, after a trek through jungle, to be on an inland sea, twenty hexes across at its length and 12 at its width (about 52 turns to get back to previously explored territory). My strategic plan came crashing to the floor - taking away my intriguing prospects and replacing them with boring ones.

I saw this in earlier editions (huge maps) but on a much smaller scale and I mention it here, because in one recent, frustrating sequence of re-rolls, I had similar encounters with "inland seas" in four out of ten starts. I think it is valid to ask, from the perspective of game play, why bother with this sort of "gotcha" prank that is all but certain to kill most games? The experience here is not an outside-the-box pencil and paper test. I like those too but the fun of Civilization is that simulates the real world.

 

[Alziel]

Whilst I agree that going wide is more difficult now I haven't found it to be impossible at all - far from it! Maybe it's just my style of play?

In a recent (Emperor level) game as the Shoshone I ended up with a continent to myself (after ousting my only neighbour, Gandhi) and ended that game with 14 cities (3 of which were once Gandhi's - I annexed his capital and puppeted the other two). I had started with Liberty in that game. During the replay at the end of the game I saw that I was also the first Civ to settle 7 cities - by the start of the Renaissance era (completely surrounding Gandhi before I went in for the kill). Although I did suffer a big hit on happiness early on, this was offset by pursuing Mercantile City States and other City States which had luxury resources that I didn't already have. I suffered one other major happiness hit in the eraly Modern era when the two most influeential civs chose to take Autocracy (I had chosen Freedom) but I soon steadied that ship by using a combination of Broadcast Towers, Hotels and Freedom happiness tenets.

The last game I played I was the Zulu and I started on a continent with three other Civs (Polynesia, The Mayans and Korea). I only settled three cities myself and as soon as I had placed an Ikanda in each and had got my Impis I went after Polynesia and wiped them (they had 3 cities giving me a total of 6). I then went after the Mayans after steadying my economy and happiness and wiped them too (they also had 3 cities, giving me a total of 9). Finally, I wiped Korea (who also had 3 cities, giving me a total of 12). I settled two more cities before the end of the game for a final total of 14 cities at the end of the game. Again, good use of CS alliances helped to keep me afloat. Also, I never picked Liberty in that game - I went Honour.

So my two previous games ended with 13 and 14 cities respectively - most of which were acquired fairly early on. It wasn't as easy to do as usual but it certainly wasn't impossible. Both ended with Diplomatic wins incidentally - (although I was going for the Science Victory both times - but that's another story!).

To the main point of the thread, I've not felt the need to reroll a start for a long time and certainly never once since BNW was released. Like others have said, maybe it's just a question of playstyle??

Cheers

 

[Walter E Kurtz]

This topic has popped up several times recently. You rarely get 4 good city locations. Or at least you'll run out of good spots immediately after that and/or lose one to your neighbor.

Of course it all depends on map type and size. I've found that Pangea type maps are often the best because they give you more room. Going large also helps.

Another really bad consequence of the current design - and I never see this discussed anywhere - is the fact that AI will settle in every free damn spot that you HAVE to leave open because it absolutely sucks for a city. You will see the AI drop cities everywhere. On deity they will be doing it on lightning speed too. This really ticks me off.

 

[isau]

For me it's an issue of some starts just being boring. If I get a really bad start I do usually reroll less because I would lose and more because the wait between turns for something to happen makes me lose interest in the game. Only about 20% of my games makes it past turn 200 anyway before I start wanting something new.

 

[Karmah]

I really don t relate to OPs conclusion.
If something I tend to have more good starting position rather than less , since coastal is now pretty much ok if you expand your second coastal granary early enough (I should say second city but really on my coastal start , this is all this city is for a little while , a food support for my grandioso capita )