Do we know the starting bias of each Civ?

[Doctor Phibes]

Oil only spawns in desert, tundra and ocean. In the default map scripts anyway.

Turns up on ice too, a whole lot. Resulting in that undignified endgame scramble for polar oil. It's not like that could happen in RL is it?

 

[fmlizard2]

You can get Oil in marshlands too, which show up in grassland.

 

[anandus]

Keejus, Jaroth's spreadsheet wasn't enough to deduct any such bias for specific Civs attributes, or what?

Where can we download the spreadsheet? It are all dead links

 

[Revoran]

Arabia: Desert, Oil resource
Greece: Marble resource
England: Coast
Polynesia: Coast
Denmark: Coast, Tundra
Ottomans: Coast, Desert (not too sure about the desert)
Iroquois: Forest
Aztecs: Jungle
Russia: Tundra
America: Used to be rivers, removed in this patch, no bias now
Mongolia: Horses resource
India: Rivers, Grassland (i think)
Inca: Hills, Mountains

Other civs: Honestly I dunno.

 

[LaminarFlow]

I was reading some threads on here and I read that Rome usually gets a starting position with iron and the same for the Incans and hills. Where can I find a list of the starting bias for each Civ in the game?

 

[Optional]

That bit about Rome is not true.
This is a recent thread on the starting biases: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=416156, although the question pops up so often that it isn't satisfactory that you have to dig in old threads to find this info.

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Threads merged.

 

[Keejus]

Arabia: Desert, Oil resource
Greece: Marble resource
England: Coast
Polynesia: Coast
Denmark: Coast, Tundra
Ottomans: Coast, Desert (not too sure about the desert)
Iroquois: Forest
Aztecs: Jungle
Russia: Tundra
America: Used to be rivers, removed in this patch, no bias now
Mongolia: Horses resource
India: Rivers, Grassland (i think)
Inca: Hills, Mountains

Other civs: Honestly I dunno.

Sorry, but you're mostly incorrect. There is no resource bias, and a civ with a coastal bias will not have a region bias. From the xml:

NOTE TO MODDERS: Each Civ can belong to only one of the four Start Bias categories, listed below.
If a Civ has entries in any of the four following tables, any entries in later tables will end up being ignored.
So... Coastal bias trumps River bias trumps Region Priority trumps Region Avoid.

So to have all the biases in one place, they are

America: Rivers? (Patch notes say this was removed, but it still shows up in the xml)
Arabia: Desert (not oil, but the desert tends to have plenty of it)
Aztec: Jungle
Denmark: Coast
Egypt: Not Jungle or Forest (IE, they'll start in any region that isn't jungle/forest)
England: Coast
Inca: Hills
India: Grass
Iroquois: Forest
Mongolia: Plains (where horses are most common)
Ottomans: Coast
Polynesia: Coast
Russia: Tundra
Siam: Not Jungle (Going to assume this is because of the Wat)
Songhai: Not Tundra
Spain: Coast

Other civs: Do not have any bias. Getting iron with Rome comes down to luck, alas

In fact, I'll add this to the OP

 

[Revoran]

Sorry, but you're mostly incorrect. There is no resource bias, and a civ with a coastal bias will not have a region bias. From the xml:

[...sic]

America: Rivers? (Patch notes say this was removed, but it still shows up in the xml)
Arabia: Desert (not oil, but the desert tends to have plenty of it)
Aztec: Jungle
Denmark: Coast
Egypt: Not Jungle or Forest (IE, they'll start in any region that isn't jungle/forest)
England: Coast
Inca: Hills
India: Grass
Iroquois: Forest
Mongolia: Plains (where horses are most common)
Ottomans: Coast
Polynesia: Coast
Russia: Tundra
Siam: Not Jungle (Going to assume this is because of the Wat)
Songhai: Not Tundra
Spain: Coast

Other civs:Do not have any bias. Getting iron with Rome comes down to luck, alas

In fact, I'll add this to the OP

Thanks man. With my post, I was basically going purely on observations (hence horses for mongolia when in fact they start on plains where horses are common). I didn't know where to look for anything in the xml.

IMO, it would be cool if greece started with a marble bias (but only a weak one) and Rome really needs at least a weak Iron bias or they are effectively gimped - it's like playing a weak civ that has no UU's.

 

[starrywisdom]

IMO, it would be cool if greece started with a marble bias (but only a weak one) and Rome really needs at least a weak Iron bias or they are effectively gimped - it's like playing a weak civ that has no UU's.

I'll tell you one thing about resource poping / bias - I was playing a marathon game with Arabia had a good 9 cities pretty much encompassing a whole continent that had a ton of desert and I managed to not get a single oil on my entire continent, it was very...very...irritating.

I really hate UU/UA/Etc that rely too much on the 'A.I.' and/or luck. Really get's frustrating when you're effectively gimped due to bad 'luck'.