Do you restart if stuck with a poor starting spot?

[DarkSchneider]

Ok, another poll, when starting a new game, do you use the world builder to determine whether you keep playing the game or start another. Personally, I've learned that certain starting scenarios are just torture, so I have been using the world builder to look at the map at the start of each game. On average, due to a poor initial starting spot, or what I can se from the world builder, I restart around twice before I play a game.

 

[jdotmi]

None of those answers really fits for me. I don't pull up world builder in any game that I actually complete. Ever. However, if my start location is looking a lot like the CivIII Cuban Ice-olationist home land, I'm going to restart. Or if I have a spectacularly craptastic starting area I'll restart. Or if I reveal Horses, Iron, and Copper and find that NONE OF THEM are near me I'll restart. As it is, I'm currently playing as Arabia and Japan has all the horses... But I have copper and Iron and a tech lead and Japan is almost toast.

So, no. But maybe, but not really.

 

[Galumphus]

I'll restart on average once out of five games, if my starting spot is just absurdly horrible (full of ice or desert, few resources)

 

[salty]

I used to restart, but now I've just added a 'not lame' climate type (less deserts, ice caps retreated) and jungles have 1 shield.

 

[Gr3yL3gion]

Rarely, I'll just hang on...

That's why my HOF have a long list of my retirements.

 

[Tauro]

I restart when I'm closed on three sides, and happens MANY times

I don't care about resources, ice or desert, and I've never opened the WB.

 

[hollebeek]

I often do if the spot is rather lame, just because I'm testing out different
strategies, and it's hard to get a fair comparison unless the starts are at
least vaguely reasonable. But I never use the world builder, I just quit after
playing for a while if it becomes obvious I'm screwed.

 

[diamond geezer]

Not done it yet, but I guess if it was completely horrible I would. Looking at the WB is cheating IMO, as is multiple restarts.

 

[warpstorm]

No, that (trying to win under adverse situations) is the fun of the game.

 

[alexti2]

The poll is missing: "Restart if the starting location is unusually good". I'd restart in this case. After winning from such start you never can say if it was your strategy that worked or it was just lucky start. So what's the point of playing?

 

[Cheeze]

I've changed my ways. In Civ3 I restarted a ton, but I have hardly any restarts in Civ4. Hardly ever when just seeing the starting position, but if I explore some and maybe north of me there's a huge desert and south only jungle or something bad like that, I will. I don't use WB either.

 

[Warspite2]

This is something I never done, I always play out what it gives me.

 

[Pentium]

Try playing on a machine with 256MB of RAM and you'll see why I never restart

 

[SJSerio]

Well, I didn't really restart at the begining much at first (though with each game, I would restart after getting so far). When I did, it wasn't so much of a bad starting position that bothered me, it was the maps themselves. I can never seem to get a decent map that suits my taste. I also noted after several reloads that the maps are always the same rough layout for each script. THAT gets boring to me after a while.

My first full game was a custom continent script that put me on a central island with a couple of other nations. It was me (America) , the Romans, The Arabians and the Chinese. Spain, England, Japan, and somebody else (I don't remember who off hand) each had their own islands in the corners of the world. After completing, and starting a new game with the same map settings (playing as the Romans this time), the map layout was the same.

I wasn't happy with the output of the other scripts either and got frustrated with the worldbuilder for creating maps. Another thing I look for is mountain ranges. If mountains are impassible, it really cuts their strategy if their are no good sized ranges around. Even using the Highlands script didn't help much. Finally, I through together a huge map that is loosely based on Earth's layout. I used a combination of YAME and WBS. YAME to layout the land and place the terrain and starting positions, and WBS to place the features and the resources as well as to tweak the rest (not AS bad when the foundation is already set). I started a game using the BH mod, but didn't like how that mod was working on it. So, I created my own mod (a very simple mod) and I am getting ready to play it out within the next couple of days. I still have some tweaks left before I begin and I want to Journal my campaign for future sharing...

 

[Seras]

so far i restart about 4-6 times when beginning a new game.

it's not so much a matter of difficulty....but if it doesn't look like i'd enjoy spending 20 hours building an empire there...why bother...i'll just restart till i get a spawn that inspires me =)

 

[irie-mon]

I don't know whether I have high standards or just bad luck, but I get about one good start spot out of every 6 or 7 generations. I never look at WB, I always decide after scouting. But usually when I do get a good start spot resource-wise, I end up sandwiched between people like Alexander and Montezuma, and one of them always seems to have the religion I didn't research. *sigh*

 

[Dragonlor]

I never restart games based on starting location. It takes much of the difficulty out of the game if you restart until you get a great spot...

 

[Pie-es-Tasty]

I play the game for a while and I'm totally losing, I'll restart. For example I was playing and I started on an island all by myself covered with almost nothing but jungle and no copper. By the time I discovered another civ I was so hopelessly behind in techs I just quit.

 

[Bain]

I used to restart, but now I've just added a 'not lame' climate type (less deserts, ice caps retreated) and jungles have 1 shield.

how do you add climate types?

 

[Proteus]

At the beginning I often restarted games after a while (which could be some time BC, but also a time after 1500 AD), even if I was faring very good, because I just played these games to learn the basics and wanted to test out the things I learned immediately on a new world (this and the fact that I had a slower Computer at the beginning where calculating a turn with the full [large/huge] map known could take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes )

But now I will only restart if very early in the game I find out, that the staring location is really bad (small island with no resources) and no way to get to good spots for settling with just a galley.
AFAIR I just restarted a game once for this reason.