Explioting a Food Heavy Start?

Shall we just get back to the "food heavy start" discussion from earlier, instead of wheter or not you should settle on a hill tile? Starts with several plains/hills aren't exactly the starts OP was talking about.
 
very true.
Move is the best playable option but has some risks. I've go th wrong way onto desert or hit the coast or into a CS.
I've sent my warrior forward one way when a scout pops up behind me
I just find its easier to restart. There should be some production ... I meaneven in V an unemployed person gave 1 production
To me slinger slinger slinger seems OK on paper but when you play in reality and your slingers take forever to build its just zzz as you slip back and the delayed atack now faces archers and walls
Equally settlers take forever and you are often DOW's or barbed in the meantime.
 
Unconquered Sun said:
You are talking about the window between maxed mines (Industrialization on the tech line) and forest planting (Conservation on the civics line).

I strive to have the game decided as early as possible. By T150 my advantage is such it's irrelevant if my capital has one more mine to work as opposed to having this pop point work something else.

Early game is where you want to grab every possible advantage on Deity. A free production and a defense bonus are vital.
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I'm with victoria on this one. Not that i will automatically come off a hill to settle if it allows me to get good tiles in the initial culture ring, but i'd rather keep it available, especially if it's a grassland hill. This thing will quickly become a 2f3h tile, which is basically the tile i want early. i'd rather mine a hill, than farm a grassland, always.

As for the benefits of settling onto a hill, meh... The defensive bonus rarely comes into play. Like Vic said, i'll have 3 archers and 2/3 warriors by T30 in 90% of my games. More than enough to repel anything, barbs or an early war. So yeah, i'd rather have that hill available to mine with my 1st or 2nd worker, even more if it has woods on it for a chop\mine combo. It will bring me a lot more than if i settle on it.

Now of course it's a situational thing. If i have a hill heavy start i wont bother. But if i see that this hill i start on will just be one of the 2 hills i have in my first 2 ring border, no way i m settling on it.
 
Victoria said:
Flat grassland, I have tried various strategies.

You typically die or just fall behind. It's not all bad, you have to remember that you do get extra prod for the capital so yes you need either a settler or to take out another city fast. It's just easier to restart unless you like to play a real challenging game and do not mind loosing so much. I did win a grassland start but a lot of luck was involved.
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This. Either abandon the capital and make a new production heavy city, or slap in agoge (maybe using autocracy and urban planning) and use whatever production you have to pump out military units to kill a neighbour.
 
CivScientist said:
I've pretty much written off production starved starts at this point as just being a difficulty level harder than expected. Still, sometimes I don't want to generate a new map. Is there anyway to make lemonade out of grasslands?
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Nah, just like starting with a lot of tundra lots of spots are just objectively worse. I never reload though. Tips:

micro your early game citizens - simply not losing to rushes is your first priority so you need to make sure you don't have too many civs stuck on grasslands that you can't get your slingers up fast enough
Build settlers more often from your capital - you replenish the food lost to a settler faster and extra pops you would have from not building setters wouldn't help you much anyway
Buy tiles where needed
Be slightly more inclined to get specialists buildings and again you'll have to micro citizens into those spots
 
There's an interesting choice to make if you get a start with a lot of floodplains and\or marshes. I got such a start in my Egypt Deity game and i picked the pantheon that gives +1h for every floodplain\march. It actually gave 10 or so hammer in my capital in the end, which helped early as most hills were in the 3rd ring (it was not a very nice starting location....)

But yeah, i feel like food is way too underpowered compared to hammers. In CiV, the balance was better imo. In CiVI there aint much point in getting your cities to grow tall, all you get is more district slots which after pop12 or 16 seems to not be needed at all.

Atm, it's a really bad idea to try and go with 4 cities and focus on growing tall. Which is sad as it pushes you toward conquest if you get a map where you can't settle at least 6/7 cities (for a SV, a CV would need a bit more).

i'm really curious and earger to know how firaxis will iterate on the district system and the tall\wide scenarios in the expansions.
 
cazaderonus said:
Atm, it's a really bad idea to try and go with 4 cities and focus on growing tall
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When I did CV testing I could normally manage a victory roughly on the number of cities matching the difficulty level but that's being completely focused purely on getting there. With the changes that have come in the last patch I am tempted to add 1-2 cities to that quote. That was what i would call building a tall empire... i.e. not spreading overseas/around the pangea. trying to shoehorn city build into Civ V terms is a bit of a fail IMO.
 
Victoria said:
When I did CV testing I could normally manage a victory roughly on the number of cities matching the difficulty level but that's being completely focused purely on getting there. With the changes that have come in the last patch I am tempted to add 1-2 cities to that quote. That was what i would call building a tall empire... i.e. not spreading overseas/around the pangea. trying to shoehorn city build into Civ V terms is a bit of a fail IMO.
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Yeah probably. I actually started a thread about this, feeling it could lead to interesting talks.
 
I get these starts often playing Egypt, either loads of floodplains or even floodplains with sugar which is a crazy 5 food unimproved, 3 turns to 2 population. I've found the best bet is to turn the capital into a settler factory asap. Get your first settler out the moment you have two population, try and fit a granary in if you can, ideally by buying it, and rush to early empire for the colonization policy. Put your second city in a good production spot and start doing the real work from there.

Remember that you get science and culture from population so use that to your advantage to get the production saving policies and the techs to exploit the resources earlier to somewhat make up for the lack of production. It's not completely comparable, but it's what you're given so you need to run with it.
 
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I do the same. Although sometimes I get a builder if there are tiles I can improve right away. A city with two 4-5 food tiles can get to 6 pop on its own pretty quick so long as you get another unit of housing in the cap ASAP.
 
Abraxis said:
I get these starts often playing Egypt, either loads of floodplains or even floodplains with sugar which is a crazy 5 food unimproved, 3 turns to 2 population. I've found the best bet is to turn the capital into a settler factory asap. Get your first settler out the moment you have two population, try and fit a granary in if you can, ideally by buying it, and rush to early empire for the colonization policy. Put your second city in a good production spot and start doing the real work from there.

Remember that you get science and culture from population so use that to your advantage to get the production saving policies and the techs to exploit the resources earlier to somewhat make up for the lack of production. It's not completely comparable, but it's what you're given so you need to run with it.
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Hence my suggestion of taking the +1 hammer for floodplain in those situations. Really helps with production while taking advantage of the food to spam settlers. Though in that case i'd wait until pop4/5 and having a granary before spamming settlers just so it's more efficient.
 
Lady of the Reeds and Marshes is incredible on the right maps. I once had a city with 13 floodplains lol.
 
Building settlers should be more flexible. In previous Civ Games you used food + production to build a settler. It would be a nice choice having 2 settler production types :
- the normal one with production and 1 pop cost and
- the desperate one with 2 pop cost but less production needed for those civs like egypt who start in a floodplains paradise surrounded by desert. (At least for ancient and classical era.) (Maybe a unique settler for egypt.)

Taking the Civ 6 production rules, it is hard to imagine how Egypt built the Pyramids around 5.000 years ago.

"Lady of the Reeds and Marshes" definitely helps a lot but it takes a long time to get the pantheon when production is so meager that you cannot build a monument or a Holy Site early on. Egypt's Sphinx improvement has to be researched first and you need a 1st builder for the Eureka and a 2nd builder to place the Sphinxe. (Have to try it out.) Without production you would delay the 2nd builder and somehow build a settler and buy another one with gold. The old worker was definitely more valuable since you had to buy/build only one to improve your city over time. Maybe egypt should also be able to turn population into builders (in ancient and classical era or depending on government) ...

Play a start as Egypt on Ynaemp Giant Earth ... a long river and lots of flood plains. At least you usually get some horses there near your starting position.

Science from population has been critized in many posts. However when a civ like egypt has a food heavy start, population grows quickly and so does the science from pop. This feels rather historic. Imagine you would need to build a Campus to get any science (as some people suggest) and you have a start with no production ... Late game impact from science per pop in a wide empire should be treated separately.
 
Usually, the lack of production at least means gold resources (plantations, coast, etc). Focus on improving those tiles and use the gold to buy military and also a monument (which is mandatory). Reyna is also important. You need to grow that borders ASAP to reach more gold tiles or a miraculous hill.
(I'm necroing the thread on purpose since I didn't see anyone mentioning how the game compensantes the lack of production with the abundancy of gold).
 
Bliss said:
Usually, the lack of production at least means gold resources (plantations, coast, etc). Focus on improving those tiles and use the gold to buy military and also a monument (which is mandatory). Reyna is also important. You need to grow that borders ASAP to reach more gold tiles or a miraculous hill.
(I'm necroing the thread on purpose since I didn't see anyone mentioning how the game compensantes the lack of production with the abundancy of gold).
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This +1

I often feel like the CivFanatics forum for Civ 6 has become very one-sided, when it comes to production. Yes, indeed production is important, but there are ways to go around it if you play the game the right way. Too many of deity players talk about a restart if they get a poor start. That's fine, but does that then make you a legit deity player if you need to re-roll starts in order to win?
If you don't have production, then gold and faith are king. Buy everything instead of building it.

Edit: Regarding lack of gold, you just sell everything you own to the AI, I think :)
 
@Victoria doesn't actually lose games when playing seriously.
It is only when @Victoria is experimenting that losing comes into the equation.
@Victoria and many of the top players are already finished by turn 125 to 175.
Grassland Heavy Start or not these players win every time.
 
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