Help with Openings

[Alterac]

Greetings everyone!

I am a long time reader of the site and a first time poster. I have been playing cIV now for nearly 8 years. Most of my games tend to be team games PvE with my friends ( we are too competitive to be able to play FFA with each other). As such my skills as a solo player are... lacking. I enjoy playing with random leaders and random maps as well as playing the hand that is dealt, no tech trading and no barbs (feel they don't do much more than force you to make a few more early warriors/chariots/axes than usual). I feel its these situations that can teach me more about how to play cIV well.

The game I am requesting some advice in is rather typical of the kind of games which give me the most trouble. It boils down as to how to make the best of a situation where I don't have the right techs for the resources on hand, and there is no clear "good" move

Map Settings:

Monarch
Normal Game Speed
Opponents Random

Huge Map (18 Civs)
Low Sea level
Temperate Climate
Random Map Script
No Barbs
No Tech Trading
No Huts
No Events
Choose Religion
New Random Seed on Reload (not sure how that one got clicked on... must have been going fast down the list).
No Buffy or Bat mods installed

Leader:

Alexander (Phil, Agg) of Greece

Situation:

From the get go surrounded by forest, lake side, ocean visible to the north west with fish revealed. The starting location only has pig hills visible (see attached screen shot of the start location). The scout doesn't seem to be able to help reveal much more of the start due to its position and all the intervening forests.

My Though Processes:

I should move my settler South West 2 blocks, this seems like it would reveal the most tiles and give me the best odds of finding goodies. Is there a more reasonable alternative?

My gut tells me to move; my starting techs, hunting and fishing are not even remotely useful in this start. I may be forced to research AH off the bat due to no other obvious food tiles in the BFC of my start location. If there is another food source (Corn or wet rice/wheat at a minimum) I may consider agriculture -->mining
--> BW.

If I decide to move, there seems like there are two reasonable alternatives (without seeing what the scout reveals), one feeling like more of a gamble than the other. Option one would have me move to settle near the fish (one tile north of the scout) while still benefiting from the pig. This would give me something to do early (build a work boat) while I research some worker techs (probably AH and wheel in that situation, though I don't like putting off BW or Writing). Downside to this is that there is no fresh water for the cap no river tiles to speak of.

Option 2 is the gamble, and that would be to follow the river and see where it leads. Plus side is that one can never go wrong with river tiles, there is a plains tile that might be worth settling 2E and 1N of the starting location. Downside here is that I am not even sure what I will find and that my settler will only move 1 tile a turn through that forest.

Of course... the scout could change the situation significantly, but knowing my luck with the map generator, it will probably just show me jungle.

So, in conclusion, I am interested in knowing what people would do in this situation. Please don't tell me to re-roll, I like playing the map I am served (and when I am playing with my friends I am often forced to deal with tough starts anyway so I can use the practice).

Thanks in advance!
David

 

[Virupaksha]

I would probably settle 1W on the plains hill.

Don't like your settings much. No barbs changes the early game a lot and no tech trading changes the whole game even more. Never played with either of these settings.

 

[Chase_2_Rabbits]

Congrats on your first post!

I was expecting to find food on the tile 2W of the settler. I loaded the save, moved the scout, and found there wasn't any. I don't like the plains hill settle because we're moving away from the river (and possible resources we can't see), we're not picking up any additional resources and it would have no hills or production squares. So I figured it was gamble time and moved the settler 1E.

Settler-moving spoiler:

Spoiler :

Stone and wet corn! Map saved Next turn I moved onto the stone and prayed for seafood...but there was none. I still settled on the stone, though. It's not a great capital because there's too much water, but it'll do. We can always move it later. SIP would have been fine also...but maybe we want a coastal cap.

I opened with Agr -> Min -> BW. Otherwise our worker is going to get very bored. The green hill pigs can be mined in the short term, wet corn gives us enough food.

Minor map spoilers, should be ok to check after 30 turns:

Spoiler :

We've got some decent land, but we have problems. There's virtually no river to cottage and no luxuries. Solution: The Great Lighthouse (all the nearby food and resources can be picked up with coastal cities) and/or the Mids to run rep scientists. I clicked buttons through and was able to build both (Mids in the capital, TGLight in second city).

We have some unfriendly neighbours. Perhaps those jumbos could be put to good use...

I don't think I'll play the map through because the map settings are very different to my usual ones (huge map and no tech-trading is going to mean a very long game), but good luck!

 

[lymond]

Wow..took me forever to figure out how to load this game. Not sure how C2R figured it out, but after failing to load it and checking what mods I had installed, I had a hunch that maybe this was setup in MP since you were talking about it. It is good that you provided mod/no mod info for us, but posting a game with MP setup here would be nice to know. It is extremely rare for MP files to be posted here. (also, had to go try several MP options until Direct IP worked for me)

Anywho, yeah, as mentioned those settings are not favorable here. However, I'm assuming that that setup is what you use with your friends in MP, so that is understandable - especially No Tech Trading. Barbs are usually preferred in SP and they do provide some benefits including early XP and maybe some free cities. It's the way the game was meant to be played. (Also, Huge maps are not ideal at this speed in SP)

The advice here, at least from me would be SP focused. MP is a different animal especially with mainly human v. human.

Assuming you have not moved your scout, based on the info here the only move that provides some important immediate info is moving him 1S. I suspect there are resources 2W and 1S of Settler. 1S is hidden, ofc, and the one 2W could very well be too, but it bodes well for the city regardless.

Settling on plains hill is often a good move but not blindly unless you already are showing a nice city in that place. Resources are certainly possible to the East.

Generally, I do one of two things - move to spot that provides bonus to city center or SIP. In rare cases I may move a settler as well to scout if the initial view is not promising.

With pigs, river and likely hidden resources I would not be moving the settler except possibly to the plains hill for the bonus. However, with possible food or whatever resources to the East I would most definitely Settle in Place here. (Keep in mind that part of that analysis is determining whether resources could be present in the fog, i.e,. no forests)

(On another note, there are certainly better starting techs to than hunting/fishing, but don't get too caught up on that and what resources you have. At least Hunting is a gateway to AH which will be finished when the worker finishes)

 

[Izuul]

As Lymond says, good chance of resource(s) 2E1N and/or 2E1S of settler. Settling on a PH (1W here) is typically a strong move, but in this situation that would move the settler away from those tiles so i would SIP. Teching AH isn't too bad here since you start with Hunting. Unless an Ag food source pops up i would definitely just tech AH first for the pigs.

I don't advocate settler wandering unless the start is absolutely horrendous (this isn't that bad), but if you really want to do that, move east so that you can still get the pigs next turn. I definitely wouldn't move towards the fish.