Initial Tile Worked, and how many useless tiles?

[jayjackson]

This is not a strategic post by me, but hopefully will produce some solid insight from the veterans.

I've tried a lot of starts so far, just playing around with different things, but I'm wondering this.... On your initial 1 citizen in your first settled city, if you do NOT have a 2f, 1h, 1g tile to work, would you rather work a 1f, 1h or a 2f, 1g tile. With research being tied to population, not sure if the lesser build time by not taking the extra hammer (I know its a drop from 7 to 5 turns on an initial scout build on standard) is worth growing slower, and hence dropping research. I often do find I get the ruin that adds a point of population, but I'm wondering what the vets think.

Also, I do play ALL my games under Civ4 HOF guidelines, but I did often use MapFinder unless I felt like just playing with whatever the game spawned the first time. My question is - if you are willing to restart the map in any situation, if you have a good start how many useless tiles are you willing to allow in your capital city that would otherwise be fairly decent. My last start have a fairly long river, marble and gold and sugar in the capital with a fair amount of flood plains. Normally I would have jumped at this start, but I had at least 7 unworkable desert tiles in my viewable range! Also, I lacked a farm resource, so I chose to restart. Would you have?

Please spare me the lecture about not playing a random map if you are that type of poster. There were quite a few games last year where I challenged myself by playing the first map it spit out and I *never* reload. I just in most cases choose a quality starting spot as my gaming time is precious and I'd like to have a game where I can be competitive at least.

Thanks for all constructive feedback!

J

 

[Trickster7135]

My last start have a fairly long river, marble and gold and sugar in the capital with a fair amount of flood plains. Normally I would have jumped at this start, but I had at least 7 unworkable desert tiles in my viewable range! Also, I lacked a farm resource, so I chose to restart. Would you have?

You had a start with three! happiness resource and marble! (best resource in the game, btw) and a long river and you restarted that? You just described almost a perfect start! Seven desert tiles nearby won't matter much, you'll almost never reach the 30+ population you'd need to work every tile anyways. And food resources are currently worse than non-resource tiles, so its actually a good thing you didn't have any in that start. Seriously, wow. I've only gotten a start that good once every 10 games or so.

TL;DR: ideal starts in Civ5 are almost the opposite of ideal Civ4 starts.

 

[Slowpoke]

Yeah, until the fix diplo trades, or at least give mods the tools to fix them, the only thing you should worry about when making a city in the beginning is whether it has luxuries, and how many. Luxuries = ~ 300 instant gold, allowing you to rush buy a settler/worker/horseman/colloseum/whatever you need.

 

[Roxlimn]

I'd have played that. That was a remarkable start. The 7 desert tiles will never, ever matter, even if you actually got to size 34.

 

[Tylerryan79]

I would have played that start too. Also don't forget that desert tiles aren't completely useless. If your playing your games towards the later eras having a city built on, or next to, a desert tile allows you to build a solar plant for + 25% production. This added with a nuclear plant (and hydro if your next to a river) can greatly boost production.

 

[lilnev]

If you can see ~20 tiles before deciding whether to settle (most of the first two rings, minus whatever's behind hills etc, plus whatever the warrior reveals), I'd say you should worry if more than 15 of them are unworkable. And by "worry", I mean "consider moving the settler for a turn". Seriously, the quality is determined by its best tiles, not its worst ones. Always has been, always will be.

As others have said, it's all about the luxuries. For later cities, it's 70% about the luxuries, 20% about the strategics, and other junk like food can make the difference between two otherwise-similar sites.