Is the map generator intentionally perverse?

[StrategeryBush]

Fishing, in particular, seems to be a useless starting tech. Not because of the delays in getting your civ going when you start off by building a fishing boat, but rather, because, the map generator never starts you on a coast with seafood. Has anyone looked into this?

I just did a quick test. I usually chalk this sort of thing up to pessimism and selective memory; however, I went through 25 restarts of various civs with fishing and not once did I see any seafood from the starting position on the initial map. I can regenerate the map and find seafood, but never seem to get it on the initial placement. Is this intentional on the map generator's part, or have the random generators just been breaking against me?

Thanks,
Freaking Fishing Frustrated

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

I have no idea if this is true-just from my experience-but it seems like the map type you pick will affect coastal starts. I don't get many coastal starts on pangea. Fractal, however, seems to actually FAVOR coastal starts IMO.

I honestly have NO idea how you rerolled 25 times and didn't get one fishing start though. That's crazy.

Are you playing maps larger than standard? That could affect it too, but I wouldn't know as I don't play many larger maps due to my machine.

 

[deathturnip]

What map setting are you using? Pangaea and continents tend to place you inland at the start(simply because there is more inland than coast) If you are using other map types, it seems likely you are just getting insanely unlucky. I often find fish in my capital when I start with fishing. Still, fishing tends to be a fairly weak starting tech for reasons that have been covered several times.

edit @ flyin
Larger map types make coastal less likely since there is more land. Not a part of the generator itself, but since there is alot more land and only a little more shore, inland becomes more likely in my experience.

 

[StrategeryBush]

I play on Standard maps regular size. All of the above were fractal. I have noticed that, when compared with Pangaea maps, Fractals are more likely to have coasts without seafood. It would seem that Fractal spreads the same amount of fish food over much more coastline than is available on a Pangaea. My question is only semi-serious, I would not put it past the designers to set things up to frustrate players, but if I were having to play a game I "had-to-win," the last thing I would do is take a civ with Fishing as a starting tech unless I knew I was on an Archipelago map.

 

[henrebotha]

In a system with as many variables as Civ, 25 rerolls are not nearly enough to conclusively state that seafood starts are unlikely. You just got unlucky.

 

[sfnhltb]

Remember if you play huge pangea low sea level maps (for example), nearly every start will be inland - most of the north/south coast will be ice/tundra, so the generator avoids putting civs there, and any civs on the east/west coast block off a chunk above/below them that no one else can use, so about 90% of the starts would be inland. So even 25 in a row will happen from time to time. Conversely if you got this happening on an archipelago or islands map, then I would be surprised.

 

[dirtyparrot]

I don't think that the map generator intentionally tries to screw you in particular (just ask the AI stuck in the tundra). I just can't seem to get these awesome starts that people keep generating.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It absolutely is. I keep getting "women" resources in my BFC, and civ doesn't even have techs that allow you to improve them. Only civ jewelers, a corp, can make those tiles worthwhile, but it's expensive.

Wait, no. Believe it or not, the RNG is actually random for generating starts, although there are some issues when it runs rivers generated to improve capitols through deserts (leaves them desert, not floodplains) and occasionally just spams forests everywhere due to some code issue (which actually does hurt people who start w/ fishing, because fishing =/= mining and the forests make it hard to improve anything). It does not deliberately avoid coastal starts for fishing civs though.

 

[Gliese 581]

It absolutely is. I keep getting "women" resources in my BFC, and civ doesn't even have techs that allow you to improve them. Only civ jewelers, a corp, can make those tiles worthwhile, but it's expensive.

Wait, no. Believe it or not, the RNG is actually random for generating starts, although there are some issues when it runs rivers generated to improve capitols through deserts (leaves them desert, not floodplains) and occasionally just spams forests everywhere due to some code issue (which actually does hurt people who start w/ fishing, because fishing =/= mining and the forests make it hard to improve anything). It does not deliberately avoid coastal starts for fishing civs though.

The desert issue is fixed in an unofficial patch, can't remember which.

 

[Gliese 581]

In a system with as many variables as Civ, 25 rerolls are not nearly enough to conclusively state that seafood starts are unlikely. You just got unlucky.

Unlucky doesn't quite cut it for fractal maps, the odds of that happening must be astronomically small.

 

[StrategeryBush]

Unlucky doesn't quite cut it for fractal maps, the odds of that happening must be astronomically small.

I'm not sure I'd call it astronomical. If there is a 10% chance to have seafood visible in your BFC then the chance of going 0-for-25 are around 7%. If the base chance is 20% the O-fer percent goes down to about 0.4%.

Even on Fractal with a high sea level, most of your starts are inland, and coastal starts are still frequently devoid of critters with fins or shells.

Totally off topic: If anyone remembers the board game from Avalon Hill called Titan, I hit a gargantuan long shot there about 20 years ago. I had a single chance to win the game. I needed to roll 13 Sixes out of 16 dice. I actually rolled 14 of them. The odds against that were in the billions to one.

 

[henrebotha]

I'm not sure I'd call it astronomical. If there is a 10% chance to have seafood visible in your BFC then the chance of going 0-for-25 are around 7%. If the base chance is 20% the O-fer percent goes down to about 0.4%.

Even on Fractal with a high sea level, most of your starts are inland, and coastal starts are still frequently devoid of critters with fins or shells.

Totally off topic: If anyone remembers the board game from Avalon Hill called Titan, I hit a gargantuan long shot there about 20 years ago. I had a single chance to win the game. I needed to roll 13 Sixes out of 16 dice. I actually rolled 14 of them. The odds against that were in the billions to one.

This is my point. Any non-zero chance, no matter how small, can still happen. Any number of horsehockey Hollywood films have demonstrated this ad nauseum. Getting 25 seafood-less starts in a row may be terribly rare, but it could still happen.

 

[Shurdus]

This is my point. Any non-zero chance, no matter how small, can still happen. Any number of horsehockey Hollywood films have demonstrated this ad nauseum. Getting 25 seafood-less starts in a row may be terribly rare, but it could still happen.

Be that as it may, I think we can all agree that the game does not purposefully keep you far away from the coast when you start with fishing. As a matter of fact, I play fractal a lot and I tend to have a lot of coastal starts and some of them made me wish I started with fishing.

 

[Acidrain]

I get quiet often Fishing starts and they become mad GP farms
Usually 3-4 clams + corn and cow on land, something similar.

Recent example:
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/8796/gpfarm.png

 

[futurehermit]

I WISH I had the OP's problem. I pretty much always want inland starts, which I consider much stronger, but frequently get coastal starts. Most of the time, for me, coastal starts have seafood.

i play standard/hemispheres or fractal

 

[Pinstar]

You might want to invite my RNG over to your place. My last 3 games (Fractal maps, standard size) I had 2 coastal starts with at least 4 tiles of seafood. And no I wasn't a fishing civ

 

[§L¥ Gµ¥]

I find this to be more the case than it should. Also, with early UUs, not having the appropriate resource is more often than not the case. Or gifting your nearest neighbor a tone of good early workable land while you're stuck with calendar resources.

If the civ map generator were a religion in the game, I'd make my people worship it to give me better [or fairer] starts.

 

[StrategeryBush]

You might want to invite my RNG over to your place. My last 3 games (Fractal maps, standard size) I had 2 coastal starts with at least 4 tiles of seafood. And no I wasn't a fishing civ

That, of course, is the frustration. I see great fishing starts on a regular basis, just not when my civ has Fishing as a starting tech. I have no doubt that my original impulse to question the perversity of the map generator was the result of seeing so many random leader good fishing starts without Fishing and not seeing them with Fishing, and not taking into consideration that most of the Civs in the game do not start with fishing.

In the case of the test, I wanted to try a GL/Colossus game and was looking for a coastal start with seafood, and was choosing Fishing Civs to start with. I usually go all the way back to the main menu, rather than regenerating the map, because it gets too easy to start shopping for the "perfect" start when I just hit regen-map. After 5 failed maps I started keeping track to see how many tries it would take. I got to 25 and gave up in frustration. It made me wonder if perhaps the Code Monkeys, way back when, decided that a Fishing Civ/Seafood start was too good and put in a tweak to make them less likely. They would not have to be right about the power of that start, just to have the opinion. Besides, who can resist a good conspiracy theory?

 

[Alsark]

I once had a friend in the Fall From Heaven mod who started on an ice tile, with two ice tiles both east, west, south, and north of him. There was a single tile that was an exception - a pond just one tile to his south... which held a barbarian hero ship, the Sailor's Dirge. So his capital was stuck at a population of one. It was hilarious, and I wish I would have screenshot it. Now that's perverse (and is so bad that it had to be a bug or something).

 

[Shurdus]

I once had a friend in the Fall From Heaven mod who started on an ice tile, with two ice tiles both east, west, south, and north of him. There was a single tile that was an exception - a pond just one tile to his south... which held a barbarian hero ship, the Sailor's Dirge. So his capital was stuck at a population of one. It was hilarious, and I wish I would have screenshot it. Now that's perverse (and is so bad that it had to be a bug or something).

Screenshot or it didn't happen.