Is this the sign of a bad player to start new games until you ''like'' your start ?

[Emperor Giulio]

I then play my way forward the first hundred or so turns before I know if I am playing well or not, if I had a 'good' start or not. Sometimes all things are relative and you go into a game having chosen some of those variables yourself already it can lead to judging a situation before you've given it a fair crack of the whip.

You know, you are right about that. I recall a game where I was more or less secluded on a peninsula, and had no iron whatsoever. I decided to play forward, focused on culture, and spammed Great scientists. This was the game that probably helped me evolve my playing style the most. After I b-lined to chivalry, I defended myself well with knights. By the time i made it to rifling, I had a magnificent civilization with high culture, and large metropolises. I took the continent, and then the world. Ever since then, I've been sorta playing the same way. Now I like to build about 4 highly developed core cities, while producing a formative military. I create extensive empires of puppets ruled by a small amount of large "overlord" cities.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

if I can win from any start on Warlord, does that make me a good player? xD ?

 

[Emperor Giulio]

However, it kind of bothers me that I know I'm playing as Rome the "wrong" way since I don't like to build a lot of cities. But I do like to take advantage of the classical age units.

 

[pspboy7]

My thoughts are that if you have fun playing, you're a winner even if you lose.

 

[Full Metal]

I play emperor, marathon, huge map, 10 civs. This game is going into the 4th day for me. Damn straight I'm going to reroll.

 

[machival]

Many of you who commented must have missed his question entirely. You talk about "fun" like it has anything to do with OP. He asked if rerolling is for bad players or not. Fun is a totally unrelated subject.

TPQ hit the nail on the head.

The question really is; can you win from any start?

If the answer is 'yes', you're a good player, it doesn't matter if you choose not to take any old start each time you play, but rather that you have the ability to win from any start.

 

[@nthony]

Many of you who commented must have missed his question entirely. You talk about "fun" like it has anything to do with OP. He asked if rerolling is for bad players or not. Fun is a totally unrelated subject.

TPQ hit the nail on the head.

And I'll add you only get better at the game by sticking out those tough starting positions and learning from them, even if you lose a few, you'll get better.

 

[Staal]

I won't say I have never restarted, I have, but generally I feel that I shouldn't. It is a good feeling if you can make it to victory while from a bad position. Especially now with religion being able to improve on most terrain types.

Mostly the times I have restarted was to test specific conditions such as the old Babylonian GS approach with a mountain.

I would restart that in the blink of an eye. But I also like to double the amount of Civs on the map.

I also like to add more Civs. Usually large with +4 AIs added. Don't know if that actually helps you due to restricting AI expansion. Although from my experience half the time I am the one that is crowded, requiring some early aggression to give myself breathing room.

 

[lordrune]

Since I've started playing on ContinentsPlus, I've seen some really dodgy starts. Think plains, no river, no food.

 

[JaeChunDaeSung]

I've had a habit of doing this whenever I start near so much Desert, Tundra, or Ice. I figured if there was a map designed to guarantee more fertile land for say...60-75% of the world, it would be more reasonable?

Of course...if there were ever a way to build farms on Tundra, like in Civ4, MAYBE that'd be a solution, but I seriously doubt it. Ah well, back to starting with satisfactory maps. Oh, and what bearing does the age (3-4-5 billion years) have on the map?

 

[@nthony]

I've had a habit of doing this whenever I start near so much Desert, Tundra, or Ice. I figured if there was a map designed to guarantee more fertile land for say...60-75% of the world, it would be more reasonable?

Of course...if there were ever a way to build farms on Tundra, like in Civ4, MAYBE that'd be a solution, but I seriously doubt it. Ah well, back to starting with satisfactory maps. Oh, and what bearing does the age (3-4-5 billion years) have on the map?

I always believed the younger ages led to less broken up terrain - so if it was an older planet you wouldn't get tonnes of all in one mountain ranges/desert etc.

 

[_Calyx]

I always believed the younger ages led to less broken up terrain - so if it was an older planet you wouldn't get tonnes of all in one mountain ranges/desert etc.

I always thought that younger maps would give you more mountainous and hilly terrain, while and older world would be more flat land.

 

[@nthony]

Calyx - yes, that's what I meant. I apologise got my terms the wrong way round!

 

[Aldor]

I used to restart when I found starts without extra luxury resources around (except for what you already had in your capital). This can now be avoided through religion I think. I will still restart if I find starts where I cannot see at least a few good spots for new cities, or if I'm surrounded by city states in a way that I cannot found more than one extra city.

Otherwise...I may also restart if I find myself surrounded by aggressive civs, and I'm not in a mood to fight

 

[ahawk]

The sign of an inept player is someone who doesn't even know that the start is bad.

If you have the good sense to realize the start you rolled is a bad one, that means you have a pretty good sense of how the game works already. Whether you re-roll the start or continue on at that point is irrelevant.

 

[historix69]

Inspired by this thread I started a couple of games looking for a perfect start for egypt wonder OCC with
- marble (for wonder-bonus) and
- river (for watermill) and
- flat tile for city (for windmill) and
- neighbouring mountain tile (for observatory, Machu Picchu) and
- neighbouring desert tile (for Petra) and
- neighbouring ocean tile (for Sidney Opera) and
- tiles with food-bonus (for growth) and
- productive tiles (river+hill, plains, ...).

I was not successful.
(Marble, river, mountain is possible but very often located in area with low food value.)

 

[Koolaidking]

I think it is funny how you phased your question, that re-rolling is a sign of a bad player. To my mind, knowing what is a good and bad start and what you can do with the "roll" you do get is the sign of a good player. What you do with that start, whether to play it or not, is a game play style. And as a few have said above, some people like to play knowing they beat a difficulty no matter the roll, while other like to milk the unique's of a Civ and that might require multiple rerolls to get just right. Personally, i usually give myself about 50 turns to commit to a map, even though sometimes i throw some away immediately (one that comes to mind is where i got put in a desert on huge/immortal/pangea with one incense in sight). When i consider "rerolling", my concerns are focused on the map as i have seen it, not just with the workable tiles 3 within my capital, and that takes more than turn 1 to discover. I think that others would not like this definition of "rerolling", by which i mean throwing away a map because you don't like it. I have seen some use the word "rerolling" in the sense that they never "played" the map before they quit, they only "looked", so it doesn't really count as quitting a game. This kind of rerolling is pedantic at the least.

You are not a bad player for not wanting to play a roll; you are a good player ("good" because you recognized the terribleness of the roll you did get and what you couldn't do with it) who is just picky. But depending on the speed you play and the time you commit to a single game, being picky might be more fun.

 

[PostConsumerWat]

I often restart the game if it seems tedious for whatever reason. A lot of the time I choose a random civ so I will re-roll if it is a civ that I am sick of playing. Or I could be going for a novel start. For instance, I wanted to play a culture game with the maya, or ethiopia, but I didn't want to use sacred path again... so to do get rid of the jungles I will need to do it without the start bias.

I suppose it all depends on what you are looking to get out of the game.

 

[greenday_234]

I used to be one of those guys (for years from Civ3-V Vanilla) who'd play on nothing but earth maps as America with real starting locations. I loved that for a long time but obviously got really bored because as it turns out I was missing out on 99.99% of the game

So far I'm digging Small Continents map type and I'm onto my second one. Originally, on this game I thought I had a horrible starting location it was nothing but plaines which seem really weak in terms of food and well everything, and Mountain Ranges. I was going to restart but then I decided to ride it out. Glad I did, as the plaines aren't so bad after you ride out the initial years of poor development and into Granaries and other improvements plus the Mountain Ranges make me virtually uninvade-able so I don't have to carry much of a military and can spend more time on wonders.

I guess my point here is, who cares what other people think of your restarts it's your game but if you're asking my advice, I'd try playing a few bad starts out as it'll teach new things you didn't know before.

 

[blasto]

Is it just me or is the initial map usually the best in hindsight? I'll start a game, then after deciding I can get a better map, I won't until I rerolled at least another dozen times, wishing I kept the original one all along.