Isn't it bad to start near the coast?

[Gam]

With regards to corruption. If you start in the middle of a landmass, you can expand in all directions and have corruption only become a real problem after the first few "rings" of cities around your capital- if you start on the coast, it cuts out 50% of that potential area. More cities= much farther away than in the stated alternative.

What do you think?

 

[Smellincoffee]

I asked the same question after Conquests was released, and the general opinion (that I remember) was that if the landmass will make the starting location bad (corruption-rise), then you should have long-term plans for moving it.

 

[morchuflex]

If you're playing on an archipelago map, starting on the coast can have benefits. If you're navigational, it also means 1 extra gpt in all coastal cities.
But it's true, starting coastal doesn't help corruption. You may later chose to move your palace. You can also start to (pre-)build the FP asap.

 

[Aegis]

The only benefit that I can see to having your capital on the coastline is if you expand to another continent.


For instance, if your continent is in the upper left corner, with your capital on the south-east shorline, and later on you colonize the top of the continent directly east, or SE to yours. Having your capital on the east shore of your land will make corruption very little on your colonies to the SE. I prefer to have a central ring placement and toss the FP on the colony.

 

[Tomoyo]

I think the benefit is that you can get out a very early curragh (I sometimes build a curragh first if I'm Seafaring) when you start on the coast.

 

[Theoden]

If the coastline is right you will be able to get a lot of coast cities which will give LOTS of commerce, even if it's a bit more corrupted.

 

[island007]

It isn't as bad as before.

Your empire's corruption has two major components distance corruption and rank corruption.

A coastal start will have an adverse affect on the distance corruption of some of your cities, but it will have no affect on the rank corruption. This was not true in the past, when you could RCP.

An FP in a 2nd ring city inland will help because the FP city is still used for distance corruption calculations. A river (fresh water) start is still the most important followed by food bonus then coast. A coastal start with fresh water and a food bonus more than make up for the initial adverse affects on your distance corruption.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

island is correct.

And since rank corruption makes a much bigger part of your corruption than distance corruption, it is not too bad even before the FP.

Of course, inland is better for the corruption, but the coast does give you advantages also, by far most importantly the early curragh for scouting. On low difficulty levels it is not so usefull to find your backwards AI and i would prefer the inland capital. On high difficulties however, it is very important to meet everyone asap and then i think the coastal advantage outweighs the corruption disadvantage (that for most part lasts only until you built the FP)