Isolated Start- Dotmapping Practice

[Betafor]

Just started a game, found i was alone, so decided to have fun with it rather than restarting, and host some dotmapping practice.(you can make it a competition if you want)

I'm not that good, so plz comment on mine, then you can do your own.

Original-

Mine-

 

[berserks01]

I'd probably place my cities like this.

 

[Argoth]

No copper, or have you just not researched BW?

 

[Jorunkun]

Don't have the time to do a dotmap, but suggest you plan for putting many more cities on the island and plan to capture as many of the workable tiles as possible, including sea tiles.

Reasoning behind this is that in an isolated start, you may well be the underdog for most of the game. If you space your cities too generously and do not have an opportunity to take new ones later because you are too weak, you forfeit the option of maxing out on what you have once your empire's economy is able to absorb the cost.

The trick is to space cities densely; don't be afraid of overlap, it takes a long time for cities to actually work all the squares. BUT: build the cities in order of importance, do NOT spam cities immediately and kill your economy - one of the benefits of island starts is that you don't have to worry about land grabs. Prioritise the cities that claim key ressources and offer good early growth opportunities, but work to a masterplan that allows for more - even less efficient - cities to be added as your empire grows.

If you never found them because you have better options later in the game, you lose nothing - but if you do not plan for them, you will be locked into an ineffectual layout.

 

[Wodan]

Agree with Jorunkun.

Also, suggest that you optimize coastal cities, to get better trade routes.

Looking at berserks01's map, keep most of them. That desert in the middle, plop a city right on it (that's one more workable tile). Yes, this will overlap with bottom 2nd middle city.

Move top middle blue city to coast. Move far right bottom city up and to the coast. Add another city below it.

You can almost certainly also add some cities down toward the tundra, but do those last unless you find tasty deer or something. There is one sheep down there that might be worthwhile doing early.

Wodan

 

[Betafor]

No copper, or have you just not researched BW?

no copper, have not started iron (but it's isolated so it doesnt matter so much)

Thanks Joruncun and Kodan for the advice (just occured to me that an isolated start would have a diff dotmap then regular)

Kodun, so what you are suggesting is - (red X is old position, red circle is new position, teal X are potential city sites (multiple because tot he bottom righ is a lot of fog and the middle you can only get the cow OR the spice(silk? sugar? calender recource) if you build on the desert, which is the most tile efficiant, but if you leave the desert you can get both)

I'm learning a lot here, trying to improve my dotmapping skills (which lack)

one of the benefits of island starts is that you don't have to worry about land grabs

Matinance shouldn't be a problem if we were hypothetically playing this start, look at the capital(floodplains+financial + beurocracy(sp)= all the cities you want), though it probably would be best to use the gold for research so you don't have too much of a tech disadvantage.

EDIT - fixed pic

 

[Jorunkun]

I would suggest the following locations and founding order:

1. River city SE of Seoul: close by = low cost, it can build an obelisk (or whatever they are called in warlords), working unimproved happies (good mix of food, prod and coin) and produce a worker to work the sheep later.

2. Coast north of Seoul: also low cost, high early growth potential. Once you have a worker, you can chop for the obelisk, then get a workboat out for the clam, improve the wheat and pump workers and settlers here.

Make sure you have some four or five warriors by the time these cities are founded, they can garrison your cities, fogbust sw and e of capital and thus keep more than half of your island lit up.

3. Fish and rice city in the far east, on the circle, or even on se hill – a bit expensive, but can chop and get high food quickly. With 7 warriors, you can now suppress barbs on two thirds of your island.

4. Desert city, 1n of desert tile (turquoise cross) – see the beauty in founding on desert, but would want more overlap with northern cities, which can all work coast. This site could make for a good capital later, reducing maintenance cost to all cities.

After this, it doesn’t much matter. You might want to found sw of Seoul, which also gets you the third naval health-bonus; should take care of all your coastal/harbour cities.

Consider putting three, not just two more cities on the northern coast; if you found #3 se of your planed location, you can fit them in with acceptable overlap. Start with the cow, then one for wine once monarchy is online, the commerce from this tile should make the city viable. Your goal should be nine or so cities in time for caravels.

Some other notes:

Scout the south soon, there may be silver, bronze or iron down there, which could make for a prio 3 site.

Also, check every corner of the island to see whether there isn’t some sort of sea-link to another island / continent. Sometimes it pays to settle the furthest points of an island (i.e. the desert w of capital) so that when the city pops its borders, you can see across the sea and, with some luck, get a boat across. Cities on opposing shores can bridge a four seasquare gap and get in contact before caravels, which would get you a trading partner and improve your chances in this game hugely.

In terms of barbbusting, I would start spawning warriors soon, and hope for horses. If you don’t get any, I would still suggest bypassing archery (unless this is immortal or raging barbs) and use even more warriors to get maximum fog suppression. This should see you through to iron working and save you techcost needed for optics. Plus, the warriors will make good stationary units for your cities later.

Provided you really have no early happies, so your strategy should be to grow in number of cities, which in turn necessitates cottages early to pay for them. Once you have 5 or 6 up, you should plan to have monarchy to get them above the 3-4 pop happy threshold. With the wine online, you can get these cities to 5-6 and above if necessary.

Lastly, don’t overfocus on optics; pick up pottery for cottages, currency, calendar once all your city boundaries are popped and probably col and cs as your empire grows.

Bonne chance,

J.

 

[Caesius]

Was poking around and found this thread.

Here's what I came up with:

There's quite a bit of overlap, but when you have this little land you don't have a lot of room to be a perfectionist. It's better than wasting tiles anyway.