Isolationists unite!

[Nishdog]

Wait, is that an oxymoron?

Anyways, let's assume for a moment you have the tools needed to create the perfect world (a world builder of sorts ). What would you do to create a fun isolation game? How many cities would you want to build and what would you want them to specialize in?

Which resources would you want access to? One issue I'm having in trying to create a fun map is I'm going overboard with resources. I want to have at least one of everything, but they don't all have to be in my city radii. But I'm going overboard with having corn, fish, copper, iron, and gold in my cities. I think my last game had 20 gold resources in the science city

How would you create your map to ensure nobody can bother you for as long as you care to maintain isolation? Do you want to be close enough to your neighbors that you can open trade with them without allowing them access to your lands (I like privateers for this!!)

Anybody have some fun isolation maps they'd like to share?

 

[GenocideBringer]

1) Large empire, expand early and fast. Gobble up as much land as you can so that you have everything you need

2) Spread far and wide. Spread your cities apart and focus a fair amount on culture. Again, as an isolationist, you want your civ to span as far as possible. Not only does this help you get the resources you need, it means your trade routes (since they can't go to other nations as you're an isolationist) will be more profitable.

3) Use Mercantilism's specialists to run merchants to make up for gold issues in your empire

4) Found a religion yourself, if possible, found multiple ones (For the sake of the extra and (goes back to point #2). Confucianism is a great one because it brings courthouses, which you need (back to point #2)

5) the world will most likely hate you. Keep a strong army on hand

 

[Winston Hughes]

Anybody have some fun isolation maps they'd like to share?

I had a couple of awesome ones on Warlords, but I deleted them long ago. However, you should be able to find similar maps yourself by repeating what I did:

*Start a custom fractal game with extra civs on the map.

*Before doing anything else go into the Worldbuilder and have a look at the map to see if there's a civ with an isolated start that suits your tastes. If not, return to the game and regenerate (if possible - on some crowded maps you'll start next to an AI civ and so can't regenerate for some reason).

*Once you've found an appropriate location, remove any bonus units from the civ in question, add the appropriate units to your original start, and save the map as a Worldbuilder save.

*Then load the save as a custom scenario and choose the isolated civ.

*If you don't want to start with full knowledge of the world, save the game and leave it in your saves directory for a week or two before playing.

This way is much less time-consuming than endlessly regenerating, and much less cheesy than worldbuilding yourself an island to start on.

My favourite was playing as Lizzy on an island in the middle of the ocean with only about 15-20 land tiles and room for only three cities (one awesome, two mediocre), but with stone (hurrah for the Pyramids!) and copper (hooray for the Colossus!). I went to war several times for diplomatic reasons, but never fought a single land battle (plenty at sea though). I eventually won a diplomatic victory despite having the world's smallest population by some distance.

 

[kirbystarfan]

If you truly want to be isolationist, surround your island with ice. Of course then you can't get out...

 

[Winston Hughes]

If you truly want to be isolationist, surround your island with ice. Of course then you can't get out...

Once, playing an earth map, I couldn't find one of the civs anywhere, and yet the victory screen told me that it was definitely still in the game. Eventually, I went into WB and found them trapped on a small island in the Arctic completely surrounded with sea-ice, and with nothing but ice and tundra around them. The kicker was that their only resource was a fish that was cut off from their city by ice, meaning they couldn't workboat it.