[GS] Lack of Desert in Mali Start

[pop daddy]

I've rolled about 10 Mali games and only 2 have given me sufficient desert tiles to take advantage of Mali's abilities. I assumed Mali's start bias would give me the proper terrain to put their acclimation to the desert to use, because their abilities are so obviously geared to that climate.

This raises two questions for me:

1. *Should* civs like Mali or Canada *always* spawn near a large region of "useful" terrain? I'm not necessarily asking if this is a bug (see next question).

OR

2. Is it best to think of their climate-specific abilities as situational and starts near relevant terrain as fortunate?

 

[Guynemer]

Well, Canada is quite a bit different; their bonus to using tundra is a bit dubious. Their unique improvement comes much later, and the "Petra of the tundra" also comes much later than actual Tundra, and finally their intrinsic bonus (tundra farming) is nowhere near as good as Mali's +1 food & faith for every neighboring desert tile.

Canada doesn't really need to start near tundra. By the time their tundra bonuses become relevant, they could have expanded there through normal play.

Mali absolutely should start on or near desert. Perhaps I just got lucky; I started right on the edge of an absolutely enormous contiguous desert that had more than enough room to fit in ten cities with only city-states nearby.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Canada's bonuses are tier 1 (strongest possible) to Tundra. Mali's are tier 2 toward Desert but also tier 5 towards all the mining resources. I doubt you'll ever get a Canada start that isn't directly in a large Tundra, but I got a lot of Mali starts that were in or next to only a small desert but had lots of copper or something next to the start.

I think it should be the other way around personally. Canada's tundra bonuses are kind of weak. Maybe if the tundra farms got +1 culture or something...

 

[notyourtypical]

I had a good Mali desert game with the seeds of 993973888/993973889. Space for six or seven desert cities with fresh water. Standard size, continents, everything else normal. The starting continent was bugged though, no barbarians spawned on it ever.

I manually added Dido, Wilhelmina and Laurier.

 

[Sostratus]

I had a good Mali desert game with the seeds ... The starting continent was bugged though, no barbarians spawned on it ever

My current Mali game is like this. Tons of barbs in the rest of the world, just not on my continent. Small size continents, I manually deleted a civ for breathing room, but you don't have to - I think I made the world Hot-
Map 1603682346
Game 1603682345
Start next to a large desert with that new 4 tile sahara wonder just next to you. There's 3 large deserts on your starting continent. Tip: move your starting settler 1 tile south across the river so you border more desert tiles for early pantheon.

Anyways.

I internally debate Mali's true desert affinity. You get extra faith from it. However, most of your faith will still be from HS buildings, and the Suguba doesn't care about desert. You only need one city if you want to leverage the int'l trade bonus. The biggest upside is usually that you can lock desert folklore right away.

There's a huge tradeoff between having regular, productive cities and desert cities that are only faith&gold farms that can't do anything else. You can't rush into the desert too aggressively too fast. Once you get rolling though, then it's trivial to just buy more settlers and dump them into the desert and use Moksha to get the HS/suguba combo up. Settling in desert means you get extra food, paired with an internal route to a developed city, this means you can hit size 4 pretty quick.

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

I don't know how many times I restarted Mali and Canada games to start near their biases. Given Mali's production malus, you absolutely need to start on a desert to make the civ work. As to Canada, I've turned down a lot of great, non-tundra starts because what's the point of playing a tundra/snow focused civ if you are not going to take advantage of it? Without tundra, all Canada has going for it is that it cannot be a target of surprise wars, gets the increased diplomatic favor (that is lessened without hockey rinks), and a UU with limited use.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I initially had no desert in my start but have played it anyway and it has worked out great considering my capital ended up bordering two deserts on opposite sides after exploring a bit quickly settled them.

 

[iammaxhailme]

I restarted with Hungary about 30 times before I had both a good bent river and a geothermal fissure!

 

[BrotherInJah]

First Mali game: peninsula with no desert, cut off by mountains.

Second, all green except 3 tiles desert.

Third: finally got desert, but no luck with good resources. I'm playing it anyway.

Frankly i can't play them, i mean it's hard for me to get use to buying stuff, especially that i'm a bit short of money.

 

[gunnergoz]

Mali is one of those love/hate civs that either pleases no end, or endlessly disappoints.

 

[Sostratus]

Frankly i can't play them, i mean it's hard for me to get use to buying stuff, especially that i'm a bit short of money.

A few things I have found about Mali:
1) If you have the right start, Reyna's Forest Mgmt promotion can get you massive early gold since it applies to unimproved floodplains, marshes, forests, etc.
2) Unless you get Valetta, faith is not that useful until midgame. Holy sites are there to boost sugubas. The best use of faith is to buy market buildings - don't forget that mali can do this!
3) You can make HS-Suguba formations anywhere, not just the desert, so don't sweat it. Try to do this (swap hansas for holy sites in that image.) The crescent in particular is especially powerful because often you can align the sugubas to a river.
A crescent pattern from 3 cities in a triangle will net you sugubas worth:
2 for 5 (2xHS + 1 for 2 districts adj)
1 for 8 (3xHS + 2 for 4 districts adj)
Add +2 if you can get a river involved. Guilds is a useful civic to double all this gold.

This combos especially well with Free Inquiry Golden ages. Balance this against Golden Age Monumentality if you have a lot of space and want to develop like an absolute mad lad.

4) Some people like to roll a religion and pick up feed the world for faster grow in the desert; I personally find that Choral Music is better since it means +6 culture in every city with a holy site (all of them) and picking up Wat is also great since you can buy it with faith and its gives science. Then you can focus on HS+Suguba+Campus which gives plenty of Faith/Gold/Science/Culture. Tithe is nice to pick up later for even more gold.
5) GrandMaster's Chapel once you hit tier 2 govt is amazing since now you can get all your military units with faith. Faith is 3:1 for buying while gold is 4:1; with suguba discount you're paying 2.4:1 for faith.
6) You should have reyna and Moksha's district buying promos. Have at least one of them moving around to new cities (always try to settle more spaces) and just plop down the districts instantly.

The important thing is to make sure you're getting the most bang for your buck: if you're buying builders, have the +charges card slotted or liang in the city. Ancestral hall is great value since you will be putting up cities like a locust plague and makes it easier to pump out settlers.

 

[UWHabs]

I don't know how many times I restarted Mali and Canada games to start near their biases. Given Mali's production malus, you absolutely need to start on a desert to make the civ work. As to Canada, I've turned down a lot of great, non-tundra starts because what's the point of playing a tundra/snow focused civ if you are not going to take advantage of it? Without tundra, all Canada has going for it is that it cannot be a target of surprise wars, gets the increased diplomatic favor (that is lessened without hockey rinks), and a UU with limited use.

Even with Canada's Tundra bonuses, they're really quite underwhelming. I mean, it's kind of suitable for Canada to be the civ that just stays in the tundra and kind of just, sits there doing nothing. But the more I look at them, I feel they could be a competitor to Tamar as the worst civ. It definitely feels like they need something else - even if you gave them +1 culture on tundra tiles, I don't even think that would bring them up to middle of the pack.

 

[Khalid]

What I noticed is that rivers in desert tiles now not ncessarily spawn floodplains. I had huge desert with rivers in one Mali game, but lack of food.

 

[FenrisWolf456]

It took about 6 or 7 restarts before I had what I felt was a decent thematic desert start for Mali.

My first two attempts were tundra ... followed by a couple of jungle starts ... then I got a desert, which was about the size of a single city (I did give this one a go, but it wasn't feeling thematic for me, I was just playing a generic civ in generic part of the map, not what I wanted from my first Mali play-through) ... another restart gave me what I feel was meant as a tundra start, as there was a small patch of tundra surrounded by plains ... another jungle until I finally hit the motherlode ... a desert start on a planet with an equatorial desert zone, rather than rainforests. I am currently out-Didoing Dido as I have settled with more cities than anyone, expanding around a sea that mostly separates two parts of the Pangaea continent.

Well, Canada is quite a bit different; their bonus to using tundra is a bit dubious. Their unique improvement comes much later, and the "Petra of the tundra" also comes much later than actual Tundra, and finally their intrinsic bonus (tundra farming) is nowhere near as good as Mali's +1 food & faith for every neighboring desert tile.

Canada doesn't really need to start near tundra. By the time their tundra bonuses become relevant, they could have expanded there through normal play.

I would somewhat disagree. Canada doesn't need to be smack in the middle of tundra, true, but their double resource gathering in tundra is extremely powerful. I was constantly selling my stocks of iron, niter and oil as I was maxing out my storage every couple of turns (As I was playing a peaceful game and was friends with virtually everyone in the game, in a very defensible corner of the map; I didn't really need the resources myself). Though Canada could get a standing army of resource-requiring units up in no time compared to most other civs.

Also, their tundra farms are really only useful in the early/early-mid game ... aqueducts and dams are more useful for housing concerns, and eventually neighbourhoods for housing and food. It feels to me that there would be little point to expanding into tundra in the late game ... your cities will be too small to really get the most out of the resources and hockey rinks.

 

[steveg700]

Even with Canada's Tundra bonuses, they're really quite underwhelming. I mean, it's kind of suitable for Canada to be the civ that just stays in the tundra and kind of just, sits there doing nothing. But the more I look at them, I feel they could be a competitor to Tamar as the worst civ. It definitely feels like they need something else - even if you gave them +1 culture on tundra tiles, I don't even think that would bring them up to middle of the pack.

Are you looking at them, or are you playing them before assigning them a place in the back of the pack?

They're mostly about the placement of rinks and being able to buy national parks cheaply.

 

[UWHabs]

Are you looking at them, or are you playing them before assigning them a place in the back of the pack?

They're mostly about the placement of rinks and being able to buy national parks cheaply.

I tried a couple games but couldn't get into the groove with them. Sure, rinks and parks are nice, but they're still pretty late bonuses.

 

[Hans Castorp]

If you want lots of desert guaranteed, try Mali on TSL Earth. You're spoilt for choice if you don't have Egypt, Nubia or Arabia to contend with.

 

[steveg700]

If you want lots of desert guaranteed, try Mali on TSL Earth. You're spoilt for choice if you don't have Egypt, Nubia or Arabia to contend with.

#UnderrepresentationFTW

 

[gunnergoz]

Why not use the map setup options with "hot" and "dry?" That always gives me a map with lots of desert and plains.

 

[AriochIV]

I had lots of desert in my Mali game, with normal settings.