Mars scenario - Need help

[IMBC2]

So here I am looking at the Mars Scenario from the Scenario pack. I try to build the American civilization starting with Armstrong on that northern peninsula.

As I am surveying the land around me, I notice that all the land to the west of Armstrong is canyon that gives no food whatsoever (even if the city center is on a canyon square). Settling on one of those spaces always results in a stagnant size 1 city with zero food. (Citizens still consume 2 food each turn.)

So Armstrong has some pretty promising land (as far as this scenario goes) in permafrost and food-giving (2 food) ocean squares. And irrigating a permafrost square gives a +2 bonus in food (woo-hoo!). Downside is that irrigating takes 10 (!) turns. So as long as I know that it would be pointless to try to expand my Martian-American empire too quickly using my 2 starting NONE settlers, I decide to irrigate that first permafrost square to the east of town center using both settlers.

By turn 7, my first irrigated square (woo-hoo!). Oh man, this takes way too long compared to the vanilla Civ2 game! I decide that if I really want to get my empire going, I’ll need a boat to explore that land to the south of me. Hmmm, okay, so I’ll have to build a Sailboat, but to get those, I’ll need to research Millipressure Sail. Oh geez! There’s so much stuff I’ll have to research just to get to that! And that tech path has nothing in common with the path to Oligarchy (equivalent to Monarchy). Decisions, decisions….

I look up the Civilopedia for terrain types. There’s no terrain which starts out giving you at least 2 food units (unless it’s a special). And even specials are stingy with food. No special terrain will grant more than 2 food units. Note that this does not include the man-made Terraformed terrain (5 food, 1 shield, and 5 trade), but you don’t get to create this until you can build Terraformer units (this scenario’s equivalent of Engineers). And you can’t build Terraformers before you’ve researched Pantisocracy (equivalent to Democracy in vanilla Civ2) and something else! And of course, no land on Mars starts out as Terraformed.

Well, not being too comfortable with having a one-city civ for many, many turns, I saved my game and activated the Cheat menu to see what all the land looks like. Look at ALL that canyon to the west of me! It will take at least 25 turns for my settlers to get to a decent piece of land for starting a new city! Geez, looks like none of the other civs have very favorable starting positions either… but at least they won’t have trouble expanding their empire to multiple cities. Even so, irrigating land to get decent food will be a problem when starting a new city because there are no rivers on Mars and the only way to get irrigated squares in a new town is to make a “trail of irrigation” to a square in that town or use the Automated Settlers ‘cheat’ (‘k’ command). And I notice that OCC strategy can NOT apply here because spaceship parts do not exist in this scenario.

Studying the terrain types leads me to conclude that although food is scarce in this scenario, shields and trade are abundant. Once one makes it past the food scarcity, research possibilities are the stuff dreams are made of. Also, science rates can be comfortably set high because of the abundant trade arrows.

So I am asking those who are experienced with the Mars scenario from the Scenario Pack :

1. Are there any helpful starting tips to get past the food shortage problem in growing a Martian empire, especially as the Americans?
2. Or will it be absolutely necessary, in my case, to stay at one city until I research Millipressure Sail?
3. Or would it be better for me to get Oligarchy first?

Playing this scenario is just like learning Civ2 all over again…

 

[Jesdisciple]

I'm not particularly experienced, but I recall getting satisfactory resources and making war on Mars (although it was quite a while back).

I believe I always chose that first Channel Deposits square after the peninsula for my second city, because I generally dislike good defensive terrain (especially mountains) right next to my cities. Your city square will render 2 food (as an irrigable city square gets one extra food), and your first worker can go to the Buried Frost directly south for one food surplus.

My third city got a comparable spot somewhere around the Channel Deposits with Ores (Shield) further to the west (but don't settle on an Ores square, as this is Martian "grassland" - a city on it gets one shield for the square regardless). Shortly after you found this city the Japanese to the west will probably find you, so watch out.

I usually try to wrap around the peninsula with my fourth, and sometimes fifth, city. I think they take longer than the Japanese do for your third, but the Russians will soon find you here. You should probably befriend one of the two (temporarily) for their aid against the other (by using the roundness of the map).

Don't be so picky about where to settle. Try to pick a square with 1+ food and an irrigation bonus (some have a 2 irrigation bonus, but a city only gets 1 extra food) and preferably some specials nearby, for your city. This is Mars, where we send robots right now because we can't survive on it. The scenario probably softens it a bit so you can actually play, but I kind of think the harshness is the idea.

If you want, you can use a dummy game with cheat on to create settlers on these squares and see for yourself what they yield; this is how I knew what it was.