Placement of civs at the start

[The Judge]

Anyone know in what order the different colour civs are placed on the map? Or is it random? I was under the impression there was a set order.

I recently had a game as the Japanese and the terrain I ended up with was terrible. Just 4 squares south of my first city was 25x squares of desert. To the north was the sea (city was coastal), and the east and west were mainly mountains and forest. With no good terrain for a second city I had to settle for a poor site. With no good terrain I just couldn't get going -it was awful.

 

[ElephantU]

Civs are believed to be placed in the KeyCiv order, the same as the order you see if you choose Customize Civs or Select Civ during game setup: White, Green, Blue, Yellow, Cyan, Orange, Purple. When picking starting locations the game seems to look for only one decent one, not taking into account space for second or third cities nearby. There seems to be a system of "compensation" where starts that are poorer by comparison with the other civs are given more free starting techs and occasionally a second settler.

Besides, triumphing over adversity is part of the challenge - and makes a harder victory sweeter...

 

[vorlon_mi]

Oooh, let me follow up on that. Are you saying that the starting
techs are random, both in number and in type? And that they vary
with the starting location, not the specific Civ?

How did I miss this before?

 

[ElephantU]

Not exactly - you seem to get more starting techs when your starting location is terrain-deprived or closer to other civs, particularly if you are playing Cyan/Orange/Purple civ (later start). As to which techs you get, there seems to be some dependency on your "civ/mil" characteristic of your tribe. Here's a good thread on that:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2370

(note also one of La Fayette's very first posts...)