Playing out a Bad Start

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Seems like the game is downright evil when I go for the randomize option. Got a Small, Large Islands map as Hiawatha. It's serviceable. LOTS of water resources outside my cap. My cap itself has a lot of forests. It seems good enough, but here's the terrible part. Once again the Civ Gods decided to screw with me by denying the map of IRON! No iron = no frigates. And no frigates on a water map is a next-to-impossible proposition (I think there's a grand total of 8 Iron in the map, separated in two count deposits all through out the world).

 

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I love it when you can turn a wierd start into success. I wrote about it in this thread:

 

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http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=473708

 

[binhthuy71]

Seems like the game is downright evil when I go for the randomize option. Got a Small, Large Islands map as Hiawatha. It's serviceable. LOTS of water resources outside my cap. My cap itself has a lot of forests. It seems good enough, but here's the terrible part. Once again the Civ Gods decided to screw with me by denying the map of IRON! No iron = no frigates. And no frigates on a water map is a next-to-impossible proposition (I think there's a grand total of 8 Iron in the map, separated in two count deposits all through out the world).

Large Islands is my current favorite. I choose Strategic Balance for resources and even so I have yet to play a game where I have Coal or Uranium - not even once in seven or eight games.

 

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Large Islands is my current favorite. I choose Strategic Balance for resources and even so I have yet to play a game where I have Coal or Uranium - not even once in seven or eight games.

No Coal and Uranium is winnable. Getting that Iron is vital when Science is hard to get (you really don't have the luxury of settling a lot of GSes even if you can). The only way to win in any reasonable time frame would be Domination. Next up is Oil for Battleships, but sufficiently promoted Frigates would suffice.

I'll try Island maps again. With a map-appropriate Civ this time. Probably Polynesia or Dido. Or try a quick Domination with Byzantines and Dromons (what do the Byzantines use to capture cities when they don't have a melee ship?). Peaceful victory this time (if I can hold off).

In other news, I managed to win my first Immortal victory today! Babylon on a Pangaea map. Sub 300 game again where I was peaceful all game. Won at turn 279. Shave off 20-30 turns from that if I had signed one final RA to help me get to the final Space Ship part (I made a booboo and wasted a Rationalism finisher on GDR's). So this is how it feels like when there are a lot of capable trade partners (though I was paying for a heckuvalot in additional gold because of my tech dominance)!

I was afraid because Russia told me that France was launching a naval Sneak Attack. Yes, France Your Sneak Attack was a total of two Privateers, a Frigate and an Ironclad. Blasted them all to heck with a Sub.

 

[theguy8882]

I played as the swedes and got Stockholm stuck in a desert with low production and food. I managed to settle two cities far from my capitol, and they became production powerhouses. I quickly churned out a large army and conquered the Dutch because they had lots of wonders (and because William kept insulting me). His only two cities were amazing. Rotterdam had lots of science and Amsterdam had tons of production and wonders to boot. I turtled up and won a science victory with ease.

 

[binhthuy71]

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It is, indeed, winnable and I did win. I've set myself a personal goal of winning a cultural victory with every civ, at Emperor level, using the Large Islands map. I'm an Old Guy (64 to be exact) and I started playing Civ when Microprose published it on floppy disks in 1991. That leads me to playing at the edges of the game.

 

[AiTenshi1]

Seems like the game is downright evil when I go for the randomize option. Got a Small, Large Islands map as Hiawatha. It's serviceable. LOTS of water resources outside my cap. My cap itself has a lot of forests. It seems good enough, but here's the terrible part. Once again the Civ Gods decided to screw with me by denying the map of IRON! No iron = no frigates. And no frigates on a water map is a next-to-impossible proposition (I think there's a grand total of 8 Iron in the map, separated in two count deposits all through out the world).

Actually, no iron =/= no Frigates.

No iron = you do not build Frigates (or other iron stuff).

No iron = you build Privateers and steal any ships you need (much faster than building your own, anyway).

 

[binhthuy71]

Actually, no iron =/= no Frigates.

No iron = you do not build Frigates (or other iron stuff).

No iron = you build Privateers and steal any ships you need (much faster than building your own, anyway).

With luck, you may capture an enemy Frigate using three Privateers and that's if they have at least one promotion each. In a recent Iron-deficient game Pacal sent an invasion force led by six Frigates. If I'm not mis-remembering, capturing one of them took me from 0 Iron to -1 Iron. Meaning that, although I had the Frigate, it would fight at around -20% effectiveness.

 

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Actually, no iron =/= no Frigates.

No iron = you do not build Frigates (or other iron stuff).

No iron = you build Privateers and steal any ships you need (much faster than building your own, anyway).

It could be, BUT! There were like a total of 8 iron in the map! And the AI's who do have Iron used them on swords!