I've started several games with France today to tweak a bit the units costs (settlers were to expensive).
The game can be quite hard, as your initial situation can change a LOT of things.
Here were some interesting starts. Some info first: the citizens need 3 foods. So if you have no resource, you are stuck to a population of 2 until you can get a better government, or start iirigating, and this happens quite late...
You can still build nomads (they require only 1 population), but cost twice as much as settlers (they require 3 pop). Warriors requires pop 2.
- First start: a tiny island, no bonus resource --> restart
- Second start: a not so easy initial location at first, but when discovering domestication, I had pigs, cattles and horses, all in my initial city radius! It allowed a quick expansion from here, and settle in the area. But then... Not much to do. Building workers was useless (as road couldn't be built from the start), so I build warriors... And start invading Spain. But the warriors were to expensive to maintain, and soon everybody disbanded! --> Start again, make the warriors request no maintenance (a bit to hard at start otherwise), and give the road building immediately (or no access to some resources...)
- Third start: on a flood plain. The population increase was nice... But several disease killed citizens before I could reach population 4 and build my settler. I finally manage to expand a bit, but the territory was surrounded by desert and forest, and then came the Germans...
- Fourth start: near a big forest. No choice but to build nomads. Domestication allowed me to discover a pig. I settled there, and buid 4 cities, with little defense. The Persians demanded a tech, I refused, they attacked me. Two other civ quickly joined.... I was soon defeated.
The game can be quite hard, as your initial situation can change a LOT of things.
Here were some interesting starts. Some info first: the citizens need 3 foods. So if you have no resource, you are stuck to a population of 2 until you can get a better government, or start iirigating, and this happens quite late...
You can still build nomads (they require only 1 population), but cost twice as much as settlers (they require 3 pop). Warriors requires pop 2.
- First start: a tiny island, no bonus resource --> restart
- Second start: a not so easy initial location at first, but when discovering domestication, I had pigs, cattles and horses, all in my initial city radius! It allowed a quick expansion from here, and settle in the area. But then... Not much to do. Building workers was useless (as road couldn't be built from the start), so I build warriors... And start invading Spain. But the warriors were to expensive to maintain, and soon everybody disbanded! --> Start again, make the warriors request no maintenance (a bit to hard at start otherwise), and give the road building immediately (or no access to some resources...)
- Third start: on a flood plain. The population increase was nice... But several disease killed citizens before I could reach population 4 and build my settler. I finally manage to expand a bit, but the territory was surrounded by desert and forest, and then came the Germans...
- Fourth start: near a big forest. No choice but to build nomads. Domestication allowed me to discover a pig. I settled there, and buid 4 cities, with little defense. The Persians demanded a tech, I refused, they attacked me. Two other civ quickly joined.... I was soon defeated.