Restarting for a better map

[Soryn Arkayn]

I was wondering how often do players restart a Civ4 game to find a better map?

So you understand, here's the scenario.

You start a new campaign, the map is created, and you find you're starting off in a inhospitable location. Perhaps there's Desert or Tundra or Jungle covering half the map at your starting location. Or perhaps there's no resources nearby. Or perhaps you find yourself boxed in by other Civs and you're stuck with only 2 or 3 cities.

Whatever.

I'm curious how often this happens to people, because for a few days I was restarting like mad because I just couldn't find a playable map. It wasn't until last night that I found a decent map and was able to get into the game again.

 

[cruach mor]

I am only on my 6th game of CIV IV. Three of these were abandoned because of bad start locations. I restarted about 1/3 of the Civ III games I played.

 

[IntruderAlert]

For al the games played I always accpeted the map given.
I think a less then brilliant spot is still a chalange to see how far you can get with the game.

Civ's in real life also can't resign and "play again", Play the cards you are dealt.
If it means an earrly defeat, Make em pay for your skin. Hang on by the teeth.

 

[warpstorm]

Never. If the start means I lose, I lose.

 

[Arathorn]

Never restart. Learning how to play from a sub-optimal position is one of the challenges of Civ4. You learn more from adversity than you do from domination. Only way I'd restart is if my warrior/settler were completely boxed in by peaks and literally could not move (which I think the map generator doesn't allow).

Arathorn

 

[petey]

I do that all the time. I take the units that I begin with and run around the area for a bit to see if it's any good. If so, I open up the 4000BC save file and play the map. If not, I generate another one.

If you get a bad start position, you're screwed anyways, so it's best to find a place where you can get something going and then play from there rather than waste your time with a crappy location.

 

[SygmaZero]

I always restart until I get an acceptable spot because I always play Epic games with huge maps so it's a huge investment in time and I want it to be worthwhile and fun. Especially when I'm learning the new dynamics.

I had to restart quite a few times on Noble because I was always starting near or in massive amounts of jungle with the same beat and scarce resources. The last game I started that I'm now playing and having a great time wasn't near any jungle and I could tell it was a much better location from the varied and concentrated resources and plentiful rivers.

I did try to play one game where I started completely in jungle because I had an excellent geographical bottle neck to take advantage of, but all my jungle-locked cities were producing so little, growing so slowly and choking on poor health that it wasn't much fun at all. I was just getting ran by everybody.

 

[Soryn Arkayn]

I try to play the maps I'm given, but if it's hopeless I won't hesitate to bail. There's just no sense in struggling through a 20+ hour game when you have no chance of winning.

An example of a no-win situation would be if I get boxed in by other Civs and I'm stuck with only 2 or 3 cities. I don't like overlapping city radii so I refuse to cluster my cities or build mine too close to rival cities, so on occassion I'll get stuck and I'll restart.

I don't mind getting beat by another Civ by conquest or even by a victory type, but I refuse to be beat by the map.

 

[peacenik]

I think playing every map, no matter how tough, is the best single-player method to get better at Civ games, although sometimes it is like a trip to the dentist.

 

[smarpoe]

Never restart. Learning how to play from a sub-optimal position is one of the challenges of Civ4. You learn more from adversity than you do from domination. Only way I'd restart is if my warrior/settler were completely boxed in by peaks and literally could not move (which I think the map generator doesn't allow).

Arathorn

Totally agree with you. I've never restarted because of a bad start point. I look at it this way, computer put me here and this is where I'll begin my reign of conquest. Period. Although, I may say a little prayer that my game doesn't CTD after 2 hrs of game play.

 

[ipris]

rarely, but i do occassionally restart. moreso if i'm playing an epic length game.

 

[vbraun]

Usually the starts are pretty good.

 

[Harry Haller]

I have played about 8 or 9 games so far, and in only 1 case was the start location really bad. I have been playing on "noble" so it could be that the start locations are worse on higher difficulty levels. I will generally try to stick it out even if the start location doesn't look good. Sometimes you can wind up finding a very good spot for additional cities even if your starting location is not ideal.

 

[krapylet]

I used to restart in Civ 3, and sometimes even went as far as making maps that were ridiculously easy for me. This provided me with no challenge at all. I've restarted a few times in Civ 4, but that was only because I had no idea how to play the game. For example, I didn't realize I should wait a bit before building workers/settlers so all my cities were still size 1 by like 2000 BC. I'll not restart because of a poor start location though, that's part of the game.

 

[AU_Armageddon]

I don't think I've ever been screwed by a bad map enough to consider starting over in Civ4 yet. The exact opposite though. My current game I started as the Indust/Financ Chinese and got Marble, Stone, 2 Deer, Sheep and Gold all in work radius, on a river, and with all rest but one other tile a forest.

Is on Monarchy which I have found a decent challenge for me so far, but cos of this start I got all the wonders despite 18 civs and cos of all the great people, have over 150 research from my capital already and its only 700 bc. I am here lookin at forums cos I just quit, writing it off as a walkover with 15-20 hours play to go through the motions.

So I guess my answer counts as a yes, restarting cos of map

Ironically was custom type called "balanced". trying em all one by one. Dunno what the balance part of that was though. Actual map layout turned out to be what in statistics is known as a normal distribution curve, with the south pole as x axis. Thought perhaps calling it 'balanced' is meant to be a geeky pun from the designers.

 

[Saarud]

Never restart. Not yet anyway. Once I have started I play to the end. I have only completed 2 games so far, first one on noble difficulty and the second on prince difficulty... won both. Now I'm halfway into my 3rd game and this time on monarch difficulty. I had an extremely bad start but played anyway. I am not going to win this time unless I do something really spectacular. Despite the bad start this is by far the funniest game of my 3 starts... I guess because I am having big troubles.

Oh and I like it when its random. I even randomize which civilization and which country I'll start with. Makes it more fun that way. I'm Malineese now.

 

[mikh07]

i only restart when im alone on a continent... i find it annoying that stone and marble almost never spawn near me tho

 

[Garand]

I used to restart if I got bad starting locations, but since Civ III and Civ IV, I usually just stick it out, no matter how hopeless it may be. In my current game of Civ IV, only about 1/3 of my empire is useful land - the rest is jungle or big stretches of hills. However, I stuck with it, made a legion of workers to clear the jungle, and am building up nicely despite the initial handicap. And it wasn't much of a handicap anyway - jungle in Civ IV is not nearly as debilitating as it was in Civ III - sure it's useless by itself, but it can be cleared far more quickly than in the past.

The worst starting location I ever received on a map was one of those singular freak events that I will probably never see again. I was put on a smallish continent that (not kidding) was about 80% hills and mountains, 10% desert, 5% grassland and 5% jungle. My settler started in a location of desert and a couple of grassland squares, almost totally ringed by mountains and hills, with 3 volcanoes in my city's extended radius. While that may sound bad enough, I had two Civs start right next door to me that completely boxed me in, to where I could settle no more than 3 cities - and the second one was founded on a one-square patch of desert surrounded by mountains and hills. I played it just to see what would happen but the savegame somehow corrupted and I lost it.

Anyway, try not to restart - sometimes the games where you have the most hopeless start can become the foundation of your most triumphant and memorable game. My favorite occurrence is to get stuck on a small and questionably useful island, cut a beeline for sailing, explore and colonize, then set up an Empire that spans many parts of the world, ala England. It makes for fun and challenging games as you must balance development with protecting your far-flung Empire. And at the end, as your battleships and carriers dominate the sea lanes sinking every invasion fleet headed for your lands as your spaceship launches to Alpha Centauri, you can look back on the crummy start you got and say "Choke on that, baby!"

 

[joequality]

I agree with Arathorn. take what life (cIV) gives you

 

[Hellfire]

Some people want to challenge themselves tremendously and feel great pleasure in winning 1 out of 5 or so games, even though the luck of the draw ruined the other 4.

And yet, they say that the great warrior is great because he doesn't put himself in a position to lose (or herself ).

I personally am able to size up if I am able to win a game or not based on certain parameters, and I quit. I quit because Civ takes a long time to play and I'm not going to get 200 turns into the game to finally see that I'm still in the medieval era and the Zulus are in the industrial era with tanks eagerly awaiting to invade me, all because I had crappy starting position.

Let's face it, if your civ started between tundra and mountains with 2 squares of plains to work with, chances are you'd probably not enjoy that game. But that's the beauty of civ, people can enjoy it in different ways.

It was worse in the early days of civ3 (before some patches fixed it) when sometimes a civ (YOUR civ) would start in a small grassland area surrounded on all sides by either 15 squares of mountains or ocean.

Also, in real life, there are an unlimited number of "victory conditions" and survival is possibly on the top of the list. In Civ there are limited numbers and it's a little harder to give yourself motivation to keep playing if all you are doing is playing turn for turn until the end of time after the 500 turn limit.