I'm to the point that at a glance, I can generally choose whether to plop down where I am or move to a different location. But I've started wondering if that's a skill upon which I could improve. I'd like to put up a pic of a start, then have y'all tell me where you would found your capitol and why.
The first one:
Spoiler:
I've marked the only spots I'd even consider. Have I missed anything? Where would you found Beijing? And why?
EDIT -- Oh, continents, 60% water, wet, temperate, 5 billion years, 15 opponents, emperor, if that affects your choices.
Probably D. You can get a 4 turner from that pretty easily and D gives room for an A or B site later to take the wheat. I dunno what the flowers mean - I assume those are bonus grass?
Oh, yeah, sorry. Flowers are bonus grass. I forget whose graphics. Harder to miss than the silver rock.
That was my choice, too, for the same reason. The 4 grass that will be revealed after founding at D maximizes chances of picking up another bonus food.
The capital placement always seems to important to make with the limited info on start-up. So, do you explore first (give time to other civs) or get started within a turn or two with the best settler factory you can manage, to be on the coast or not is also up in the air also.
Me, I like planning out the best ring of core cities I can manage, so I cheat and explore, spend time with bit map editor (Paint/Photoshop) and get just the placement I want for my capital and core cities and then reload 4000BC with it all planned out. I can't really justify this but I do tell myself that as a nomadic people I would know the land around me more extensively than what is given.
The capital placement always seems to important to make with the limited info on start-up. So, do you explore first (give time to other civs) or get started within a turn or two with the best settler factory you can manage, to be on the coast or not is also up in the air also.
Me, I like planning out the best ring of core cities I can manage, so I cheat and explore, spend time with bit map editor (Paint/Photoshop) and get just the placement I want for my capital and core cities and then reload 4000BC with it all planned out. I can't really justify this but I do tell myself that as a nomadic people I would know the land around me more extensively than what is given.
Play some decent ammount of games online against good players and you´ll lose the feeling of were to place your capital and start focusing on many others things, since online you cant reload, have limited time to decision making and are playing aginst cunning and cheating people as you are.
As an online player i would go for C instead of D since i realize that growing your capital as fast as possible would be far important than to grow 2 cities well, but of course D is also a very good choice.
Play some decent ammount of games online against good players and you´ll lose the feeling of were to place your capital and start focusing on many others things, since online you cant reload, have limited time to decision making and are playing aginst cunning and cheating people as you are.
Sorry. but I think the importance of your capitol placement is important to the rest of the game. You can mess yourself up pretty quickly with a bad choice and you never seem to catch up from that first flaw. It is not always vital and you set your priorities but it matters.
Sorry. but I think the importance of your capitol placement is important to the rest of the game. You can mess yourself up pretty quickly with a bad choice and you never seem to catch up from that first flaw. It is not always vital and you set your priorities but it matters.
I´m not saying it ins´t, i was merely poiting out that the "cure" for players who like to explore around first and then reload the save back to the first turn so they can have a perfect captital placement is to try their hands on multiplayer simultaneous games online, the reload option does not exist, you have a couple of minutes to make up your mind and you are only playing humans, it will greatly change your experience playing civ, especially the first 20/30 turns strategies.
Yeah, vanilla. I don't use the rank corruption thing consciously. A few cities are going to share the same rank, but I put no effort into making it so. Maybe that's what's causing my problems with corruption in later game, but cest la vie. I'm looking to play the game in an evening, two at most, and thinking about rank and such slows it down too much.
In fact, I've stopped using MapFinder. I realized pretty much all I was really looking for was a cow, 3-4 grass, and no tundra. Fresh water was nice but not a deal-breaker. Ideally, several of the fat X should be mountains, but again, no deal-breaker. It's the next set of cities that define growth the way I play, not the first one, and those you can't tell from the initial dozen or so tiles you see in MapFinder. I can get something like that with a dozen or so restarts, and in 15-20 minutes, I should have 10 cities and maybe even be in my first war. Restart if it looks bad by then.
Any suggestions based on what you see now? Would you have already chosen a site, leaving the worker to start watering the cow, or would you move him to see if there's a better town site?
How I analyzed it:
Spoiler:
Three excess food (after watering the cow) means 7 turns to expansion. The second cow will only help me for three turns prior to the 10th turn cultural expansion anyway, so there's only 3 food difference between A and E. Not a big reason to choose A over E. In fact, B is probably better than A, though I really hate to squash the forest.
Moving to found capitol at A gives me info about 2 plains and 1 grass tile.
Moving to found capitol at E gives me three new grass tiles.
I'm leaning towards E at the moment.
Moving worker to the second cow wastes one turn, but will tell me more about where to found town, so that's what I opt for.
Oh, I forgot. Standard map (meant to play huge, but oopsed it), Emperor, everything else random.
So what did my worker find?
Spoiler:
Wow! A four cow start, plus a nearby luxury! G is probably a good spot for a town, harbor and all. Might be a resource I don't want to settle on, but it should not be my capitol, anyway. My first town should be elsewhere. A and E are now out of the running for capitol. I'm now leaning towards H or I, despite that meaning a couple turns later. F is an option, I suppose, CxxC to the future harbor, and CxxC to H, as well as good spacing for a harbor town at J or K, but with 4 cows already revealed, I'm not placing very good odds on finding anything more.
The minimap suggests F is moving towards tundra. Better to stay temperate or move tropical for now. This in mind, I've decided to settle my first town on either H or I. To maximize my info, I'll start by moving to C. There's always a chance that will reveal something, some reason to either squash the forest at C or a rational reason to choose I over H.
C reveals nothing new, so I decide to found my city at H.
It turns out the gods of RNG were flighty. I am on a continent with 2 other civs. I wipe them out fairly early, (there are 2 irons on the continent, both within the fat x of the other civ's capitol) controlling 36% of the map, IIRC. I lose 2 galleys searching, but stumble onto England's island with the third. Soon, I have 48% of the map. Aargh! No saltpeter. 48%, scads of hills, a few deserts, no saltpeter. Xerxes has 2 on his small island, but can't trade. 54%. Triple AAARRRGGGGHHHH -- not a stinking coal to be found! Shaka has TWO on his island (plus, I later find, one under his capitol) but won't trade. 58%. At this point, I just decide to take the domination win.
Strange map. F had 2 cows plus a deer in forest. G had 2 fish and 1 whale. That's a singleton incense between L and K, but K controls 2 wheat 1 fish, 1 whale.
Not really possible to play it wrong, as it turns out, but how would you have played the first half-dozen moves?
I woudl go with A - I haven't checked your spoilers yet. it would have the worker already to work the cow and it meas fewer river crossings are likely. more info would be helpful on that though.
From the original start, I'd probably have been thinking I'd settle at A, because you can see the third cow's head peeking out of the fog 2 SE of the start. Because of this, I would probably have moved the settler and started irrigating the starting cow on the first turn. The settler would have then ended up at G, because I hate being off the river. I like 20K games, and at emperor I find it a toss-up between using the capitol or the 2nd city. Here, unless the hidden tiles at G turned out to be really nice, I'd be putting my 20K city at B, getting all 4 cows and at least one hill.
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