Solitary Island Start

[Jelster]

Just started a new game: England/King/Large Islands.

It's turn 21 and I've worked out that I'm on a reasonably sized island with 2 CS's (Zurich & Zanzibar).

Do I knock it on the head and start again, or shall I change my strategy and stay on the island. As England I can build a couple of tiremes and get out to meet other countries/CS's while having a fairly defensible empire. There's mountains, rivers, wheat, resources etc here, along with Crab, Silver, Gems, Marble & cotton.

I'm quite tempted to give it a try and see how it goes. Opinions ??

 

[Hieschen]

A screen shot would be nice (or a save game for that matter)

If the island is large enough to host 3 cities, i would go on.

 

[PurpleHaze34]

With England I would go all navy domination. Play on!

 

[nanomage]

You mentioned building triremes to make contact with others, so you're not truly isolated?

 

[Jelster]

You mentioned building triremes to make contact with others, so you're not truly isolated?

Well I've now gone all around the island and I have no shallow water route to any other civ, bar the two CS's on the island.

 

[kirbdog]

It sounds interesting for you to play, from your description. That trumps all other considerations.

 

[DabigQuack]

just be the first person to navigation..

use all the iron u can muster into ship of the lines and go whoop someones ass

EDIT- take a privateer to capature the final hit of cities

 

[nanomage]

you don't need to be the first to navigation for that. ai can't counter frigates with frigates, much less if you've SotL. Really need iron though, have some backup plan in case you have none

 

[Deau]

beline to univs while rexing your continent, then hit naviguation asap with a quick detour to iron. Choose if you want to do heavy naval warmongering or go for science. Use demography tab to figure out if passive play is viable.

 

[BrokTheFanatic]

I like those starts, though runaways can be a real problem. Depends on your difficulty.

But I'd restart and probably play it knowing I don't need to do anything but build science and my city base. If you have many woods, can try for an early wonder if on immortal or diety. Any lower difficulty I'd definitely build something early on while I build up tech for crossing the seas. England is ideal for this, conquering across the water or settling open islands with luxuries and resources. Even if behind in tech you get the 2 spies and can use them to close the gap.

Hopefully the island is big enough for 4+ cities, don't worry about a pefect spread, they can overlap. Just need a couple good tiles per city. Can even take over a CS but not right away due to the diplo hit.

[edit: oh yeah, if it is sizable and can handle 6+ cities, you can go liberty and spread over it fast. Libraries in all and then NC. That works when you don't need to build any troops for defense. Can use all prod for early libraries]

 

[Jelster]

Right, status update as of last night.

There is another island which has been completely over run by Mongolia, however this DOES have a shallow water path to the main continent which contains all the other Civs include the Maya, Arabia and Hiawatha all trying to build their own run away states.

I'm behind in technology, but not by much, and I'm the only one with deep water transport, so if I had of kept up my normal research lines I'd probably be up with the Maya.

I reckon if I knuckle down and work at it I can pull a science VC off, but I'll need to take some cities on the mainland - those puppets will sustain my need for gold and science.....

As yet, no other Civ has made it to my island, I could take the two CS's and use them as puppets before anybody else gets here without them knowing...

 

[Jelster]

Here's a screen shot of an early map...

 

[Jelster]

To my surprise, I actually ended up winning this game. Although after inspection it was on Prince, not King, however I reloaded the initial autosave and saved it again for anybody that wants to have a crack at it....

I do have InfoAddict running on this if any of you use it.

 

[smileyy90210]

Yeah, on King I would think the inabilty to sell Luxuries would have hurt a lot.

 

[joncnunn]

Large Islands: This is a stable of mine.

No point building a scout on this map type; while the probability isn't quite zero, it's rare for a major AI to be sharing your starting landmass; (your Warrior is plenty to be the first to meet the one or two city states on your landmass and rack up all the goody huts)
It's not quite as critical as tiny islands, but the first naval tech is still more of a priority than on other map types. (You'll probably want to be building naval ships as scouts right after you complete NC to make contact with AIs and start finding the natural wonders.)

The rest is the same as always; pick polices appropriate for how many cities your planning on founding and what form of victory your wanting to achieve.

My standard opening is:
Start researching Pottery, start building a Worker (but it will be delayed, see below)

Upon completing Pottery, add a Shrine & Granary to the queue and then reorder the queue such that it's in the following order:
1. Shrine
2. Worker (the one partly completed)
3. Granary

Upon completing Writing, add a Library to the end of the queue.

Upon hitting 25 cultural points, open Tradition. A few turns later chose Legalism. Next will be Monarchy followed by Landed Elite.

 

[joncnunn]

Yeah, on King I would think the inabilty to sell Luxuries would have hurt a lot.

More than offset by AI can't possibly DOW you in early game while your busy with civilian units & basic buildings (and thus have little military) if they haven't even met you yet.

 

[joncnunn]

Here's a screen shot of an early map...

If this is standard size map, this is actually a much bigger starting landmass than is normal for the large islands script.

I'm actually counting 5 possible city sites (this includes your capital) not already taken by city states.
Normally there is only 3 or 4 city sites not taken by city states.

 

[Jelster]

If I remember correctly, this was a Continents map, which is why I was alone on the landmass (or at least I thought it was continents...)

Once I worked out I was on my own I managed to get 4 cities with infrastructure set up, and was passed T300 before anybody else found the island, until then I had managed not to exchange embassies, and I never had 1 spy steal anything during the entire game.

I built up a strong navy and took another landmass, built up a land army and took some more puppets. Obviously once I met other Civ's I had lots of lux's to sell, so I generated quite a bit of regular cash.

I took Gods of the Seas, built the GLH and put Sea Ports into 3 coastal cities. Quite powerful....

 

[Browd]

It was Large Continents. Interesting map, and lucky to get two mercantile CSs on your continent.

 

[smileyy90210]

More than offset by AI can't possibly DOW you in early game while your busy with civilian units & basic buildings (and thus have little military) if they haven't even met you yet.

True. I tend to play a fairly...risky....King strategy of not having many early units, so I'm able to use my lux money on workers/settlers/buildings, which usually lets me grab an extra early wonder (I've found Pyramids or Stonehenge can start a GE-driven Wonder cascade)