The pattern that is emerging in my games is that starting locations tend to have around a huge lot of same luxury...
Those would be the "regional" luxuries applied to each civ. That seems to be working as intended. As you said, it's to give each civ somewhat of a monopoly on a regional luxury if it expands within its designated region, to promote trading. Each civ gets a unique one, unless you increase the civ count above the standard 8. In starts of lesser fertility, additional copies are placed.
Try changing the resource abundance in settings.
Yeah, but that shouldn't be necessary, and in my opinion, it isn't a very good setting anyway. It increases luxuries and bonuses way too much, and strategics quantities (not even talking about frequencies) become very bloated (and again, in my opinion, unbalanced).
Plus, that setting wouldn't affect the issue I'm speaking of at start locations anyway (Unless you select Sparse or Legendary) because start areas have an impact radius of 3 which blocks-out luxuries placed throughout regions and is handled more precisely. That's why, when you don't see 1 or more copies of a regional luxury (within 3 rings of the city, but most times sticks to first 2) and 1 bonus luxury (within 2 rings of the city) on standard settings, then something may be wrong.
Edit: MadDjinn States Venice has a preference to best coastal area, which means they can end up isolated because of that (doesn't take into account others apparently). In Diety Venice LP 1
Indeed, that seems to be the only change to AssignStartingPlots. Yes, Venice gets the first pick if there are others civs with a coastal bias and there are coastal starts available, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're also "always" isolated and there's still a decent chance that they'll have neighbors nearby. Venice has the same impact value and 8 ripple values as other civs.
And it's not the "best" coastal area either, just the first. It could be the most fertile region with a coastal start or it could be the worst one. Starts are initially assigned to regions without any civ assigned to them, then the game chooses which civs go where out of those region starts depending on biases and such.
Starts are assigned in order, starting with the least fertile region and ending with the most fertile (again, without any civs assigned yet). This way, the starts in the fertile areas will be much more likely to be pushed around by the impact and ripple values of the starts already placed and may be closer to each other. This potentially gives the starts in less fertile areas more room to find suitable expansions.
But Venice just gets the first pick out of the shuffled number of regions that have a coastal start. It could be a less fertile region which is a little more isolated (which works out for Venice, since expanding into a less fertile region isn't an option anyway and normalization methods "beef-up" their less fertile starting area to an acceptable one via resources and such), or it could be a fertile region with potentially closer neighboring civs. But, it ensures that if at least one coastal start exists on a map, Venice gets it first and doesn't have to fallback to a lake start (if that exists anywhere).
Also, is it just me or do the maps seem larger? (This isn't a statement. It's a real question.)
Nope, they're the same size.
I have 18 CS in my game and three quarters of them have ONLY gems as their lux. As Portugal, it's annoying that three feitorias cover all of the CS luxuries possible.
Hmm... that's a strange number, so I'm not sure what map size you're using. But let's just say it's Standard.
Civs = 8
Regional Lux = 8
CS = 16
CS Lux = 3
Special Lux (Marble) = 1
Disabled Lux (on Standard) = 3
Random Lux = 20 - RegionalLux - CSLux - SpecialLux - DisabledLux = 5
- - - -
Weights are applied...
3 CSLux = total weight of 75% (25% each)
1 RegionalLux + 5 RandomLux = total weight of 25% (4.16% each)
- - - -
In a perfect world
:
With 16 Total CS, roughly 12 should receive the 3 luxuries exclusive to CS's (4x1, 4x1, 4x1).
Roughly, 4 CS should receive the remaining pool of luxuries which include the randoms and the regional luxury the CS is located in (if it's in one).
- - - -
BUT, these luxuries also have to pass tests to see if they're compatible with the CS's terrain, before they're given a weight and allowed to be rolled for by the CS.
So, if 2 out of those 3 CS luxuries were more selective luxuries with tighter demands (such as ivory or incense), then it's possible that nearly 3/4 of the CS received Gems (which is very flexible and can be on any hill terrain with any covering and even flat jungle) because Gems may have had a 75% weight alone when CS were rolling for luxuries.
Why did the player in the Brazil screenshot settle in place?! If your start is that bad, find a better one.
...
I don't see any resources in the area. He could go and explore, but if you spend more than 3 turns looking for a settling spot, you might as well generate a new map.
^
No one has played enough games yet to say anything meaningful about the start locations. Same thing happens every patch, people play one or two games and come to the forums with their suspicions about the AI being more or less aggressive, the start locations being weird or any number of other "observations".
I agree. Observations of being isolated often, not getting rivers, and such are likely just due to unlucky instances. They happen. So, when one first starts playing the expansion, it may just "seem" like it's the norm so far amongst one's limited number of games . One needs to play much more, know how things work, and also be aware of the settings you choose which may affect what is being sought after.
But... my initial "observation" that started this thread still stands. I know how the code works and how maps are supposed to be setup.
