Starting location is as much a factor in difficulty as the difficulty level you play

[tdy99]

This may seem like stating the obvious, but it hit me recently how vital starting location really is. I decided to move back down to Monarch from my normal immortal for a low pressure game, and rolled a fairly crappy start. I struggled more on monarch with a crappy start than I have in many immortal games with superior starting locations.

Agree or disagree? The difference between a very good starting location and a fairly bad one is worth about 2 or 3 difficulty levels?

 

[CocoIsKing28]

Yeah, a terrible start could give you a hard time on settler. Just think: a bad start with no production or food leads to bad expansion and bad research. If you can't expand quick enough your enemies will take your city-spots. It you are bad with research and prod. you can't build a strong enough army to take your enemies down. Your start is pretty much everything in a game.

 

[elmurcis]

I agree.. Maybe you can play nice game if you have crappy Capital and great 2nd city.. but in general it will be harder..
Same time excellent start can give so huge boost that you get far ahead your usual plan. For example I usually try to build GLH (just water based strategy) and usual finish date for that is around 1900-1800 BC (with 2nd city built around 2950-2850 BC), but had 1 game where I was able to settle 2nd city around 3100 BC and finish GLH around 2350 BC... It was snowball efect and I was able to expand to 40 cities almost only peacefully while AI had just around 20 cities max..

 

[Choggy]

Good question. On on the one hand, a crappy location means you're playing catchup much longer. One the other hand, the AI tech bonuses at higher levels as you progress through the eras blunt a good start anyway.

Depends on your definition of a crappy start. If you mean that there is a decent spot not too far away then you can always relocate your capital. If you're talking about a tundra start surrounded by ever more tundra then, yeah, I reckon that's worth 2 or 3 levels.

 

[plasmacannon]

I got sick of the bad starts on Temperate maps and switched to Tropical.
Yes, there is a lot of jungle, but there is less desert and plains, plus the jungle can be chopped down for more grassland tiles.

 

[Pangaea]

Plains is what I really hate, even more than jungle. At least jungle can be cut down (eventually) and you'll have good tiles underneath. Can't really do much with plains, they'll always be a bit crap. So wtih a lot of plains, the start will obviously (IMO) add toe the difficulty. How much would be a topic for debate on an individual star basis, but it certainly has a huge impact on the game. There is a reason why HoF players reroll a lot.

 

[damerell]

Yeah, a terrible start could give you a hard time on settler.

That is surely going a bit far; the AI is just so hopelessly encumbered on Settler, and the game does take some steps to ensure your starting position is not altogether dreadful.

I remember I played an OCC game where, for a bit of a change of pace, I used the Islands map and WBed my start over to a 1x1 island in the middle of the sea, playing on Chieftain. Now by any reasonable assessment this is not a good start spot; you don't lack for commerce, but you're in a world of hurt hammer-wise until you squeeze out the Moai Statues, and obviously you will never enjoy any land-based food, luxury or strategic resource that you cannot afford to buy in from the AI [1] - at least in a normal OCC game you tend to have a few, especially as your cultural borders expand - and you won't buy in any at all, except maybe a swap for a duplicate seafood, until you have Currency. Of course, early on you have no defense worries, but later in the game if the AI manages temporary naval superiority and blockades you (as they did to me) it can be very painful.

Nevertheless, although I had a few nervous moments, it ended in victory. On Settler? It's my belief that a reasonable player (let us say, one who can win on Noble) is not actually going to have a hard time on Settler from any starting position the game can actually generate.

[1] I suspect the AI who sold me oil at lots-of-gold per turn and found the deal very rapidly cancelled shortly followed by the arrival of a large number of transports and destroyers was not overcome with joy, but such is life.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Plains is what I really hate, even more than jungle. At least jungle can be cut down (eventually) and you'll have good tiles underneath. Can't really do much with plains, they'll always be a bit crap.

Plains do become viable at biology. The problem is getting there before you fall too far behind.

They have the same raw yield as grassland, they just lack food which is absolutely horrible until later game.

 

[noto2]

I try my best to work low food yield tiles by combining them with high food yield ones (except for a GP farm, obviously). Doing this I can often make use of plains tiles. For example, let's say you want a commercial city, where do you build it? Surrounded by grassland tiles? You could... you could try to work 10 grassland cottages, the commercial output would be good but the city would have no hammers and you'd rely completely on whipping for infrastructure. Or, on the other hand, what if you have a city with 8 plains tiles and wet corn and 1-2 seafood? You could work the food tiles and cottage those plains. Thus the cottages will grow and each one will provide you with a hammer as well as the commerce. It makes for a very useful hybrid city. This allows you to get production without needing to whip and it doesn't force you to use US to get hammers either. I often find in the mid game my population caps force me to whip periodically to make use of the surplus food. If you cottage plains tiles and work those you can put the food into that and it frees you to use a civic other than slavery (oh...I play Kmod where serfdom is actually useful, so between that and caste system I don't always want to be in slavery).

 

[Kesshi]

I try my best to work low food yield tiles by combining them with high food yield ones (except for a GP farm, obviously). Doing this I can often make use of plains tiles.

Typically the opportunity cost of working a non-plain tile is superior to working a plain tile. In your situation it would probably be more beneficial to work a specialist than an improved plains tile.

 

[damerell]

Typically the opportunity cost of working a non-plain tile is superior to working a plain tile. In your situation it would probably be more beneficial to work a specialist than an improved plains tile.

I'm not sure you mean "opportunity cost" here, but... really? Working a plains tile pays for half a specialist, food-wise, so effectively we only get half a specialist by not working it [1]. Let's compare with an engineer, then, because the plains tile's hammer is just equal to one-half the engineer's two hammers, which balances out nicely. So the engineer is worth 1.5 GPP; or (supposing I cottage the plains tile) I could have 4 commerce eventually, plus any benefit from civics or techs for the cottage.

Are the 1.5 GPP really better, particularly given that the 4 commerce is cash-in-hand not jam-tomorrow?

I'm a novice, so I think I'm missing something here. People often seem less keen on hammers than I find myself.

[1] Assuming no happy, health cap issues - otherwise, yes, let's have a specialist.

 

[Kesshi]

A plains tile doesn't pay for half a specialist because it takes 2 food to work that tile and you gain is only 1 food, thus making a plains tile is negative food. The issue with plains is that you can only have minimal potential gains elsewhere. The only thing that might be worth it with plains tiles are riverside plains with cottages if you are financial, and even then those take a few turns to mature past mediocre. Early game, "a few turns to mature" is a significant amount of time.

 

[damerell]

A plains tile doesn't pay for half a specialist because it takes 2 food to work that tile and you gain is only 1 food, thus making a plains tile is negative food.

You're not comparing like with like there; by that metric, not working the plains tile and instead having a specialist is twice as much negative food.

Suppose the city has +2 food. You can either have one specialist or work two plains tiles. Ergo, a plains tile should be compared with half a specialist.

Early game, "a few turns to mature" is a significant amount of time.

GPP don't exactly pay off in the short term either, especially if settled - at least with a cottage, you get some benefit right away.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Kesshi is right. Plains are food-neutral when farmed and thus cost a pop to basically give 1 hammer.

Now, evaluate what you're going to grow onto with that 2 food, if the best tile you can work right now is just a plains tile. The answer is more plains, or something even worse. In a PURE hammer city with food surplus that doesn't have the techs needed to make things like workshops viable, plains farms are good whip holdover if you can't work anything else and are waiting for to cool, if the city has that kind of surplus food and is already working all of its hills.

Otherwise, the specialist provides more actual output now (food is not a direct contribution unless building workers/settlers, food is potential that only gets returned later via whips or additional worked tiles). Usually 3 yield of SOMETHING (4 if you go with a spy and can steal tech) is stronger than 1 now and a marginal tile later.

If the gpp produced will actually generate a great person at some point, the value is *much* greater.

At biology you can do much better with the 3 1 tiles. Under state property + caste a city with 20 plains tiles only can run 10 farms + 10 shops and hit 61 base ...pretty good. Of course, it's still weaker than grassland with 20 tiles under caste (you can work all workshops and put up 80 base ), but suddenly it's very usable. Likely you won't run pop 20 in a production city, but you see what I mean now. They're weak tiles no matter how you slice it, they just become usable about halfway into the tech tree or so.

 

[damerell]

Kesshi is right. Plains are food-neutral when farmed and thus cost a pop to basically give 1 hammer.

No; if they're food-neutral when farmed (assuming you build a farm), they cost no pop to give one hammer. A city with a +n food surplus can expand onto 20 farmed plains tiles (obviously this is not a particularly plausible real scenario) and still have +n food surplus giving n/2 specialists (up to the health/happy caps, which I think I recognised).

Specifically, I think Kesshi is wrong to compare anything other than 1 specialist to 2 pop working 2 plains tiles. Both options consume a net -2 food and that's the absolute determinant of city size (and I've avoided thinking about farmed plains because 1) I don't think that's optimal and 2) it confuses the issue).

Now, evaluate what you're going to grow onto with that 2 food, if the best tile you can work right now is just a plains tile.

I'll have the specialist. The difference between me and the person who took the specialist straight up is I got the specialist later, but I got the +1 hammer immediately.

If the gpp produced will actually generate a great person at some point, the value is *much* greater.

What proportion of GPP go wasted in a typical game (honest question, I have no idea)? And, of course, a GP at some point is jam-tomorrow.

 

[Kesshi]

There is a reason the top Civ players on this forum have for many years said again and again, that Plains are useless tiles until Biology. I, too, have done the math. Regardless, I have spoken my part about Plains tiles, and do not think I can say much more without reiterating rhetoric already presented.

You are entitled to your opinion and I will respect that.

(In before TMIT claims that this is a statement of fact, not opinion. )

 

[damerell]

There is a reason the top Civ players on this forum have for many years said again and again, that Plains are useless tiles until Biology. I, too, have done the math. Regardless, I have spoken my part about Plains tiles, and do not think I can say much more without reiterating rhetoric already presented. You are entitled to your opinion and I will respect that. (In before TMIT claims that this is a statement of fact, not opinion. )

No, this is a matter of fact. The values of the tiles are known; it's not a matter of what the top Civ players think, or what you think, or what I think.

And I honestly don't understand what is wrong with the observation that with 2 otherwise unused food a city can either have one specialist or work two plains tiles.

 

[vranasm]

every citizen costs you gold in civic maintenance. It is estimated to be around 1 gpt.

so yes the farmed plains tile is neutral citizen (in theory you can run wealth to pay for the cost)... good whip fodder, but certainly not productive at all, or very slightly (with forge it can tip those 25% to another 1 gpt with wealth)

 

[damerell]

every citizen costs you gold in civic maintenance. It is estimated to be around 1 gpt. so yes the farmed plains tile is neutral citizen (in theory you can run wealth to pay for the cost)... good whip fodder, but certainly not productive at all, or very slightly (with forge it can tip those 25% to another 1 gpt with wealth)

Now there's something to that, but 1 GPT? A quick glance at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=148840 suggests it's not really close to that.

But why farm plains? That really does bring them out at their worst, where you squeeze a hammer and another +2 food to work another plains to...

 

[Kesshi]

No, this is a matter of fact.

I wish you the best of luck working your plains.