Starting Position

[DaveMcW]

The sun rises on the year 4000 BC. Since time immemorial, the AMAZON people have lived a nomadic life. After years of wandering, they are ready to settle down and found your first city.

Cyrus, your people have vested absolute power in you, trusting that you can build a Civilization to stand the test of time!

 

[Sommerswerd]

A nice playable start... No wait I mean... Waaa Sheep?!? I want Pigs... No Fish?!? Double Waaa call the Waambulance! All joking aside, seems like we settle in place and tech AH.

I mean we are on a Plains Hill, the cadillac of settling locations (good defense, useless tile). We need a worker to mine the silver and pasture the sheep. Not to thrilled about all the water, but it could be alot worse.

Game is underway! Exciting!

 

[Link]

hooray! the game starts.

 

[damnrunner]

I like the start. AH for the 1st tech I presume.

Settle in place on the plains hill I presume.

 

[Tinkerbell]

Nice, game starts!!!

 

[Norton I]

Plains hill with all visible resources in the BFC... I would be surprised if anyone could come up with an alternative location for city #1

 

[leonisgod]

It's probably best to settle in place, would be interesting to see what's under the haze to the east inside the city radius with a scout move.

 

[WithTea]

I would move the scout NE. There might be fish in the NW black, which would make the spot N of settler good, but I would rather have the extra shield and defense of the hill, than a hope of fish or loss of turn to find out. Always best to see as much of the starting area as possible before settling though.

 

[Tinkerbell]

btw, i think by settling we will see automaticly what's in the bfc.

 

[Loev]

Wow we have started! So cool!

 

[Norton I]

The forests at the northern edge look snowy and we have silver. Usually there is more tundra/snow around silver locations. My guess is that we are in the far north and that the map maker has edited in some extra grassland by hand.

 

[fireflames]

Scout NE, settle in place. I see no reason to waste a turn with this start.

Edit: And obviously tech AH out of the gate.

 

[Norton I]

An alternative move for the scout would be SE-NE. It wouldn't end on a hilltop, but it traveled further and might have more options in the next turn. When we settle in place anyway, it is not critical to get the view from the hilltop NE.

 

[Loev]

The forests at the northern edge look snowy and we have silver. Usually there is more tundra/snow around silver locations. My guess is that we are in the far north and that the map maker has edited in some extra grassland by hand.

You have some good eyes, those are snowy trees on grassland.
I agree to move scout NE and settle on the hill. BTW double sheep and silver

//edit If we settle first then 2 tiles east will become visible. Then we can move the scout SE

 

[Norton I]

Another guess: I think the mapmaker gave every civ double resources, so that we have to trade them with other teams. That means that getting a trade route with another civ early will push up both our caps.

 

[RasmCiv]

An alternative move for the scout would be SE-NE. It wouldn't end on a hilltop, but it traveled further and might have more options in the next turn. When we settle in place anyway, it is not critical to get the view from the hilltop NE.

This seems the best move to me too

 

[damnrunner]

So my understanding is that pastures and mines each take 4 turns to build. The sheep with a pasture will give a total of 5 food and 1 commerce each. Once mined, the silver (note both are on a river) will net 2 hammers and 6 commerce each.

This is pretty good but is a bit hammer poor for our capitol.

Someone should do some testing here but I suspect the optimum start is worker builds:
pastures @1S (4 turns)
pasture @1S,1SE (4 turns)
road @1S (2 turns)
moves to silver mine (1 turn on road)
builds sliver mine@1NW (4 turns)
moves to sliver @2N (1 turn)
builds silver mine @2N (4 turns)

This is a total of 20 worker turns and assumes we only build 1 worker at the start. It will probably make more sense to build a worker, then warriors, and once the 2 pastures are being worked to start a 2nd worker. This should let worker #2 help finish the 2nd mine or begin roading to our 2nd city site.

 

[remake20]

I haven't read all of these pots yet, but I say settle in place and move scout SE>NE

 

[SilentConfusion]

Plains hill start with two grassland sheep and two grassland silvers... That's a pretty awesome start. I assume that the other teams got a similarly awesome start. With starts like these I think it will tempt more people to go worker first to get these great tiles improved. This means less risk of anyone even attempting a warrior rush.

AH>Mining seems a no-brainer. Really we couldn't ask for much more with our leader. We didn't go financial, but look we'll still have lots of commerce early (no need for roads to hook up silver). We need to go AH soon and we're given two grassland animals. I really can't imagine a much better start for us.

I would lean towards going worker first. Our scout can probably warn us if anyone is close in which case we could switch to a warrior. We don't have to worry about whether to go worker or workboat first, since we don't have seafood.

I will recreate this start position in WorldBuilder and post the save so that everyone can take a look and try out different openings for themselves. I will post it in this thread.

Just so you don't get overexcited about our start position, do keep in mind that our opponents probably have equally awesome starts.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Dave left nothing to chance in terms of our opening micro decision. Settle in place, AH.

Suggested early build

1. Warrior (grow to 2)
2. Stagnate growth at 2 to complete warrior (work 2 1f 2h tiles), fortify warrior.
3. Worker on best available tiles, although it looks like a basic 3 yield tile without commerce will be the best so it's a wash between a lot of tiles.

This gives us a safe opening.

This is very likely to be specialized as a commerce site and the silver can pay for a lot of expansion...I'm pleasantly surprised as we won't bottom out easily during REX with this start, and should be able to compete with our traits.