Starting your first city

[Meta]

I started a new game of Civilization 3 with the Ottomans on Warlord difficulty. The difficulty is so easy because I am not used to regular civ3(Regent on Conquests). I was wondering where a better choice to found my city would be.

If I founded it where it was I would get the defense bonus of the hills on a river but it is not on the coast. If I move it to cost I move away from the cattle tile and the floodplain.

 

[Rassnie]

Start right where you are. The flood plain and cattle far outweigh the effect of starting on the coast. You can put out a settler quite quickly on that spot, so make one of your next three or four cities a coastal city.

 

[MikeH]

Agreed, that's a four turn settler factory waiting to happen .

Now if only Ainwood would give us starts like that un the GOTM....

 

[mortalmadman]

You need to focus on just gettin things up. They'll be plenty of time 4 taking advantage of that later.

 

[KaDingir]

There's a pretty serious gotcha associated with starting out on flood plains. In a recent game (regent, vanilla) I started out with a very attractive flood plain city, thinking that I had me an A number 1 settler factory. But the first four times the population got to size four, sickness broke out and I lost population, thereby delaying settler production. Like so many things, flood plains are a double-edged sword.

 

[Mewtarthio]

You only need to get the population to size three to build a Settler.

 

[KaDingir]

Very true, but having folks dying off slows down the "rebuilding" process. We need a new worker action: Drain Swamp.

 

[Kronis]

There's a pretty serious gotcha associated with starting out on flood plains. In a recent game (regent, vanilla) I started out with a very attractive flood plain city, thinking that I had me an A number 1 settler factory. But the first four times the population got to size four, sickness broke out and I lost population, thereby delaying settler production. Like so many things, flood plains are a double-edged sword.

That's extremely poor luck ! Was this city surrounded by more than 3 flood plain tiles ? Because 3 gives only a 16% maximum chance that you will have sickness. It's considerably more with swampland and jungles, as you know...

 

[KaDingir]

In that game I had at least four flood plain tiles. My own fault--I should have taken the risk and moved one square before founding the capital.

 

[alamo]

Settle on the spot - no good reason to move.

You can control how many people work the floodplains and balance the risk vs benefit. Use fp to grow fast when <3, then go to grassland/plains.

Toggle the grid with Ctrl+G. It helps to plan your city placements.

 

[Tomoyo]

Settle on the spot; You would only have one water in your 21 that can't be used to the fullest. If it's a smallish archipelago, I would consider moving to the coast, but I would be content with a 5 turn settler factory (I don't think 4 turns is possible) where you are.

 

[philippe]

i would go one left and take profit from the mountain

 

[bob rulz]

Then he'd miss the bonus grassland completely.

EDIT: Nevermind, he'd get it with the cultural expansion.

 

[Darkness]

Agreed, that's a four turn settler factory waiting to happen .

Now if only Ainwood would give us starts like that un the GOTM....

he used to do that, before C3C was implemented in the GOTM anyway...

On Topic: Definately settle on the spot. The coastal town can wait...

 

[Olli513]

Don't move your settlers!It gives the AI advantage at tech and culture !

 

[Tomoyo]

Actually, it gives the AI an advantage in speed, which includes everything. There are many situations where the best move would be to move the settler (like if the starting position has many water tiles in it's 21, but isn't coastal, or moving to get an extra food bonus which would more than make up for the one turn lost.

I tend to move my settler a lot because I tend to like aesthetically pleasing empires, rather than functional ones. However, the more I play, functional empire get more aesthetically pleasing.

 

[Samson]

That's extremely poor luck ! Was this city surrounded by more than 3 flood plain tiles ? Because 3 gives only a 16% maximum chance that you will have sickness. It's considerably more with swampland and jungles, as you know...

How do you calculate this probability? ANd is that 16% per turn? That does sounds quite high to me, that is something like 3% chance of it NOT happening in 20 turns (0.86^20=0.03, I could be wrong with my maths).

 

[Tomoyo]

I think Flood plains can only give you disease if you are currently working that square, and it is most definately not # of FPs / 21.

 

[Samson]

I think Flood plains can only give you disease if you are currently working that square,

I am sure you are right. In the old days, when I used to reload (stopped that now) if I got a disease warning I would reload the last turn, take the citizen off that tile and end the turn. You would not get the disease.

However, I will usually use the flood plain in prefference to other tiles. Can it really be 16% chance of dieases per turn?