Tips for Earth (Large) Map Japan and/or Coastal starts generall?

[Chataboutgames]

I pretty much always go for production heavy/land based starts so I want to try something different with this mod and Real Earth Japan looks like a good option. I feel like the move is to rush Wakos and invade in to Korea/China, but even with that in mind this is a tough start. Rice and horses for first two resources but the settled Barbarians to your North cut you off from half the island and you need quite some tech before you can siege down a barb city. Also I just can't shake the feeling that coastal starts are really, really weak. Any Advice?

 

[Alekseyev_]

The starting limestone should allow you to easily get things like pyramids, Stonehenge, Moai statues. Being on an island, you're not really in a rush to expand your civ quickly, so you can build up some of these useful wonders for a very strong homeland culture, great person points and great pagan temples once you expand. The barbarian city can be flipped fairly easily with strong culture nearby, so just place your cities as optimally as possible, perhaps even on other islands, while the culture passively grabs the barbarian city for you.

I find that the japanese unique terrain improvement is a great boon on this map, particularly when colonising other island groups, and I have had one of the most fun games playing them on this map.

Personally, while China has some very attractive terrain, I liked going for more easily invaded coastal targets: Austronesia and after that, Australia. The Wakos can serve you very well there!

In general, make use of your easily defensible island, get a good tech lead before you expand too far beyond it, and then roll

 

[Chataboutgames]

The starting limestone should allow you to easily get things like pyramids, Stonehenge, Moai statues. Being on an island, you're not really in a rush to expand your civ quickly, so you can build up some of these useful wonders for a very strong homeland culture, great person points and great pagan temples once you expand. The barbarian city can be flipped fairly easily with strong culture nearby, so just place your cities as optimally as possible, perhaps even on other islands, while the culture passively grabs the barbarian city for you.

I find that the japanese unique terrain improvement is a great boon on this map, particularly when colonising other island groups, and I have had one of the most fun games playing them on this map.

Personally, while China has some very attractive terrain, I liked going for more easily invaded coastal targets: Austronesia and after that, Australia. The Wakos can serve you very well there!

In general, make use of your easily defensible island, get a good tech lead before you expand too far beyond it, and then roll

Maybe that's the huge version of the map. I'm not seeing starting Limestone, just starting fish, crabs, rice and horses.

 

[Alekseyev_]

Ohh my bad! I mix up large and huge. I always think of the huge one as the "larger" one. I have no experience with Japan on that version sadly. But I guess the idea to colonise Austronesia and Australia should remain quite good for the midgame.

 

[rrrwww]

Islans starts are by far the easiest. Japan and England are the only ones you can routinely win on higher difficulty levels without being a civ 4 Godlike player. Japan is hands down the easiest civ on both world map sizes. As Japan, try to build the great lighthouse and Colossus and try to found a religion. The fact that you start on an island is a huge advantage. There’s not a single disadvantage about it. It means you can ignore the potential of an enemy attacking you during the early and mid game. I purposely do not play these nations except on the highest difficulty