What is it with Liz and wine ?

[Jelster]

I've been looking at moving up a level to Emperor, and have been looking for a decent start to get me going. One of the best games I have ever played was as Elizabeth with a few sea lux's, and took Gods of the sea.

So I thought I would try it again, and have been re-rolling for a decent coastal start, but I've been getting muliple wine lux's in over 50% of my restarts.

Is this coded in somewhere ?

 

[Glassmage]

no. It is random.

 

[Gordon Brittas]

Maybe Lizzie is an alcoholic.
Would explain her moods.

 

[IkM]

Once, as Carthage I had 4-5 sea lux. that was great game. +1 from Fishing Boats just great.

btw, like Glassmage said it's random.

 

[ense7en]

If you want to stack the odds, use abundant resources or legendary start.

 

[kaspergm]

Maybe Lizzie is an alcoholic.
Would explain her moods.

 

[Calouste]

Wine is a pretty nice luxury with Goddess of Festivals and a Monastery.

 

[joncnunn]

Legendary just stacks the odds towards getting numerous copies of some luxury; it doesn't lock civs to a specific one.

Now there are several civs with avoid XXX and a few with XXX starting biases; which as a side effect would stack the odds as a side effect.

 

[I_qua_I]

no. It is random.

I'm actually very suspicious of this. Maybe a modder (or someone familiar with the xml files) can put this suspicion to rest but I routinely find myself starting near certain kinds of luxuries depending on which civ I'm playing. I used to play India a lot (like every game) and it was VERY rare that I started near a wine or incense and if I did it was a one of. I used to always want them for the monasteries. Silver and sugar and cotton seemed to be really common. I then decided to start playing random civs and found I got incense and wine much more frequently. My first random game, for example, was as the Japanese and I had 4 incense within my capital's 3 tile radius, and 4 in my second city's.

I know some people will say it's just an effect of terrain bias ("Maybe India just spawns in terrain that doesn't yield those luxuries...") but that doesn't seem to explain all the cases when I would spawn in the desert with Ghandi (this happened often enough despite the grassland (I think) bias) and get sugar and/or cotton all the time instead of incense. As Arabia I've had many desert-incense starts. When I do go random I've also found it more common to get a wine/incense start when I'm playing a civ I normally wouldn't pick for finding them too war-centered (2 UUs, or no culture buffs, etc.). When I noticed this I wondered if it was intended this way to give each civ a chance at a cultural victory.

 

[Glassmage]

Wine appears on Grass. India bias start is Grass. Disable start bias and you get random everything.

 

[I_qua_I]

Wine appears on Grass. India bias start is Grass. Disable start bias and you get random everything.

Even more telling. I didn't know wine's start bias was also grass. This makes it even more unusual that I would never get it.