Worst starting bias?

[bbbt]

So I'm curious who you all think has the worst starting bias in the game.

I hear Brazil a lot for the jungle start (and it can be a pain), but I'm going to nominate William.

His starts aren't bad in theory, normal a nice river and grassland and the like. However, he has a UI that uses marsh/flood plains, and his UU is a ship. Yet, he never starts on the coast, and never seems to get any marsh/flood plain at the start.

Granted, they both come later, so you can expand to make use of them, but it seems like they didn't take them into account for is starts at all.

 

[vivalamexico]

Tundra can be a bit of a pain if no deer or furs

 

[HanNorwood]

Don't Morocco and The Zulu have a start bias near desert?

 

[vivalamexico]

Don't Morocco and The Zulu have a start bias near desert?

Not Zulu. All they want to do is avoid jungle. For Morocco, desert is vital to get the best out of the Kasbah and Berber Cavalry. The Kasbah makes up for a lot of the drawbacks of desert, and with Kasbah spam, this is a very good start bias
Arabia also has desert

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

I almost always start next to a desert as the Dutch

 

[AW Arcaeca]

So I'm curious who you all think has the worst starting bias in the game.

Anyone with a starting bias that isn't grassland, plains, desert (sometimes) and/or coastal.

 

[arand86]

The worst start is pretty much always tundra. Russia+Sweden if I'm not mistaken.

I don't understand why so many consider desert as a bad start. As a bad place to put a city? Certainly. But starts all but guarantee you a river, which means floodplains and folklore and Petra potential

 

[GoStu]

All bonus resources being roughly equal, I'd have to say Tundra is the worst. In theory deserts are worse (no yield vs. 1 food), but there's Flood Plains tiles anywhere you want to settle and there's Petra to make one super-city.

Really, truly, barren Coast is a close second though. I find with coastal starts it's either going to go really well or really badly depending on how many Fish I have.

I like playing Continents or Small Continents, so everyone's sort of on Coast though.

 

[comatosedragon]

I see a lot of hatred for tundra here. My best games have been as Russia (quite a few) and Poland (while Poland doesn't innately have a tundra start bias, they did in the game I am referring to...)

Anyway -- I would say the worst start would be any with more than 2 initial ocean/coast tiles, or any which force your expansion to ocean tiles. Sure, sea food caravans (and just caravans in general) are great, but all that wasted real estate really irks me. You need to go outside of the 'optimal' tech path to build lighthouses, and production is hard to come by.

Yeah, give me tundra over heavy ocean any day of the week.

 

[joncnunn]

The Dutch are fine with their grassland bias. There is no marsh bias setting. Grassland is normally good as well.

Jungle bias is normally fine because it's normally an edge jungle and not in the middle of it.

Desert bias is normally fine because it's often really a flood plains start.

Tundra bias is normally fine as well; it's normally a near tundra start instead of in the middle of it.

It's plains bias that has the most potential to be a bad start. These starts place you in the middle of plains and not on the edge. If there's not a river near where you start, food is going to be a major problem.

 

[GWashington]

I'd have to say Arabia when they spawn by no near flood plains.. it's happened to me a few times.

I almost always start next to a desert as the Dutch

Probably for the Dutch improvement, the Polder. They can be built on marsh and flood plains, so that's probably the reasoning for the desert start.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Can anyone come up with a reason for any civ to have thundra bias in gameplay terms?

 

[Erelich]

I hate Jungle starts, I usually reroll those unless I'm playing as Aztecs/Brazil. Not only do you need to tech bronze working early to work it, but I've noticed that a lot of jungle starts/areas tend to be flat so the production is garbage. Tundra would be worse, but it usually doesn't cover as much area as Jungle so there's a better chance you'll start on the edge of it rather than the middle.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Normal Jungle got allways plain under them so getting more food from choping them needs a river, however you get more production from plain then jungle.
Jungle is however good for Culture if you get that patheon, hard to do because your in jungle or science if you get a University which isn't something you will be able to do at the start.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Tundra is a pretty consistently bad start start, especially if you find yourself mid-continent. Coastal is second worst because it is so iffy about giving you good sea resources. I'm also not a huge fan of Jungle because its full potential isn't reached until Trading Posts. Plus it usually has pretty bad production.

 

[Sagax]

Can anyone come up with a reason for any civ to have thundra bias in gameplay terms?

None. Except you are more likely to find forest where tundra ends, which leads to some production.

 

[tat501]

Youre wrong about William. Grassland is a good start. You usually get some marsh nearby or floodplain aswell and by the time you are thinking about sea beggars you should have had the opportunity to expand towards a coast unless you are unlucky.

Worst is Jungle - it takes so so long to build anything at the start everyone gets ahead of you (and you have to get to bronze working to even chop the stuff down - and I don't really like chopping it down because with a trade post, a uni and rationalism its a good tile).

Second worst start bias is tundra.

 

[rawrtrav]

For William, play on a small continents map, you will start on the coast 90% of the time, or like within 1 or 2 tiles of it. It makes the Netherlands ridiculously strong in my opinion.

 

[Talcove]

Tundra, for sure.
Russia can salvage a tundra start, mostly because of their UA, the same goes for the Celts. Sweden, however, I don't understand. What part of Sweden's Uniques necessitates a tundra start? Morocco starts in the Desert because of their Kasbah and Berber Cavalry. Brazil starts near the Jungle because of their Brazilwood camps. Sweden has a UA that requires you to meet a lot of people and make friends, and two front-line war UUs. So why exactly do they start in a tundra?

 

[Syailendra]

there is a little tactical pros when starting on tundra. You have no one at your backyard, you need less army on defense this way.