Worst Starting Locations

[sealman]

Just wondering what peoples worst starting locations have been in some of their games. Bad starting locations where one actually continued to play.

Mine is a recent start that I have to try out the new patch. Everything random. I was given the French and started in the mountains. and by mountains, I mean the Alps. Think Tibet. I am along the coast and the workable tiles around Paris look something like this

WWW
WWWW
WCGMM (This is all via memory so may be a bit off)
WGMMM (not by much though)
WMMMM

W = Sea/Coast or Ocean
C = Paris
G = Grassland
M = Mountain

after exploring around the area for another city site, never found anything much better. There is a little wooded valley with 2 dyes were I placed another city. Once I finally found some flat land, I found the Greeks. As it turns out, I am on a continent with

Greece in the foothills
America in the grasslands
Babylonian also in the grasslands and plains
England in the plains and tundra.

I will post some shots of my mountain kingdom when I get home. Just wondering what some other peoples starting locations have been and the results of the games.

 

[Hurricane]

What? No screenshot?

 

[sealman]

I am at work right now... ssshhhh don't tell my boss. screen shots will come up when I get home this evening.

 

[Thunderfall]

Did you play GOTM #5? That one was pretty bad. Lots of players got killed by the AI on the map.

That game showed that a bad starting location can make a very interesting & challenging game.

 

[sealman]

Did not play GOTM #5 but have noticed that tough starts make the game much more interesting.

 

[saintides]

Sort of recently I played a game as the Egyptians, regent level.

I was planted smak dab in the middle of monsoon jungle. Hang on, that's smax, that would of been a good thing. Jungle I mean (with mountains around my first city). Since it's a level I have conquered many times, decided to go with it.

I struggled all through that game. I was often tempted to give up on it and start another game. Everywhere around me was jungle with the exception of a few squares that gave me a little food. Good thing I had fast workers. Took forever to get settlers out.

Freaking Japan and China were breathing down my neck, had to be nice to them for awhile (that hurt, not use to doing the nice thing).

As the game went on, I seemed to progress, very slowly.

Eventually I had every resource. Iron, coal, rubber .. the works. Didn't have to trade for much. I know I didn't have access to a few resources but for the most part had them all (had a handful of luxury resources too). Seems a lot of stuff is in the jungle. Of course, some of the resources I had was because I got tired of China and Japan and finally we went to war and I eventually killed them (that took forever, had a lot of riots and such, my peeps were not happy).

I was nice to the rest of the world, never went to war with anybody else.

Launched a space ship.. victory (and that was a close call).

 

[Rasczak2]

Worst starting position:

A small island, all by myself, solid desert except for two grass squares next to my capital. Nothing else. No lakes or rivers. Needless to say, I quit .

 

[cracker]

I second the Jungle isolation location as the worst I have ever had.

I started a game as the Indians sitting on a hill with two grass squares and a couple of mountains surrounded by desert. Since I could see coast nearby I planted and went on. With each passing turn I became more frustrated because on the other side of the desert was a band of Jungle and followed by mountains that was at least 15 tiles deep and on the other edge of the jungle and mountains was a beautiful mixture of grassland and plains with thriving communities of Japanese, Zulus, and Babylonians.

Somewhere else in the world there were 4 other civs obvioulsy much happier.

I did finally give up and move on to another on another map just because it was up to about 10 AD and I had only succeeded in slogging out space for about 5 towns in the jungle. Clearing jungle at 24 turns per tile and having no forests or water resources to work with really slows the pace down. With no cash bonus for clearing the jungle and 24 turns instead of 10 for forests, I think I was 8 to 10 techs behind and only had about 100coins in cash when I saw the handwritting on the wall. The jungle kept me kinda safe but with few resources ( I did have Iron and dyes and token whale and a fish or two), no productivity, and no food .... You can't buy love, guns, or butter with petrified monkey poop.

I think I was behind by 500 to 600 points on Monarch level compared to the # 3 civ with only 4 civs visible. The little pop up boxes that flash early in the game with rankings of wealth, happiness and technology all rated me as number 8 out of 8.

... cracker ...

 

[Sullla]

Worst starting spot ever... The only game of Civ3 I ever quit because of the starting location was one where there was desert in every direction. I mean ALL desert. I started on the coast, and as I began exploring I just kept finding more and more desert, with a few mountains every now and then. After exploring roughly 300 tiles and finding nothing but desert, I gave up on the game. With no fresh water to irrigate them until Electricity, those desert tiles would all be producing a big fat 0 food. No non-costal city would ever be able to get past size 1. Now that's just not playable at all. At least you can do something about jungle, and even tundra gives you 1 food. Not much to be said about starting in the Sahara.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

you might want to find the thread from 3 weeks back about this topic - funny pics in there

 

[sealman]

Here is my fledgling mountain kingdom:

Have taken some cities from the Greeks so I now have 2 cities on the glasslands. I have two more cities in the mountains that do not show up in the image.

I will have to check out that past thread.

 

[Dralix]

First of all, that really does look ugly. You're a better man than I. I wouldn't even bother with such a world.

Now, two questions ...

First, why do your trees look so much nicer than mine, and second how do you get the little notation above your iron icon. The other day I saw similar things on a city display screenshot.

Thanks

 

[sealman]

I can answer both of your questions with the words "someonelses mods"

I think the trees are Sn00py's modified terrain graphics but I am not sure. The trees suddenly changed when I downloaded the War and Govern Mod. The "I" over the iron (also "H" "S" O", you get the picture) is also a graphics mod that I can not think of at the moment.

Either way, if you search through the graphic mod forum, you should come across them

__

To make matters worse... In this game, I found a grand total of 1 goody hut and what was there... NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am currently in thrid place, but that is among the 5 civilizations that I know about although I think that the Iroquois, wherever they are are #1, they keep getting all the wonders.

Oh, and something happened to the a people who called themselves the Zulu's. Funny that I hear about their destruction but I never met them.

 

[Padma]

Yes, the graphics are snoopy's. You can find them in this thread

He also has finished some new city graphics which can be found here

As for the resources, check out SkankyBurns' mod here

BTW, m_m_x did some nice barbarian camp / goody hut graphics. They can be found here.

Trying to make Civving enjoyable for everyone!

 

[sealman]

Padma: you beat me too it. My belive my resource icons are Kal el's (forgive the possible misspelling) You can find them here

 

[saintides]

Originally posted by sealman
Here is my fledgling mountain kingdom:
.

That is cr~p! I would of started a new game. I like to know if you end up winning this one.

Now I wish I didn't read this thread. I'll have to beat myself up for now on and take those lousy starting positions and give it a go.

Looks like i'll become a mod freak now too. Love that barbarian camp.

 

[Padma]

Originally posted by sealman
Padma: you beat me too it. My belive my resource icons are Kal el's (forgive the possible misspelling) You can find them here

Yeah, I waited a bit to see if you were posting any more detail.

As to the resources, there are a lot of good resource mods out there, so I just picked the one I use, as it looked 'similar' to what was in the screnshot.

 

[Padma]

Originally posted by saintides
Now I wish I didn't read this thread. I'll have to beat myself up for now on and take those lousy starting positions and give it a go.

I have the same problem. After seeing how some players in the Stories & Tales Forum can go from a horrible start to win, I've had to give every start a try, just to see if I can make it work

 

[Pointman]

haha sealman, i had a game like that, only my peninsula was only 1-2 squares wide, and i controlled about 10-15 squares deep. And there were the russians bullying me.

Not the best game of my life

 

[sealman]

Noone has really started bullying me yet but I saw that those darn Babylonians will shortly. At least I have the Greeks and Americans as a buffer.