No man is an island

[xenophile58]

I'm always tempted to abort a game when I find my empire all alone on an island, no matter how big the island. However, in the spirit of exploration that has me accepting random leaders, I took an island start location as Caesar on Monarch/Continents/Ancient/Normal. There was only one fish resource within 2 spaces of land so not much incentive to develop marine technologies. When I did take Sailing my galley's circumnavigation of the island didn't show any hint of nearby land.
Eventually visiting caravels turned up but trade wasn't easy. The 'heathen' religion I'd founded and adopted seemed to put a brake on relations. Only a couple of open border agreements, and even when resource/luxury trading became possible, not much cooperation. With only Fish, Wheat, Cattle, Spice and Gems locally this essentially crippled my growth and research, despite rampant Roman culture.
So how soon should an isolated proto-emporer sacrifice savings on military spending for diplomacy and trade? After Alphabet? Once the cities are stuffed with Longbows/Crossbows? When do you start building Caravels and go calling on the neighbours?

[Enigma_Nova]

You can see 2 tiles out from the coast with a Warrior or Scout.
If you don't see any coast at the end of your fog, only ocean, that's pretty much a "Tech to Caravels first thing right away immediately now at this moment post haste" indicator.

[Diadem]

Why?

It's not as if you need contact with others. I guess it depends on who you play with. If you're aggressive you want some neighbours to conquer I guess. But if I play as, say, Ghandi, I'm perfectly happy to just colonize my island and play my own game. I won't need any military, won't have any trouble with wars, it's perfect.

If the island's big enough that is. Otherwise you'll fall behind, obviously...

[xenophile58]

I'm definitelly inclined to think that unless your island is blessed with abundant variety of food and luxuries, you need to establish trades to allow substantial city growth. Tech trading is useful but trade route income and access to non-local resources seems essential. And there's the joy (and income) from converting the unbelievers.
Whilst it is a saving not having to maintain a large garrison, the possiblity of Genghiz turning up to show you what his unique units can do means military research can't be entirely neglected. Or you end up like the real Incas when the Spanish arrived.
My doubt is when to hoist the sails, so Enigma_Nova's suggestion that it is the absolute priority seems persuasive. I know everything in this game is contingent, but in general, is this right?

[Quillan]

I've had two games where I got stuck on an island by myself. Both islands were fair sized (I was able to put down 8-10 cities without problems). However, both games suffered horribly from lack of resources. I'd have either zero or only one luxury item on the island, so the cities would top out at a rather small size due to unhappiness. This would cost me research. Even with priority set on researching to Astronomy (Optics will let you contact the rest of the world, but you have to have Astronomy to trade with it), I'd be way behind on tech once I reached them. Alone on an island with ample resources would probably work. Alone on an island lacking luxuries or food diversity stinks. I lost both of those games. Now, I wish I had saved the games from the start, so I could try them again with different strategies and see what sort of difference it would make.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I've had my share of solo island low resource starts. I actually do not mind them too much. I do beline for the ocean sailing techs and usually manage to grab a few of the islands on the map.

The key is to trade and keep a strong navy even at the risk of beelining for destroyers and the like.

You can just keep around a minimal army in this scenario which helps.

[baboon]

I immediately quit when I find myself alone on an island. It's like playing a game with only half the options available.

You can't attack anyone, no one can attack you. Just building buildings, yawn

[knighterrant]

I don't know about that. If I'm alone, I go for caravels as soon as possible. Not necessarily to conquer but because the diversity of trading with others gets you a leg up. Even if you just trade resources and the occasional tech rather than bullets.

I've had games where I was an island nation and still came out pretty good. A good navy is important in this case. If anyone does get the idea of making your nation into a vacation spot for their armies, you can sink them a lot easier than fighting them once they land.

[Shr3dZ]

Everyone keeps mentioning Caravels, but those only carry a missionary, great leader, spy etc etc etc... The first boat that can carry an army, or settlers across the ocean squares is the Galleon right? Thats much further down the tech tree too...

[Spaced Cowboy]

Originally posted by Shr3dZ
Everyone keeps mentioning Caravels, but those only carry a missionary, great leader, spy etc etc etc... The first boat that can carry an army, or settlers across the ocean squares is the Galleon right? Thats much further down the tech tree too...

It (astronomy) is only a few hops from optics, but the costs are must higher in that area of the tech tree (relative to optics). For an island start, it is a must beeline.

[Arrian]

Starting alone on a (decent sized) island is a builder's dream. I could understand it being the warmonger's nightmare, though...

-Arrian

[teaster]

Warmonger nightmare is true, I play random Civ and recently started a game as Inca. Cool I had never played them before early UU aggressive, let's go. I started pumping out my UU like crazy and sent them out to conquer ... nothing

crud

[Arrian]

Not as bad as starting alone in CivIII as, say, the Zulu or Mongols. At least the Inca are financial, right?

-Arrian

[Dis]

I love being by myself. It keeps the warfare down. .

Starting alone isn't a big deal in civ4 (esp with tech trading turned off). Not as bad as in civ3 where it was nearly always fatal.

[Quillan]

It's probably due to play style, but I didn't find solo starts in Civ 3 to be that big a deal, providing the island was large enough to support plenty of cities. The lack of resources could prove to be a problem, but that just meant I was forced into naval invasions later on.