Devel's Workshop III - Surviving Sub-Par Starts

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by uberfish
#4 and #6 look too weird to be normally generated maps (plains surrounded by ice, jungle on desert?)

Honestly, all mine (MAGNUM - generated from the m/c name) are genuinely all random.. except I deliberately selected leaders with no early UU to prevent an easy early rush

Actually I can't remember why I included Louis (game 5), except that was a genuinely random leader too.. I suspect I missed the wheatfield while zoomed out

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by Blake
Game IV is obviously (?) the most intersting I think. And as a non-philo civ too, but Financial will be the redeeming quality. Man, if the save were posted I'd already be playing it.

Take a look in Vel's RFBG thread

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=4250759#post4250759

Enjoy!

[xxFlukexx]

I vote for map #3. Map #1 is pretty bad too, but cows plains is one of my favorite resource (3f+3h) and stone nearby is a huge plus(would've been in your fat cross if you didn't move)

Map #4, I dunno, is that a bad start? You start with fishing so that's a big bonus. 4xcrab and 1xfish with 2 plains hills? Sounds good to me. The Ice is bad, yes. But unless someone went into the worldbuilder the ice should let up eventually and give some decent terrain. I would just go for an early religion and then onto Monarchy to get some happy's for the large pop that city can handle, then pump out GPs, etc.

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by xxFlukexx
Map #4, I dunno, is that a bad start? You start with fishing so that's a big bonus. 4xcrab and 1xfish with 2 plains hills? Sounds good to me. The Ice is bad, yes. [...]

I thought it was bad to start with (other than the crab resourses - I just /couldn't/ get Washington to start on a non-coastal tile. Then I played it a bit. Then I restarted & played it a bit differently. Then I did it again.. and again..

I'm not in Vel's league; hell, I'm not in most of your leagues - I struggle on Normal difficulty - but this was too good an opportunity to pass up. One thing I will mention though in my defence: I always play on large/huge maps, & usually on normal speed

[snafuc4]

FWIW, as a contributor (of saves) I'm not voting in this poll, & won't be commenting on anything I can think of that can be construed as 'contamination' except possibly in the most general terms, even WRT maptype

[Swiss Pauli]

I'd start with game IV as I think it will be the quickest to decide whether to quit: if there's no production site nearby then it's time to quit.

[couerdelion]

I’d agree IV looks “interesting” but not good for this particular workshop because it looks too similar, in vertical growth terms to the previous workshop. It’s a shame really because it looks like IV will win this poll and you’ll be making a bee-line for slavery and all that pop-rushing. My guess is that you’ll put two boats out there first and then get the worker out to slightly augment the production being content to use the extra cash from the food tiles to keep tech investment rolling steadily along. Your small fortune in getting a fishing tech start

I think the only problem here for a CS slingshot is that the commerce looks just a little too much on the low side. But it might also be interesting to know which of the two leaders you’ve got there. Doesn’t Roosevelt’s traits suit this.

Option 1, I think looked the worst of the lot on three fronts.
1) It’s a Type I, which you rightly say are the worst so you’re going to have to make a very early decision on your second city - is your scout there to allow and escort for you settler or to allow for that “huge” bonus point to the production of the settler?)
2) Hammurabi, IIRC, has some uninteresting traits
3) I can also imagine the game being very demoralised at having two small bonus tiles from the fat cross (river and stone) for no benefit. With the benefit of hindsight, it might even have been better to put your settler back by the lake and lose a turn on building the city


On the discussion of the unusual nature of the Game IV start, I don’t think it is that dissimilar from some I’ve had. I had one yesterday that was tundra and sea with my city having access to three land tiles and a total of three food resources. Moving inland and east, the small tundra peninsular was almost entirely cut off from the rest of the continent by a mountain range with the only entrance into it at the furthest point from my city requiring the use of three hills squares to clear the obstacle. To all intents and purposes, this was a tundra island.

[Arrian]

I'm voting for Game III. Game IV certainly looks interesting, and it would be cool to do a workshop on it, but game III is more run-of-the-mill crappy.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

And, oh, yeah: what's up with the jungle-on-desert??

-Arrian

[Spaced Cowboy]

Originally posted by Arrian
And, oh, yeah: what's up with the jungle-on-desert??

-Arrian

QFDITTO

[CrashDuce]

I think Game one looks like the best choice for the workshop....However I would really like a copy of four to play on my own. That is just a wicked interesting start.

[Hauptman]

Originally posted by Arrian
And, oh, yeah: what's up with the jungle-on-desert??

-Arrian

worldbuilder doctoring?

[-SafaN-]

i got a real interesting sub-par start! I was trying a atzek jag rush, and ended up in a very bad place. At first it seems ok, certainly with the stone, but in 10 turns u'll know what i mean. Even if u don' t take it for the workshop, i want to see how u will manage this one.

ps yes the blue u see on the other side of the island is also ocean

[Shr3dZ]

Im voting VI, all that jungle everywhere and your capital ONLY has clams? ouchy.

Everyone seems to be voting IV, although I think its interesting, I dont think it works very well in this workshop.

[Blake]

Originally posted by -SafaN-
i got a real interesting sub-par start! I was trying a atzek jag rush, and ended up in a very bad place. At first it seems ok, certainly with the stone, but in 10 turns u'll know what i mean. Even if u don' t take it for the workshop, i want to see how u will manage this one.

ps yes the blue u see on the other side of the island is also ocean

save file?

And, oh, yeah: what's up with the jungle-on-desert??

This is often a result of "non-standard" map scripts, for example Great Plains has desert forest. Offhand I can't think of what script might make desert jungle though.