Would this be an optimal starting location?

[Diadem]

Founding on gold? No way! Gold is way too valuable if mined to found on. And it's not like you have to wait forever to access it.

I also disagree that the city has too many floodplains. There is no such thing as too many floodplains. Just expand hard and fast and grab many health resources asap.

So many floodplains do indeed hurt your early growth. That's true. But later in the game, it'll be pure heaven. You can make an amazing capital with that city, or move your capital somewhere else and make this one a GPP farm.

[couerdelion]

At any reasonably high level of difficulty, this city would probably be close to starving at size 1!!

[Diadem]

That being said, moving the city up one square would perhaps have been a good idea. You'd trade 2 floodplains, a plains hill and 2 forested grassland for 1 plains, 1 desert hill, 2 forested plains and a plains cow.

The cow is worth as much as two floodplains, and having some plains over grassland is not bad in this city - you can use the production. It's a shame about the desert hill, but that's only 1 hammer compared to a plains hill - not the end of the world.

[Quillan]

Normally I'd agree with you about founding on gold, Diadem, but Blake's point in this case is due to one of the settings: raging barbarians. Now, it's probably less of a problem on Noble than it is on Diety where Blake plays, but still it's likely to be pillaged several times over. Founding on that hill prevents it from being pillaged.

[Diadem]

He's Mansa Musa right? Put some skirmishers on those hills and let them barbarians come. You're save until they start comming with swordsmen, which is a while, even with raging barbs.

[Arrian]

Or, as the original poster actually did in his game, build the Great Wall and just don't worry about it at all. Stone means the GW is a supercheap build - totally worth it.

Skirms are solid, but in Warlords the barbs won't just mindlessly hit your fortified units on good defensive terrain. They'll march around them and rip up your improvements.

But again, before deciding for sure, I'd want to move the warrior 3 onto the gold hill to see what lies to the E/NE. Then I could pick between moving the settler 1 tile north, 1 tile northeast, 2 tiles northeast or onto the gold hill.

-Arrian

[Blake]

REAL men don't build the great wall.

[Krill]

hey, You could get lucky after you get teh GW and snag the pyramids if you wanted

[Diadem]

Another option is to found on top of the stones, go settler first and throw your 2nd city on the gold (or the other way around, I guess that's even better).

They'd nicely divide the floodplains between 'em, and you'll have two powerhouse cities instead of one

[chuckdelicious]

My opinion is that would be a good second/third city location , but not so great for the capital. I wouldn't build the worker first, I'd pump a settler to get a city that could produce units. I'd also beeline for bronze working so I could sacrifice some suckers if need be.

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Blake
REAL men don't build the great wall.

Stone in the capital radius: The gift that keeps on giving

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by Diadem
Another option is to found on top of the stones, go settler first and throw your 2nd city on the gold (or the other way around, I guess that's even better).

They'd nicely divide the floodplains between 'em, and you'll have two powerhouse cities instead of one

That city would suck, though.

-Arrian

[Diadem]

Suck? Well it depends on what's behind those hills, but if the terrain there is decent both cities would be pretty good.

[Blake]

See I don't get choosing raging barbs then building the great wall.

You choose raging barbs because you want to fight lots of barbs.

Then you build the Great Wall because you don't want to fight the barbs???

wtf?

[InThane]

I play with raging barbs on by default in all my games. This being my first game of Warlords, I thought I'd try out some of the features, especially with that handy little stone resource sitting next door.

My personal weakness in Civ is that I tend to go too builder-oriented, and so I ignore self-defense. Raging barbs makes me focus on building defensive units earlier - think of it as kind of a training mechanism.