Advanced Starts

[Will9]

I haven't used Advanced Starts for their true purpose (to start the game late) but have used them with an Ancient Era start. It is enough to get a couple citys along with some units and some techs. I find it much more fun then regular Ancient Era starts. It doesn't cause the Ancient Era to go much quicker than a regular start so you don't just skip over the era. You can also support more cities early in the game (since can get your first cities some improvements and 2-3 citizens). I find it fun to have to 4 city empire in 2500 BC.

[Kuciwalker]

Adv starts get buggy if you regen the map.

[Will9]

I've found that once you place your first city (after you regen the map), it is fine.

[yin26]

Re: Advanced Starts

Originally posted by Will9
I haven't used Advanced Starts for their true purpose (to start the game late) but have used them with an Ancient Era start.

Yeah, from the day we first had a chance to test it, I used it on an Ancient Era start and never looked back...so I dispute what the stated purpose of AS is on the box!

[Alexander I]

You know I hadn't thought to try that, but now that you mention it, it seems like a great idea. It can get really boring waiting through a lot of empty ancient turns. Good idea!

[ptzvetan]

Since I start playing BTS (18.07) I always use advanced start in Ancient Era.
Just I'm wondering what exacly the AI players are buying- cities, tech or balanced.

[Blake]

Somewhere between cities and balanced.

The AS AI is not really designed for ancient but thanks in large part to the noble efforts of Yin I had to optimize it some for ancient.

The AI will buy some tech, but it's fairly conservative in buying tech. Raising the starting points typically leads to it buying more tech, but it probably wont find the optimal balance.

[Jvstin]

Originally posted by Alexander I
You know I hadn't thought to try that, but now that you mention it, it seems like a great idea. It can get really boring waiting through a lot of empty ancient turns. Good idea!

When I get BTS, I definitely am going to have to try this out. It will help give a large, hydraulic empire feel to ancient era starts.

[yin26]

Originally posted by Blake The AS AI is not really designed for ancient but thanks in large part to the noble efforts of Yin I had to optimize it some for ancient.

I think you've done a great job with this, Blake. The AI now starts well in Ancient. My advice to anybody who wants some good settings along with this:

Aggressive AI, No Tech Brokering, Monarch (or a level or two lower still is good), Land Map, 7+ Players.

[Proteus_MST]

Hm,
dunno if my advanced start is broken or if I expect too much from it.

When I select advanced start I am in map builder mode (with the window for field improvements, bonus ressources and the like on in the upper left).
Behind this window there is a window with "Begin" an d the amount of gold I can spend.
I also have a window where there are 2 tabs filled, one is the tab for cities (with found city and automate) and the tab for techs.
There also is a certain part of the map visible with obviously my cultural borders.

If I click on the symbol to found a city and then click on the field on the map where i want to place the city, it doesn´t do anything, no new city, only the map centers around the fied where I clicked 8if it is a leftclick) also no other mouse button or a combination of keyboard shortcuts and mouseclicks seems to have any success in founding a city.
Likewise with techs, if I click on a tech it always shows me the costs for the tech as 0 and I am not able to instantly research the tech (i.e. buy it).

If I cick on "Begin" all of the gold I have is spent automatically on cities, improvements and tech, likewise if I click on "Automatically build improvements" but in both cases (although the game has begun) the window with begin and the remaining gold stays open (and blocks my sight at thewindow showing the gold in my treasury.

So, is this the normal behavior of advanced start?
Or is this something only I have?

(as for the settings: I tried it with Custom continents, epic speed and ancient as well as classical start. And obviously myy game is patched, at least a cloick on the update button says that no patch is available.)

[Will9]

Does anyone know if the AI will always build its capital on the red circle in adavanced starts?

[MoonWolf]

Proteus_MST:
It seems like a graphical problem as stuff aren't updated. What's the spec of your computer? Also, do you experience any strange behaviour with a normal game, some of the mods etc?

[Blake]

Originally posted by Will9
Does anyone know if the AI will always build its capital on the red circle in adavanced starts?

Yes, it does.
(Short reason: The city placement algorithm does not work for placing capitals, a specialized capital placement algorithm is about as complicated again - the red circles are good enough)

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by MoonWolf
Proteus_MST:
It seems like a graphical problem as stuff aren't updated. What's the spec of your computer? Also, do you experience any strange behaviour with a normal game, some of the mods etc?

AMD Athlon XP with 2.2 GHz
1 GB DDR-RAM
ATI Radeon 9250 (128 MB)
BtS is installed over Vanilla Civ + Warlords

Yesterday everything went normal without a single Crash (only the problems with advanced start),
but today after I started another game (Custom_Continents, Huge mapsize, 8 Civs, Epic) I keep on getting crashes with this game that might be attributed to problems with the graphics card.
After maybe 10 minutes of playing this game I the screen goes black and I have to restart the computer to get it working again.
As yesterday this problem didn´t appear (although I played the game much longer and used the same map settings) I assume it could also have something to do with overheating of the graphics card (I leaft the computer running during the night). Will make another test later the day when I had the chance to keep the computer turned off for some hours.

As for mods/scenarios:
I didn´t try any to date, so no experience with them yet.

[Proteus_MST]

Looks like the problem with advanced starts is solved now.

The Update-Button in BtS seems to be broken so that the game didn´t find any new upgrades although BtS had only version 3.01
Finding the patch on the Firaxis homepage and installing it manually finally solved the problem for me

(so, fopr anyone who ha s the same problems as myself (which seems to include most germans), the patch can be foun d here: http://www.firaxis.com/games/game_de...d=16&showcon=2 )