Best Starting Location?

[jnh140]

Yesterday I fired up a new game, to find three clams, an ocean fish, and two corn patches in my starting site's fat cross-- without moving the settler. And after picking up bronze working, just one space away was a perfect spot for a second city, with bananas and copper. (Prince difficulty, im moving up in the world)

With a start like this, i've been able to whip an innordinate number of people into building an inordinate number of things. I'm taking my people to the sea, though, as the slim peninsula i'm on is totally bottled up on the north by England. Founding 3\4 of the current religions with two cities is a pretty good way to start!

This beats my previous best start where I found two food resources with something rediculas like 7 fur tiles.

What are the best starts you've encountered?

[rah]

Mine was on a river with a few flood plains and a couple of food specials. My concern was what was I going to do for production since there were only two hills in my fat cross. I researched BW and on a grassland river square copper appeared. Sweet. I had built mines on the two hills and within 15 turns of researching BW copper appeared under BOTH mines. I've never had 3 coppers inside my caps BFC before. I may have had a few better spots but this one was my favorite since it was an mp game and my brother kept *****ing about his lack of copper.

[johnmcd]

I had one where every single tile was on a river, except two sea tiles both with sea food specials. So not so much food, but then there were three gems too.

[Theben]

Best location for my capital was surrounded by river with lots of hills, wheat, corn, marble, and 2 gold. Later Iron appeared. The problem turned out to be there wasn't much good land nearby for future cities and my northern neighbor Sitting Bull was expanding like crazy. My 3rd city fell to a barbarian event and was recaptured by the NA. Eventually it was 12 of his cities to my 4. We were the only ones on that continent so it was game over for me.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Theben
my northern neighbor Sitting Bull was expanding like crazy.

He always does that. I think it must be hard coded.

[johnmcd]

I think I had a seven food special start once, two of them deer, two fish and two crabs.

It was far North, nowhere else to settle for miles around. Glad to be philosophical that game!

[rah]

Yeah, it does seem that usually the best starting location is lacking good second and third city options.

[Seedle]

Originally posted by rah
Yeah, it does seem that usually the best starting location is lacking good second and third city options.

Not Always So!



Thats 2 clam, 1 crab, 1 sheep, 1 forested plains deer, and 4 flood plains, with the city on a plains hill. Pretty sick. And there is a city with tundra forest deer, plains copper, wheat, and fish to the left, with a river city with cow and copper to the north. Plus nearby stone, wine, and horse. Too bad iron is inconvenient to get to and it's Rome.

Other good start locations I've had:



Actually, the AI had this one.



Possibly the sickest capital ever. Only remote problem is it isn't actually on the river. Note the incense on the starting square. Also an AI start.



ANOTHER AI start. I thought I had photos of some of my starts.... Actual starting square is the open grassland by the silk. Though it may be best to found on the southwest silk, and then have another city get the iron, southeast gold, and cow.

The 4000 b.c. save for the first pic

Pretty sure this is the save with the last pic.
Either go capture it (it is to your southeast) or use the world builder and and start there. (Might do that myself...)

edit: First save is from last week, the second is about a year or so old, not sure if it will still work, come to think of it. edit2: It does work, just loaded it up.

[jnh140]

nice pics i'll post one of my start in this post later. [edited for my own blindness)

im totally cut off on my incredible 6 GOOD food start, when I get home from not-working-at-work today I will embark on the "spread to 13 landmasses before industrialization" mission, hopefully to offset the lack of area for me to spread into. So far, its not going TOO poorly.

[joncnunn]

I would agree with the implemation that sometimes it's better if a close AI gets that wonderful start if you can succesfuly rush it and take it for yourself early enough.

[smbakeresq]

The best I have had is 2 crabs, 1 fish, 1 banana, start in plains hill with river through and 4 future grass hills for windmills as Lincoln. Copper was 3 spaces away, with iron 4 spaces for cities 2 and 3. Too rapid expansion a problem that I had to play through twice.

[Blaupanzer]

Seedle, that first Rome start is one of the best I've ever seen. Searching for iron and marble out a bit from the core is a lot easier than working with a desert and plains city with a badly located water source, and no horses, metals, or food specials that will eventually have 2 oils in that desert. Starting as Persia, the site had 3 incense that would help at calendar. However not much chance to get that far. Like your site much better.

[Theben]

The best capital start I've seen was in an MP game and my buddy was the Khmer. He literally had 4 gold hills in his BFC as well as 2 or 3 food specials. He also had plenty of good land nearby. Thankfully he wasn't as good a civ player at the time and I was able to pace him scorewise, although if it ever got to the point we had to slug it out I think he had more cities.