Our Starting Location!!

[OzzyKP]

Mmmm, lots of food.

[OzzyKP]

Also, I've granted plako (the mapmaker) access to this forum. As a map maker myself in other games I certainly appreciate the joy of watching others discover your creation. Welcome plako!

[OzzyKP]

Initial thoughts:

If we settle in place we get 4 flood plains, 3 hills, banana, corn & the bonus for settling on a plains hill.

If we go two north we get three hills (maybe more), 3 flood plains, banana, corn, cow and access to the sea. Initially I'm thinking this might do us better. But I defer to the opinions of others.

[mzprox]

I don't like when settling place is not obvious and it's certainly not in this one..
if we settle in place we have 3 deforested hills: very likely hold resources, very likely copper.
has almost zero forests.. so no choppig at all..

we could move north to have a coastal capital.. we can move where the warrior stands so we would have forests and that deer so extra fast production in the beginning.

right now i think that's the best choice.. we give up some benefits for med/late game (riverside position, cottaged flood plains), but we get a big boost in early production which might prove to be critical. that way we get a cow 3/3 and deer 5/1 after imporved.

if we move our settler there we can still finish our worker one turn earlier, then later we will have many forests to chop.

But of course I will play some test games to see which one is the best.

[Hercules]

Though my heart says move to the sea I must admit I like settling on the plains hill, plus the prospect of some early gold from what looks like lakes is enticing.

question is which would speed our worker first build and employment.

In any case we should move our warrior first.

[mzprox]

possible settling spots (and short summary)

A - in place

settling in the first turn, riverside with many floodplans, corn, banana, worker production medium (12 turns)

only 1 forest, no cow or deer, not coastal

B - 1N

just like A except: slow worker production (15 turns), gets an extra forest to chop

C -2N 1W (coastal plains hill)

Coastal capital (harbor, custom house), gets cow, some undiscovered tiles might hold something), medium worker production (12)

loses banana, not riverside, loses a turn

D - 2N

coastal, extra cow,

slow worker production (15 turns)



E - 1 E on banana

gets deer, 2 forests, fast worker production (11 turns)

not riverside, 2 less flood plains

F 2E 1N (warrior's place)

Gets cow and deer, fastest worker production (10 turns), many forests to chop

not riverside, no floodplains, loses a turn,

G - 1N 1 E (on corn)

similar to F, just less forest, loses the corn, but saves some flood plains


I think these are the viable choices, i1m really not sure which is the best..

[DNK]

At least Archery's a lot easier to sidetrack into now...

I think it's important to be able to connect up resources quickly. If we SIP, that cow and deer are going to need a double pop to get at, and then it would be a waste unless we settled in their direction. The nice thing about settling on the warrior is we can use all the resources (well, not banana) for the first city, and probably split some between it and a second/third city as needed.

I think 1SW could be really strong for a production site (7 hills, mostly plains + FPs + grass banana), though we might use it early for specialists instead - leave the mines until later once we've expanded out into other commercial cities. It also will have good overlap with the capital, and it can probably take the banana later in the game as the capital gets cottaged over (or not, but we have this choice, and I like choices better than setting things up so surely from the start).

So, my vote is settle on the warrior and probably put a second city 1SW of the settler, though this can change as we scout - copper should be in the second city, so that could make 1SW a lot less positive. The great thing about 1SW isthe flexibility: specialists now and tons of production later. If we want to build economically quickly then switch to REXing (and probably defense), that works well with our approach.

To be honest, choosing starting sites isn't my strongest point, though

[DNK]

Also, note we should be settling with decent overlap here given the map and settings, not only to share improved tiles and shave off worker turns as well for micro maximization.

[mzprox]

p BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave

here, if someone wants to play with it, I will update it when we have more information

I can say this actually is a bad starting position.. we can't have both production and commerce, health is problematic, no luxury resource around

[Robert]

Shall we settle on a hill? It awards an extra 25% bonus defense.

[mzprox]

Shall we settle on a hill? It awards an extra 25% bonus defense.

It's already very bad if we need to defend in our capital.. it means they can pillage everything. The priority I think is to get a fast start and think about how our capital would work later. It's not just acity but getting 50% bonus from civic, home of the Oxford university etc.

I suggest we don't just vote and go along with the majority, but all starting postion must be played to a certain point then we compare every aspects of it.

[Calanthian]

One point I am sure about is that we need to move our warrior NE.
Then we get information on 1 additional tile.
This could help decide if we like the coastal position.

Then we can discuss further.

First build: a worker. (no defense yet)

[mzprox]

I think the only information we can get is the 2N tile, which is very likely an empty grassland.Since we can see NE a tundra tile I would send the warrior west (first move 1 NW). Then look around the coast.

[Calanthian]

1 NW is also fine.. it is true this tile will probably grassland, but if it would have a resource everything changes..

[mzprox]

This is what i got for t40 so far. (settled at the warrior)

tech: hunting, AH, fishing, pottery