Second colony pod ??

[Barinthus]

Yeah I prefer to just accept whatever the dice rolls. But hey, everybody to their own.

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by Alex
i like to play with "flex starting location" off (the default). i like the added challenge i get with a not-so-good starting position. plus, it makes some sense to me: when the faction lands on that weird and dangerous landscape, their first priority have to be security and so they decide to establish a settlement as soon as they can. exploring is too risky for them.

Originally posted by DataAeolus
Yeah I prefer to just accept whatever the dice rolls.

I totally agree. Makes no sense that group of space colonists can land on planet and then start a conversation like: "Hey I don`t want live there - I see fungal tower there. " or "If we spend two years moving as nomads with scarce supplies through completely alien and probably hostile world, we will able to found a base near monolith."

[:) Smiley]

At least in AC if your base isn't next to the sea, you can bring the sea to it! In Civ, you're just screwed.

[Enigma_Nova]

I started one of my famed small map games (conquer victory in 2102 W00T I ROCK)
I started Inland as Zak. Deirdre also started inland, 2 squares away from my base.
"Hello Zak."
"Sup Deedee."
"I was wondering if you'd like a treaty of friendship?"
"No, just let me move into that base you left undefended."
"Okay. Thanks Zak."

[spartak]

Nice one...

[The Mad Monk]

Cool...

Spartak! When did you return from your "Christmas vacation"?

[The Mad Monk]

Just landed one three away from the nearest shore.

[Mr. Harley]

I choose flexible starting locations and the map outline on simply because they came in from orbit. You have to push really hard to justify them not at least having a vague idea where they were landing.

[The Mad Monk]

I leave the map outline off, because when I first tried it (oh so long ago), it was hard to tell at a glance where I had and had not been.

Now, I set preferences to show the grid in the ocean, which also shows the grid in unexplored territory, zoom all the way out, and pick out all the nifty looking contours.

[Bella Hella]

wanted to mention that i started one tile away from the water in a one-city challenge game the other day. d'oh!

[Barinthus]

I know this is off the thread, hope it's ok

One-city challenge, how does that work? Is it multi-player thing or solo? I'd imagine it means that the player is to build only one city. But what about conquests - can he keep those or does he have to raze those bases?

[Illuminatus]

You have to obliterate the conquered bases.

[sammy1339]

If I'm correct, according to Prima's extremely crappy but usually-correct-on-technical-points-not-having-to-do-with-strategy Official Strategy Guide, whether or not you start with an extra colony pod has to do with how good the game judges your starting location to be. The way the game picks your starting location is by selecting a random square and calculating a number based on how many resources and enemies are near. The more squares it rejects the less picky it gets (i.e. the lower the number can be in order for it to give you the starting location.) If the calculated number is sufficiently low it will give you a free colony pod. The higher the difficulty level you play on the lower the number requirement is, and the faster it goes down. The requirement for getting a colony pod does not, however. Therefore you will almost never get a colony pod at citizen level, where your starting location will usually be good (high number of resource bonuses and distant from rival factions), you will get a colony pod about half the time on librarian level, where your starting location will be so-so, and you will almost always get a colony pod on transcend level where your starting location will usually be crappy. I believe that is how it works, anyway.