Still the Greatest Starting Strategy

[Hoek]

I forget who turned me on to this, but it is so freaking good...the trick is that you don't set your city down immediately. Instead, you search for villages. You go around and get the villages, and you will start you civ out with an impressive treasury and military (that is completely independent, may i add). Also, there is no risk of barbarians being in villages until you set your first city down.

cool huh?

[Caligastia]

Sounds good except you cant research techs while you are wandering around, and if an enemy civ kills your settler its game over.

[Blaupanzer]

At Deity, if you wait a long time, then make a capitol, you better get a boatload of free starting techs or you will miss most wonders and chase the AI all game in techs.

[solo]

Hoek,

If the map has many easily accessible huts, it's a great starting strategy. You might really like this start, with a map especially designed for the purpose. By exploring huts first you are likely to have 30 techs, about 2000 gold and close to 100 units by the year 2000 BC! This "river" map was used for the OCC games with BC landing.

[Scouse Gits]

When to stop village hunting and start city building is a tough call. The two extremes seem to be best.

a) Pop a few huts and hope for non-units, gold or a useful tech (rare). Then if a decent city site appears build. I like to save some non grassland/plains huts near my capital for later - hoping for nomads. We all must have found nomads in distant huts that started walking during Despotism and arrived at the SSC for the opening of the Superhighways

b) Grab as much as you can if you think you are on a big (large world) continent - and hope you will receive some/all of the science for Monarchy.

The problem comes when around 8 - 12 huts are opened. On a bad day you may find up to half a dozen useless techs prior to Monarchy. When you eventually found and start researching Code of Laws - it's 21 turns away

------------------

SG(2)

[Ming]

I forget who turned me on to this, but it is so freaking good

HI Hoek... remember me
While I'm sure others have done it before, I was the first to actually post it.
(originally posted at the old Addicted site)

It is still a great strategy for playing in SP mode (don't bother in MP )
While a good ICS strategy will kick the snot out of the hut tipping approach, it is still a lot of fun.

I would only add, don't place your first city down until you at least have monarchy or republic... because the first science you actually try to research will cost MANY... MANY... MANY turns of research to develop

I used to do this until about 2500 bc... If you wait much longer, the AI's will usually have a pretty good head start and might be starting on wonders you might desire. By then, you would usually have a perfect spot to put a capital down... That was usually the determining point for me to stop... good location, and monarchy in the bag already

Thanks for the memories

[War4ever]

definitely not a strat to try in an mp game........ you will get slaughtered...... sure an early archer/chariot is effective, but not worth it if you can't get those cities down.

in sp diety you get two settlers so even if one should die all is not lost.... on a large map you can't wander till the end of time, on a small one you can and likely take the ai out without a city....not really alot of fun.

large maps i wander till 3000bc or so unless i find a site before that or come into alot of huts as others have mentioned

[Hoek]

Hey Ming...haha...yeah...memories...remember when the addicted forums shut down and a bunch of us formed that email ring? I'm trying to remember all who was in it

I know that you, me, stew, xin yu, rune, floyd, and the greek guy who went into the military were all in it...we invited Jesus, I think (remember CDB? that was the funnest thread ever, next to that one with the guy named greg who made a whole bunch of outrageous claims)...but he had trouble with spam alot. Who else was in it? I can't seem to remember

[Ming]

Yes... the memories...
All I can remember beyond your list was (I think) Allard... and I thought there were two David's...
Yeah, we did invite CDB to join in, but he declined. I don't think he wanted us all to have his email address

I can remember how desperate we were to find another place to post again.
The email group was fun, but it didn't have the immediacy value of posting on a forum...

The unbeatable civ god (UCG) threads were the funniest thing going at Addicted.
I remember when we all wanted to place SERIOUS money bets on the outcome of the "big match"... He wanted to take ALL of us on at the same time, and predicted he would still win. The thread just got funnier with every post.
Addicted was also the first "Civ site" where discussions of religion and politics dominated the general forum. Those were the days...

But I can't complain... most of us found a new home here, and the fun just continues...

[Hoek]

You know who else there was? Chris Hoang, I seem to remember.

BTW: do you recall the name of the Greek guy?

Also, remember when we were all trying to figure out what "CDB" stood for?

That UCG thread was so large (since the forum format was kinda unweildy) that my browser would often take several minutes to update it...that thread alone had >1000 posts, I believe.

[TCO]

GROUNDHOG DAY! Anybody remember Ceasar the Ass pirate. And little Enur!

[Ming]

Yes GP... ground hog day And sure, I remember rune - enur

DaveV was the other Dave I was thinking of. He saw this thread, and sent me one of the old emails (still had it on his hard drive)... the address list includes all the people that were in the group. I'm running between meetings now, so I will post a full list later.

[Ming]

OK Hoek... here is the address list from one of the old emails that DaveV was nice enough to send me.

Ming
Stewart
DaveV
Hoek
Xin Yu
Allard Hofelt
ChrisH
Lucas French
Frank Johnson
Frank Peach
David Floyd
Rune/Enur
John Petroski
Erik Santiso

I think some others may not have been on this list, but it covers most of the people that actually sent emails a lot.

An interesting bunch of characters to say the least
Thanks again DaveV for sending me that "blast from the past"

[Hoek]

I think that I remember eveyone on the list except for eric santiso...and I think david v must have come along after the greek guy who I can't remember the name of left

---we should get the old crew back together! we should play an MP game together or something

[Ming]

I'm sure many of the people on the list don't play anymore.
It's been ages since I played with Xin Yu, but he got hooked on ToT...

I saw in the other forum that you were looking to hook up with a tribe. Obviously, that means you must be playing MP now a days.
You should check out the Setting Up IP games thread in the MP forums. That's the one our group uses to set up games.