Conquered before the middle ages

[Blademun]

You would be right, sir. I play on huge-large maps. I recently started playing at monarch level. I always play with max players.

I'v had a run of bad luck lately in the start out. Mainly the poor placement of my first settler. Often on the very edge, instead of the center of a continent and/or favorable terrain. This ruins my strategy, since it forces me to spread in one direction. And trust me..that 30 tile distance dosen't seem like so much in those instances, when I have settlers easily crossing that distance just to get to the expanding side...

Thanks for clarifying what I was doing, is called. btw.

Also, I recently rethought it out. One could say all the time spent moving the settlers into posistion is wasted, since they are not in city-form, produceing something. I don't know. I find that placeing city edge to city edge ultimately ends you up with a very small empire. Since the AI is just soo good at expanding, your borders run into theirs too soon.. ¬_¬ Hrmm..

[vmxa1]

Everythig is a trade off. I just spent about two months playing Sid and before that mostly Demi and an occassional Deity. I cannot image moving a settler 30 turns at any point in the game.

You can get away with some loose or OCP placement up to Emperor after that, you will have your hands full on normal maps.

I would expect to have barbs take down a wandering settler if it took 30 turns to get to a spot. Above emperor, barbs can kill your warriors.

At deity and sid you have no bonus vs barbs. At monarch it is 100, 50 for emperor.

If you don't like the speed of the AI rexing at Monarch, you will really hate it at higher levels.

[Blademun]

Well, I looked at it more closely. It seems less to do with their speed and alot more to do with placement. Maybe I should start another post on this..but is it just me or does it seem like the higher you put the difficulty rateing, the more and more disadvantagious your spot?

At Regent I got started out in the middle of a huge green river valley with only some weak ole arabs to worry about...

At Monarch I get started out in jungles, forests, tundra or desert. After 7 attempts I got a peice of green....that was hemmed in within 10 squares by the Zulus, and 20 away were the egyptians... and this was on a huge map.

If I were a patient man I could sit through each difficulty level and repeatedly test to see if this is true. However I'm sure someone eles already has, and since I am a lazy man, I will let that someone eles tell me. Thanks in advance . LoL

[spy14]

You are a lazy man.

As am I.

But IIRC then yes the higher levels do give you more difficult starts overall

[Aeson]

Difficulty level has no effect on map generation or civ placement. You can test this by creating a map with a seed number, choose a difficulty, see what you get. Use the same settings for a new game (non-random! same seed, civ, AI civs (order is even important IIRC), barbs, water level, landform, mapsize, ect.) but a different difficulty level and you will get the same start.

[Solomwi]

This from the mastermind of "So Cold..."

[vmxa1]

Save your energy, the level has no impact on the map.

[Blademun]

Well, maybe not the map itself but maybe the placeing of your settler onto the map at the begining..?

[Ljube]

I haven’t seen any connection between the difficulty level and the start position.

And by the way, I just won a space race at emperor. With the weakest army, joining in MPPs with everyone but my sole surviving neighbours, the militaristic, armed to their teeth Mayas to prevent them from attacking and soon afterwards, inviting them all to assist me in my fight against distant Koreans who only once attempted lading with a single tank

The final 30 turns were filled with bribes towards the Mayans to appease them. Though not the most convincing performance of mine, I've achieved the victory I desired.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Blademun
Well, maybe not the map itself but maybe the placeing of your settler onto the map at the begining..?

No. With the same settings, civs, and seed, you will start in the same place regardless of the difficulty level.

[Darkchampion]

I usually use this for my layout

X=cities
0=not cities

X00X0X00X0X00X00


if you disband every other city once your hospitals come in you have something very close to OCP

X0000X0000X0000X

and I do this for the capital and core cities (cities i use for improvements and wonders. dont build many troops with them unless im going for an early conquest. naturally i change the layout if i start on a river or lake as your capital will go to pop 12 soon)

C=capital

0000X00
0000000
X000000
000C000
000000X
0000000
00X0000