Is there no mercy? Geography/starting positions...

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Didymus
I feel your pain, man. I have only ever had Coal once: it appeared next to a city. Then, five turns later, it was exhausted! And you NEED railroads. (You can live w/o Saltpeter, altho it hurts.) I'm not sure that I have ever had a supply of rubber, either. Still, this is part of the game. You're not supposed to have all the resources you need.

I always play with 5 billion yrs; huge swathes of the same terrain is deadly. But I agree that jungle shouldn't take so freaking long to cut down, for gameplay reasons if nothing else.

Trade and diplomacy is everything when you need resources. One tip I find is that if you ask the other civ to suggest a deal, you get better terms than if you make a proposal. Brown-nose, survive until you can research Fission, build the UN, and go for a diplomatic victory. It doesn't matter if you are the weakest civ left on the map!

I got better terrain going this time. Used the small land/Archipelago setting on a large world. I even have a been able to obtain a couple of sources of iron by 'removing' the infidels from my lands. Got some ivory (some... lol! 5!!) in the deal too. I have just one horsie though, hope it stays.

As for your suggestion for a diplomatic victory. What if you don't like to win that way?

[Zanzin]

Well....

I've been playing arcipagelo, 80% water, 4 billion years.

Currently in middle ages, and I got all the saltpepper!! (3 lots of it)

The egyptians might have some, but the americans, russians, greeks and japanese don't!!

Now, the greeks are trying to invade me. There is a giant continent, kinda of a T shape.

I'm the vertical bit, america is top left, greece in the middle, and russians top right.

I give the americans and russians salt pepper in return for them declaring war on the greeks.....I am the master, the greeks are stuffed!!! Getting attacked on 3 fronts.

In times like this, the new resource system rocks. Being in the greeks position would suck though.

In terms of starting locations.....mine was pretty good, but the 5 AI players all seemed to get slightly better spots than I did. We all had the same amount of land, but in the middle of mine was a giant jungle/mountain range - took me a lot longer to conolise my section of the "T" than it did the other players

[Jason]

On my Regent Standard Continents game, I got stuck in with just enough room to cram in 5 cities, in a line, on about a third of the continent, 2 other, larger civs. My part had no fresh water, I had to wait for the other civs to irrigate all the way down to me, and sneak workers in to guerilla irrigate the rest of the way. I'm leading in tech and bringing in a ton of cash though, so I'm going to see how it goes. If it was a spaceship game I'd be sure to win but it's set for conquest only and I have the smallest physical empire in the game, although the 2nd largest pop.

So, bad geography, awesome game. With luck of course.

[Grim Legacy]

The fresh water issue in addition to the 'settlers cost 2 pop' thing make good terrain even more crucial than in Civ2.

I did encounter enough grassland usually, though (wet terrain settings probably causes that), so that mere roads suffice in the Despotism age. After monarchy only would irrigation add food bonuses. So that gives some time to wait for fresh water.

Another random terrain thought: the special resources are indeed often in the worst parts of the land, like mountains, desert, hills or tundra.

Luckily, tundra is usually at the periphery of my lands, so that I can 'control' it without having to built cities around it. Hills are manageable too, but for those huge jungles/mountain ranges I don't have a solution yet.

[Jason]

The population cap is pretty stern, 12 till the Industrial era, so cities don't NEED irrigation, but it's annoying to develop slowly when your neighbors have it. My size 12 cities in the heartland aren't yet irrigated.

A lack of irrigation DOES lead to mining almost every square though.

[Grim Legacy]

Oh yes, the mining thing helps too...

Hm yeah I'm at the size12 point myself ATM. Two cities (no1 and 3) didn't need an aqueduct, the others all have it by now... but sanitation is still some time off. Hmmmm.

[Honour_Shogun]

Well, the randomness(or is it arbitrary bad luck) has appeared for me. Finally got coal and then oil. Well, for coal, I lucked out. Seems it likes to appear in jungle(ha! I knew they were there for something other than stopping my catapults from getting to the front lines.) And I actually have access to 5 of them. But then, with oil, well, there are 6 deposits on the revealed map(I have world maps from everyone, only a part in the north that is unexplored). I have 2 of them, but France has 4! And they are still in the early middle ages period(they must be, as they are only just in republic government). So all that oil, that I could use, well, I cannot get it. And so, I have had to contemplate attacking France, eliminating them, and hoping like hell the otehr nations do not decide I am an easy target. Oh well. Them's the brakes, eh?

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Honour_Shogun
Well, the randomness(or is it arbitrary bad luck) has appeared for me. Finally got coal and then oil. Well, for coal, I lucked out. Seems it likes to appear in jungle(ha! I knew they were there for something other than stopping my catapults from getting to the front lines.) And I actually have access to 5 of them. But then, with oil, well, there are 6 deposits on the revealed map(I have world maps from everyone, only a part in the north that is unexplored). I have 2 of them, but France has 4! And they are still in the early middle ages period(they must be, as they are only just in republic government). So all that oil, that I could use, well, I cannot get it. And so, I have had to contemplate attacking France, eliminating them, and hoping like hell the otehr nations do not decide I am an easy target. Oh well. Them's the brakes, eh?

Hm? You have 2 oil but that's not enough? I don't understand...