Restarting Fever

[Natrunner]

I am almost a perfectionist when it come to restarting my games. I have to be in a good place(not too many desert or jungle tiles) and not meet another player right off the bat. I don't know if it is me or if I am just being overly anal. I sometimes restart 5 or 6 times before I continue on. Does anyone else have the problem? Let me know if you do.

[cassembler]

Yup. I'll usually wait until the mid to late middle ages though, the point where I know I'm ether gonna win or lose. Besides, the modern era is too fd up for my tastes... If they can make late game as fun and interresting as early game, everything will be fantastic...

[Control Freak]

I too do the restart marathon before deciding if I will play through or not...the again I am a Control Freak!

[ike0481]

Restarts and Auto Saves

Yep. I do the same thing too. I'll also have to admit that I'm an abuser of the auto save feature. If a war isn't going my way after the 4th or 5th turn I usually load the autosave and continue peacefully.

[Dominator_Jones]

I try to make any game work, but sometimes I just end up in a real crappy starting location. Small Island with 3 other civs or something like that and then I just restart as well.

[kmj]

Generally, I don't restart, but I always play with all the bottom settings in the middle which seems to always give you some hope.

Last night I decided to do random for all the map settings:
(all three were huge/16 civs)

First attempt: Way north; alone on continent big enough for 8-12 cities - *** 90% tundra! There was only room for my capital! I built another settler, looked, looked, looked, and restarted.

Second attempt: south of the equator alone on continent big enough for 7-10 cities. 40% mountain/hills, 45% desert, 10% grasslands, 5% forest. build 7 cities, 4 of which were pretty strangled, but had coastline. Had a rough time getting science, finally got a galley, made contact with other civs and found I was way behind. Gave up. Too much of a challenge after my previous game (which was fun, but I didn't really feel like being behind the whole time again).

Third attempt: Big continent; big enough for 40-50 cities, probably more. Turns out I share it with the egyptians and greeks.. guess who I am. (romans ). There's a vast jungle to the north, between the egyptians and I. The greeks are further north than the egyptians. They're both kind of boxed in, the greeks by oceans and egypt, egypt by the greeks and a tremendously huge jungle. I start out w/ grassland, hills, two rivers, and many cows and wheat, at the west side of a relatively uninterrupted band of grasslands which stretch (far) to the other side of the continent. I'm the only one at the south of the continent. To the south of me are plains, and to the southeast, desert with floodplains and wheat. Needless to say, I do alot of expanding. I ignore the jungle, and have very strong base in the southeast of the continent, and have expanded so that I have a continuous border stretching from the west to the east of the continent... kind of a dyslexic manifest destiny. I've taken all the best city sites, so I'll let the greeks wander through my territory and settle the desert wasteland in the southeast... this part of the desert doesn't even have rivers, all desert and mountains; can't imagine the cities could ever get past size one. With my emphasis on culture (gonna take a break, I think, to destroy egypt and get their iron; my people want legions!), I'm sure I'll own those cities soon enough anyway.


er.. did I go off on a tangent? sorry.

Anyway, this is by far the best starting situation I've ever had from any civ game, civ2 or 3... well, can't be sure of that, since I've played Civ2 so many times, who really knows.

[General Ludd]

I do it sometimes, mostly only for aesthetic reasons, though. But I'll admit to being "overly anal".

[Evil_Eric_4]

The game Im in now I restarted at least 20 times.
Im playing on a real world mod as america and had to restart toget correct start position
My neighbors?----zulus and persians.--again

[allbad]

yea, i get pretty anal about my starting location too. I just don't want to spend 8 hours on a game that I know I'm going to lose. I gotta work to pay for that game :P

[wal35]

I admit I'd developed a nasty habit in Civ2 of saving at 4000BC reveal the map see if it was worth carrying on. Saved a lot of time.

Now that starting postions are even more critical in Civ3 its doubly irritating its not in Civ3.

I guess if it all depends if you want a civ you are "proud" of or just after an artifical high score via ICS -well that how I justified my use of reveal map

[Velociryx]

::Nods:: Sheesh, I feel like I"m part of a support group....lol

I'll admit....I'm pretty picky about my start.

* I DON'T wanna be on a landmass alone. (Interesting contrast to SMAC, where my preference was a mid-sized continent all to myself)

* DON'T want any sort of polar start. If I see tundra or snow-capped mountains, the game gets a restart on general principles.

*DO want at least one bonus food tile OR a river. I'm not picky here....either one's okay, but if I don't have at least the extra commerce income that the river provides (and long term growth potential) or the quick growth of food, I can't keep pace with the AI's landgrab phase.

*DO want to be further than six tiles away from the nearest AI competitor. They zero in on me fast enough as it is....I'd like a LITTLE breathing room just to make the game fun!

* At least one resource with at least one surplus (ie - 2 furs) is a requirement. Even if I have NOTHING else, having a basis to trade from is key. Fortunately, since resources tend to be clumped, this has only been a problem twice (on a smallish island with NO resources at all...instarestart!)

* Not required, but my preferred games have my capitol starting somewhere fairly central, facilitating easy expansion in every direction (ie - postpones having to relocate the capitol....with corruption levels as they are at present, having a peninsular start can WRECK the productivitiy of your cities till the end of the Middle Ages if you grow beyond five cities (standard map).

Oh, I'm sure as I play more often, I'll find myself starting "wherever," but for the moment, a decent food start is the only way I've been found to keep pace with AI expansion and not get boxed in and held to 4-5 cities. That'd be enough if I wanted to play a hyper-agressive rush game, but I'm simply not interested in those, tho I DO think the prevailing geography does a fantastic job at forcing aggression (ie - if you start in the tundra, you've almost GOT to be militarily aggressive to survive).

-=Vel=-

[Jeff George]

I never restart any games of this sort. I prefer to play with what's dealt to me, otherwise it feels too much like cheating. If you can't win from a bad starting position maybe you should be playing something easier, like checkers.

[Evil_Eric_4]

I never restart any games of this sort. I prefer to play with what's dealt to me, otherwise it feels too much like cheating. If you can't win from a bad starting position maybe you should be playing something easier, like checkers.

OK Mr.Ironman

[scratches head]Now where did I put that candyland game anyway?

[greggbert]

Me too I really hate restarting, and I always try to play through even if it looks like i'm defintaly going to lose. I think this is where the corruption and lack of shield maintenence on units really helps because if you can just find enough clear land, you can usually do pretty well.

Also, some of the most fun gameplay comes when you are losing, since I then try all sorts of stuff like packing my cities together near my capital, researching optional techs just so I can get a good trade, and building wonders that I would not normally build (like the colossus, or great library) type of wonder. I am also more likely to be a rouge state when it comes to nuclear power.

It's also kind of cool to hide behind a very powerful friendly civ by giving them lots of tribute, and basically being their bit... I mean vassal. Anyway, I've had more fun losing the game then winning it sometimes!

-Gregg

[Velociryx]

For me, it's not *about* whether I can or cannot beat the game from a bad start....right now, I can't consistently, and I know that...Oh...I could if I used the 100% aggression beatdown game, exploiting the AI's obvious weaknesses, but....what can I say....those kinds of games are generally not much fun for me, and I like to explore other options....other options simply not available with an "all tundra" or "jungle" start.

::shrug::



-=Vel=-