Some maps just SUCK

[justjake73]

No Horses? I could trade for em
Ditto for Saltpeter.

but only ! $%#^% COAL IN THE ENTIRE WORLD?!?!?!? W- T -F???!?!

I thought there was at LEAST supposed to be 1 for EACH civ on the map but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think there should be a "mark" if a square has a resource. It can be the same mark, but at least you KNOW something will be there EVENTUALLY!!!!

[Atahualpa]

ahh resources dont bug me too much.

at least that gives a descent challenge.

And there has to be coal
hit Ctrl-Shift-M to hide the terrain improvements and such and search for coal.
And if you see someone has it: Trade or go to war.

Going for war for resources is probably the only reason I go for war.

ata

[aebbeka]

I have trouble just getting a decent map in the first place. I'm always either surrounded by desert and jungle or am on a little tiny island.

[quicksilver417]

the best map to play is earth huge
i can find all my resources there AND it gets me isolated and a lot of space 4 expansion so i can aviod warfare at least until the middle ages

[Akka]

I thought there was at LEAST supposed to be 1 for EACH civ on the map but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There IS at least one ressource per civ. The trouble with coal is that it's extremely difficult to see it. But it's present.

I think there should be a "mark" if a square has a resource. It can be the same mark, but at least you KNOW something will be there EVENTUALLY!!!!

Someone made a graphic mod for Civ3 where ressources had a little symbol very visible that helped a lot to locate them, but I couln't find the thread it was in...

[FNBrown]

Just go to war for it.

I played one game as the English where I didn't settle a single city. At all. My entire empire was built upon the conquest of my enemies. (this is not always really easy... but the French parked an unguarded settler right next to London, and I took it from there).

When it comes to resources, I rarely trade. You can't depend on the source, and it leaves you over a barrel, diplomatically speaking, with whatever nation is your source.

[Blackadar1]

Having started quite a few (50+) Civ III games, I can reasonably say that the human player continually gets shafted in the choice of the starting postions. For example, in my current game, I played on a normal sized map with 4 other Civs. There are 4 continents - guess who had to "share" his with one other Civ? And got the worst of the starting positions - buried way down South, almost in the tundra, where my only expansion opportunities were TOWARD the other civ. I made it work, but after revealing the entire map, as usual the other Civs started with far better positions.

Ah, just one more indication that Civ III wasn't properly playtested...

[Ironikinit]

Pressing ctrl+shift+M makes it a lot easier to find resources.

[Asmodean]

Blackadar1: Now that's just not true. I've played quite a few games, where my starting position was miles and miles of grassland and hills, with a few lonely mountains that were good for resources.

The only advantage I can see that AI civs get in starting locations, is that they tend to have access to more luxuries than the human player.

Other than that, I just don't agree with you.

Asmodean

[Grim Legacy]

Mh I agree on the map thing. 8 out of 10 times my starting position is too poor to have a nice go at it. 4 out of those 8 are plain bad. 2 out of the original 10 are ok. 0.2 out of those 2 are great.

I like a good starting position. Alas, I've found myself playing <500BC games trying to feel satisfied with the land, and giving up eventually. I think this starting position issue causes me to play Civ3 less.

[kailhun]

About half the time I just go with the starting position given to me by the computer. The other half I use the makevisible program to show the entire map ( on a second save), check the map and see where I want to be.
Then using the save-game-editor program I move myself onto a nice position and the AI-civs away. Once I stuck them all on a small island , but this wasn't a lot of fun.
Every civ is supposed to be near at least one of the resources (I remember reading something along these lines somewhere), but i get the impression that the resoucres are placed according to the territory my civ has when the resource appears. With exception of the later resources, I always have to go to iron, coal, salpeter etc.

Robert

[Willem]

Originally posted by kailhun
About half the time I just go with the starting position given to me by the computer. The other half I use the makevisible program to show the entire map ( on a second save), check the map and see where I want to be.
Then using the save-game-editor program I move myself onto a nice position and the AI-civs away. Once I stuck them all on a small island , but this wasn't a lot of fun.
Every civ is supposed to be near at least one of the resources (I remember reading something along these lines somewhere), but i get the impression that the resoucres are placed according to the territory my civ has when the resource appears. With exception of the later resources, I always have to go to iron, coal, salpeter etc.

Robert

The resources are placed when the map is first made up. A couple of times I've started a map over from the beginning, and the resources where in the exact same spot each time.

[Ironikinit]

Well, my current game I had a pretty bad starting spot, but I've had some pretty good ones. Once started with iron in my capital's radius and founded my second city on what turned out to be horses. I've started out alone on a large continent once, but that's not as much fun as I thought it would be. Plus I was playing the Russians, a boring civ IMO.

A lot of starts do suck, and it's frustrating to play for a while and realize that you're in for a bad game because there's no iron to be had in your area, etc. The time it takes makes me more likely to try to stick it out. Anyway, as I said, I've had pretty good starting spots in a lot of my games lately.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Ironikinit
Well, my current game I had a pretty bad starting spot, but I've had some pretty good ones. Once started with iron in my capital's radius and founded my second city on what turned out to be horses. I've started out alone on a large continent once, but that's not as much fun as I thought it would be. Plus I was playing the Russians, a boring civ IMO.

A lot of starts do suck, and it's frustrating to play for a while and realize that you're in for a bad game because there's no iron to be had in your area, etc. The time it takes makes me more likely to try to stick it out. Anyway, as I said, I've had pretty good starting spots in a lot of my games lately.

Here's a thought. The auto save always keeps your very first turn on file, so if you do get a map that's good, you can always save that somewhere, and play it again later on. Once you have a collection of these, it won't matter much whether you've already played it since you probably won't remember much about the map anyway.

[MonsterMan]

I remember one time...

I had cranked up the warmth and humidity, and set the age to 3 billion years. I don't think you'll find a harsher world than the one I ended up with; on my large continent there were two little chunks of grassland, the other home to the Russians, with a mountain range as large as the screen separating us.

Needless to say, most of the rest of the map was jungle. I might try such a map for my next game, I feel warm in my shoes now.

I don't think it matters if there isn't any coal in the world. Eventually you'll move beyond needing it at all, and since no-one else has it either you won't be left behind. But I have a hard time believing there isn't any coal in your world. Do try the keyboard command, coal looks like a mine on the far zoom and is 'invisible' if you have a city sitting on the resource or a unit on the tile.