Whats your best start posistion ever??

[Worthingtons]

Recently I started a game off with the Romans, now I like a decent starting posistion, some grassland and maybe a cow, but this one was taking the piss.

it had 5(thats FIVE) Cows and 2 Fish!!! 7 special resources and it's my capital too. too add to that, nearly every other sqare was a grassland shield square, and there was a lush river running down it too!!
Kewl or what!

[Ironikinit]

Load the autosave for 4000 BC and save it as "great start rome" or whatever, and then you can have it whenever you want an easy game.

One of my best starts was a coastal city that had several cows, a river, and who knows what all. I believe there was wine, too, but I've forgotten. All I know is that I was off to a fantastic start, leading the histogram early on, which I rarely do.

I got the civilization.exe error. It was the only time that reloading from an earlier point didn't fix it. I don't know what caused it. So yeah, you might want to save it at 4000 BC cos you never know.

[Dinner]

Some people get all the luck! I'm estatic if I can just get 2-3 resources and I ussually have to restart several times to get even that...

[Worthingtons]

Yep, same here, So i was quite dizzy with that, I would save the 4000bc except my opponents would be in the same kinda posistion leading to simular games really. I'm annoyed I missed all the ancient wonders (bar the GL) tho.

[Rage]

Does the quality of the starting location depend on the difficuty level or is it purely random?

[steelehc]

Once, as the Americans, Washington was lucky enough to be source of a cow, two wheats, a fish, an iron, and two coal. At one point, a uranium appeared somewhere. This was the city that got me 199 production. I was pissed, cause I couldn't get it above 200.

Steele

[Boracks]

My best start was on the large map of Earth. I started in South America, expanded to fill it and didn't meat anyone else. So I carefully went through Central America and into North America - and it was empty! Six civ's were in Africa and Asia but I had all of the America's to myself!

[Worthingtons]

Yep, a different kind of good start there. but no question, a Capital City with the Iron Works must be a dream come true (even more so than 5 cows and 2 fish!). didnt know there was a 200 shield cap.

[DrFell]

All I need is a couple floodplain wheat sqares with some similar locations nearby, and I'm happy.

[Worthingtons]

Interesting... most people would restart given floodplains, I also like them tho, but mainly for Pop Rushing reasons

[DrFell]

Exactly, pop rushing is so powerful, and as I usually play on deity it's almost neccessary to build up to an early war for tech and cities.

[Arrian]

I think the best capitol location I had was a Regent game as the Iroquois:

5 cows, river, 4 hills (all on river). It grew like crazy and had tons of production, as I don't think I ever needed irrigation - every square was mined.

My dream start location, which I have yet to see, is:

Start on a gold hill, on a river, with several cows (or maybe a combo of a wheat on floodplain and a couple of cows) and some more hills and grassland. Having iron and coal show up later in the non-gold hills would top it off.

I have definitely noticed that the start locations seem meaner on Monarch than they were on lower levels. But I could be imagining things.

Personally, I think having good sites for your 2nd and 3rd cities is just as important than the capitol site itself, because you need to be able to hand off settler production so your capitol can start building your Wonder of choice (for me, the Great Library).

-Arrian

[Dinner]

An interesting varion on this thread would be "what was your worst start ever"? Mine happened the other day when I was the Greeks and started on a five tile island that was all desert. No river, no hills, no special resources... Just desert.

I actually played the game for an hour just to see how long it would take for me to die.

[Venger]

My best starting position ever was with my wife on her side, and I'm up and...oh wait, that's not what you meant...

Venger
P.S. Still stopping by to see if they'll ever patch this abortion of a Civ release...

[star mouse]

Originally posted by Ironikinit
Load the autosave for 4000 BC and save it as "great start rome" or whatever, and then you can have it whenever you want an easy game.

Originally posted by Rothy
Yep, same here, So i was quite dizzy with that, I would save the 4000bc except my opponents would be in the same kinda posistion leading to simular games really. I'm annoyed I missed all the ancient wonders (bar the GL) tho.

How about this for an idea? If you get a game with a great start, we upload the 4000 BC autosave to a thread with a brief description, then when someone else wants an easy game they can download it.

I think one would need to state the following with each save file:

* Civilization
* Opponents (if known)
* Difficulty
* Map size, water coverage, land form, rainfall, temperature, world age
* If playing with a modified BIC file, state the modifications
* Attach a JPG image showing the starting position or describe it

My current game has a decent start position, not great around the capital except for 1 cow on grassland and 2 gold on hills, but the surrounding terrain has plenty of good city sites. It also has a humungous inland sea, the largest I have ever seen in a CIV game.