Worst starting location ever! LOL

[Jawn Henry]

I had an odd game as well. I had contact with everyone except a mystery civ. Got contact by trading with another civ for it (turned out to be the Germans), but i still couldn't find them. I looked around for them in Asia - no joy. I started stomping on the French for repeated territorial violations, then i decided, on a whim, to give the Germans a captured city. What do i see? a star in the name block - it was their capital. They didn't get around to building a city, or were wiped out except for 1 unit by someone else, but there are no cities with German names anywhere.

Wierd!

JH

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Jawn Henry
I had an odd game as well. I had contact with everyone except a mystery civ. Got contact by trading with another civ for it (turned out to be the Germans), but i still couldn't find them. I looked around for them in Asia - no joy. I started stomping on the French for repeated territorial violations, then i decided, on a whim, to give the Germans a captured city. What do i see? a star in the name block - it was their capital. They didn't get around to building a city, or were wiped out except for 1 unit by someone else, but there are no cities with German names anywhere.

Wierd!

JH

they probably have a galley drifting around somewhere with a settler inside. that's why they weren't annihilated... just a guess...

[Thrawn05]

My first game of monarch, I tried a huge arch map. I got one little island. By the time I was able to research Navigation so I can sail out and get some land... I was knocked out by a group of ironclads and galleons with rilfemen on it. That sucked.

BTW: THe island looks pretty much what Nym had.

[alva]

Originally posted by Nym
I think I have quite found THE worst starting location.

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/crouet/Sylva...g_location.JPG[/IMG]

Why??? I mean, she got 2 wales!!!

[Switch]

But only one is available. Now NO one can say that they could have put better city locations than that! The site is the only one with available whales....OUCH!

[OPD]

lol I've always hated the Russians.
Not only do they only have 2 tiles of land but they're miles from anyone else.

I bet the expansionist trait came in handy.

[Optimizer]

Starting on an island is far too large a problem in Civ 3. IRL, there are many prosperous island kingdoms - like UK, Japan, Taiwan and Indonesia.

One bad thing is that the ships in Civ 3 (Civ 1 & 2 too) are expensive, slow and high-tech.

Please read my Maritime Manifesto for more opinions on the maritime side of the game.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Optimizer
Starting on an island is far too large a problem in Civ 3. IRL, there are many prosperous island kingdoms - like UK, Japan, Taiwan and Indonesia.

One bad thing is that the ships in Civ 3 (Civ 1 & 2 too) are expensive, slow and high-tech.

Please read my Maritime Manifesto for more opinions on the maritime side of the game.

but it's not totally wrong.
britain, japan and indonesia have several larger islands very near to the continent (coastal squares), while the russians in this game are on a very very small island divided from the others by an ocean.
if you think of the reallife-civilizazions which got on small (and sometimes larger) islands very early, they were far behind in techs too. e.g. polynesians, caribbeans (before the europeans came), etc.

[sun_tzu_159]

Hi all,
The worst starting location is a single tile island obviously with no resources and no way out with sea tiles. I have found such islands later in games when exploring oceans but so far no starting position was ever put here - In one game I put a city on one to see how it would grow with no help - Its growth rate was comparable to any other city until size six when it took a long time to get necessary improvements for expansion.

The basic problem is that you only have one or two cities for production and cannot trade early on advances, research something no-one else is and sell it on for there advances to get an advantage.

I saw an AI with an island of 12 squares and it settled on the central square with no contact to the sea probably because it was the only one that was not lake or hill. I never saw an island start so bad as the Russians here though.

The AI should have a small advantage when starting on a small island where normally it cannot settle more than x (say two) cities using normal rules - easy to write check routine.
Firstly it should be given knowledge of the whole island and surrounding sea/ocean resources.
Secondly the normal rules of city spacing should be replaced by 'island' rules of city spacing.
Thirdly the rule of build immediately should be suspended and a plan for all city sites formulated building the best city first. This is only what a human player does under the same circumstances.

On the first map on this thread there is still room for two more cities on the big island and one city on the small island even with the poorly placed first city - probably placed to take advantage of the fish during the early years - but not with a check of the overall circumsatances. The Russians could have done no more on the second map but they had a 50/50 chance of getting it exactly right. I had exactly this choice in one game when arriving at such an island, it would be impressive if the AI got it right every time when arriving at such islands because somebody actually put it in the program.

The Babylonians would have a chance if they knew of a poorly defended city on the mainland (I find it really irritating that the AI knows how many units are defending cities and bypass the well-defended ones to attack weaker ones - human has to guess and hope for the best) and could send three ships with twelve units there in a desperate bid for expansion.

Also they will probably have a settler and ship docked there ready to flee. Apolex do you remember if when you finally finshed them they sent out a ship?

On the subject of lost Civs I was playing Egyptians on a huge map, sixteen civs, no mods. Eventually fifteen civs were known, one missing. I was sailing round Indias southern continent who were at war with Ioquois on same continent and Greeks from my northern continent when I spotted Greek troops attacking Bombay. I decided to stick around and watch as two Greek ships unloaded two units each. The attack proceeded and after the first round I got a warning from India to go away 'troops move automatically' so as the three civs were doing a good job of destroying each other I agreed. Now there were no squares where the ship could go that weren't Indian territory close by so suddenly I found myself in Zululand fully six ocean squares further south and completely unknown to anyone in the game. The routine for checking closest legal square to move a unit probably does not have a check for explored/unexplored. Anyway the Zulus had built six ciities on an island average two squares wide and ten squares long with nine square bulge at each end like a dumbell. It was impressive city spacing but probably by chance.

Regards
Sun_TZu

[Apolex]

Originally posted by sun_tzu_159

Also they will probably have a settler and ship docked there ready to flee. Apolex do you remember if when you finally finshed them they sent out a ship?

Sun_TZu,

I don't know if the computer 'weights' how badly it needs to expand to catch up, but throughout the whole game the Babs constantly patrolled the shores looking for a place to unload settlers. If I razed a city, within a few turns the Babylonians were there trying to get a foothold. It took a while later to hunt down their last little boat to end the game.

As for that Russian starting location, it would be highly difficult for even Aeson to salvage that situation on anything higher than Monarch. On his legendary comeback before, at least he had SOME amount of land area to work with. The Russians here seem to be hopelessly FUBARed.

-Apolex