Your Start

[DeepO]

Originally posted by snoopy369
DeepO, i'll try to make more screenies later tonight.

Excellent... thanks!

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake
What do you mean by poorer? By settling on the hill we get +1 hammer, and we STILL have a guarantee of 5 floodplains (up from 4) and 3 (non-desert) hills on rivers (down from 4).

moving 8 will mean we lose 3 forests for sure, and we lose quite a few plains too. We gain at least 1 fp, and a ph. I'm not certain if the city tile counts for the health penalty on fp, but at any rate we'll lose 2 health by moving 8.

What do we gain, for losing the plains at 21, 22, 23, 41 and 63? a plain at 74, and otherwise just fp, desert, and unrivered ph.

That doesn't look to me as a better 21-tile radius, even if we gain a free +1 hpt from the city tile.

------------

But, what's most important to me, is to see where we got situated by the settling AI. There is no ocean nearby, which is the biggest problem to model correctly in the AI. The rest is simply a count of the available hfc in the fat cross, with a bonus from resources. I've never seen the CIV AI suggest a starting pos, when 1 tile next to it there's a better tile, if you take pure hfc and resources into account. Especially not if both tiles would have river access (and thus extra health).

We don't see both fat crosses yet, but the only reason I see the AI choose this position to start on, and not 8 of it is because purely on hfc and resources, it's the better tile. As long as there is no compelling suggestion to choose otherwise, I'd like to trust the AI...

But I'll try to start some scenarios on the map Max provided(Thanks! ), so I can get a feel for myself.

DeepO

[Krill]

How far this game has come, compared to PTW...

We actually trust the AI

[DeepO]

O, but I always trusted it... in the sense that it's predictable. That's less true for CIV compared to PTW, but AFAIK there is no backstabbing code in the city settling AI

DeepO

[Metaliturtle]

wow 50 posts about start location, this is totally the most synthesized form of legal heroin in the world, right here it's a CIV multiplayer democracy game!

Seriously...

DeepO, a city on a hill may mean the difference between victory or early defeat in regards to our potential neighbors...

[Arrian]

Building on a plains hills, if available, is pretty much a no-brainer for me at this point. Even if it costs us a couple of forest tiles (we will still have a minimum of 3).

-Arrian

[NicodaMax]

Potential output from the fat crosses (without improvements gives me a +2h and +2g on the plains hill vs +2f if we settle on the fp. If you consider improvements, the ph settlement favours commerce and production vs food and a little health on the fp (from those 3 forests).
I may be off by 1 on those numbers, but unless there's some goodies on 21, 22, or 23 i don't see a reason not to settle on the ph. And of course, as Metaliturtle puts it, there's the defense bonus.
Then, it may very well be important for the warrior to go 2 and check that there's no compelling reason to not move the settler 8.
The arguement could go both ways. We may want to check 8 before commiting the move from the settler, but up there we know there's at least one ph (881) one with acces to water at 883 (could be fp). So I think going 2 may be more important.
Finally, when playing the sim, CIV puts a nice blue circle on the ph...what more reason do you need?

[Krill]

wow 50 posts about start location, this is totally the most synthesized form of legal heroin in the world, right here it's a CIV multiplayer democracy game!

Yeah. We're slacking.

The more I look at this start location, the more I think "where is the beef". start locations always have resources around them, even if they are aluminium, uranium, or the good old cow.

You know what the algorythm does, it carves out a good 21 tiles, and places the civ in the middle. As we don't know what all of those tiles are, I propose that we move the warrior 89, as that uncovers all of the tiles in the original fat cross, apart from the tiles 21, 22, and 23 of the start location. 7 out of the ten tiles in the fat cross that are unknownwill be uncovered, in adition to 3 tiles out of the 5 that would be placed in the fat cross if we settled on the plains hill.

So, in summary, move the warrior, then decide. I'll hedge my bets on what we do, but right now I would lean towards settling where we are...

[Krill]

Max, that blue circle from the sim is a moot point; we don't know what the hidden tiles contian, so we don't know how that would affect the AI settling positions. Invalid point, really.

[NicodaMax]

Originally posted by Krill
Max, that bluie circle from the sim is a moot point; we don't know what the hidden tiles contian, so we don't know how that would affect the AI settling positions. Invalid point, really.

= just kidding on that last point
= I'm being silly.
That was brought on by the "trusting the AI" talk...
Humor is a tricky thing in these threads...maybe should refrain from it more

[Krill]

Sorry, it is probably just me. I have a slight problem interpreting the tone of some posts. We're all here to have fun, so no reason to cut out the humour

[Arrian]

Krill,

How will moving the warrior 8 show us if we're going to miss a resource by moving and settling on that same spot (the hill 8 of our start)?

I think moving the warrior 2 will give us better info. It will show us tiles we will put outside of the fat cross if we do move our settler north. If we send the warrior south and we see a couple of bonus resources, then there might be a compelling case to settle where we are. If there are no such juicy resources (or resources that we don't deem juicy enough), we can settle on the plains hill w/o worrying that we've hurt ourselves...

-Arrian

[Krill]

It shows us the tiles 41 and 63 of our current starting location, two tiles that we would not be using if we settled on the hill. It also shows us an extra 3 tiles that we would gain if we settled on the hill. We wold also be able to deduce what the tile types would be of an additional 2 tiles that we would gain if we moved 8 and settled.

If we move 2, we can see 4 tiles that we would lose if we moved 8, and we would gain no additional infomation on what the city site on the hill would be like.

In other words, if we move the warrior 8, we can compare what we know of both starting locations, but if we move the warrior 2, all we know is what most of the flood plains city location would be like, and then we would have to decide if it was worthwhile to settle on that position, and we would have to hope that the city site on the hill would be better if we did move the settler 8.

[Krill]

The other thing, though is that we have to be careful about religion; if we move 8, we have to understand that any civ can beat us to it by prioritising a tile producing 1 gold.

If we did not settle on the first turn, I would give up on any religion out of the first 3, to be honest...

[Krill]

A lot does depend on what we want to try and do. If we want an early religion, the fp makes more sense, if we want to go for the Oracle, then I would definately go with the fp site, due to, uh, inside info...if we wanted to be utterly paranoid about a rush by the Horde, then I would not even bother about religion, I would be more concerned about building an army to fight them with, because if we let them get to within the reach of our capital, we have already lost.