Potluck Start Comparisons

[Swiss Pauli]

My game had a somewhat unresolved feel about it: plenty of religious tensions, but only one 'war' (me taking 3 Byz cities in as many turns). With some weak AIs (3CC Willem, Sitting Duck the Backward, and Hammy the Lame) I expected a bit more action.

Hammy's problems made it a cakewalk for Khmer (and Portugal) to dominate their backyards. I had made it a priority to befriend him anyway, and carried this through to Portugal with missionaries. This gave me a defensive and trading bloc against any Hindu-AP nonsense.

Justinian isolated himself through religion and couldn't get over losing 3 cities to me. Willem got lucky that Pacal and/or Justinian didn't kill him before I let him capitulate. Pacal did well in spreading Judaism and building its shrine early, but Zara went Hindu, Sitting Bull was too ignorant, and I spread Judaism rather late (after overlooking it), so he ran out of steam somewhat. Sitting Bull had the land but did nothing with it; a major disappointment.

Joao flourished in his usual gimme-gimme way, but Zara was by far the best performing AI. He was the main reason I didn't ignore military as he's not afraid of late game aggression, and was surging ahead in power and tech towards the end. If he made a 'wrong' move, it was that the dice didn't let him stomp Sitting Bull.

[Dark Savant]

Don't be surprised if some of the future games have average or subpar starting locations.

If it's well below average (the Byzantine start, even though I complained about it, is clearly subpar but certainly not awful), I might gamble and tell the settler to take a hike, as is often profitable in Civ 1 (where you can't see much at the start), 2 (gets lots of free and good NONE units from huts), or 3 (if you are Expansionistic).

I almost miss doing that with Civ 4's artificially inflated start positions ... and I know that you're not entirely fond of me (in particular) taking a walk with the start settler to begin with. Might want to take measures against that, too.

[uberfish]

The scenario designers usually pre-found the first city if it's meant to be a bad start, to reduce the luck element of searching for a better site

[Gaius]

yeah the mayans had a pretty bad start i'm not gonna lie

but did anybody benefit from corps?

i used mining corp. and sids sushi with some substantial effects

near the end of the game my mining corp was producing +18 hammers!!
thats without amplifers

and my sushi corp was producing +8 food and +27 culture!!!!!!

the trick is jus not spamming it to EVERY CITY of ours jus selecting the most opitimal cities that would benefit.

i'm jus curious if anyone used corps in their games and how it relates to my game.

[Zeviz]

...
but did anybody benefit from corps?
...

I got a lot of benefits from Standard Ethanol. It gave me about +10 research in every city and, with a 6 city empire, the maintanance costs weren't too bad. I also spread it to Mayans and Indians for the corporation quest, and Mayans proceeded to spread it to all of their cities, giving my HQ an income boost big enough to overcome all expenses (and make money at 100% research).

I guess this means that to avoid being bankrupted by corporate expenses you have to spread it to some AIs and hope that they'll spread it around for you.