Potluck Start Comparisons

[Kylearan]

Hi,

the Mayans had THREE food bonuses, plus copper! That's not good enough?!

I agree with Sulla here. When I conquered the Mayans, they had only improved the resources at their capital and nothing else, so bringing the new city up to speed was somewhat similar to a "normal" start. I just loved that city, as it was whipping heaven. I don't think lacking a forest is a big deal if you are in slavery.

-Kylearan

[uberfish]

Umm... the Mayans had THREE food bonuses, plus copper! That's not good enough?! Man, some of you must have some crazy expectations for a starting position!

Nothing to do with map regeneration. I would actually have happily traded the wheat AND copper for a few forests and a 2-tile river. Seriously. I actually thought the tundra start from epic 11 was better! (Obviously I devalued copper somewhat because of my self imposed restriction though, and if I was just playing to win ASAP I'd attack the Dutch as soon as the gloves came off in 1000BC to steal their nice capital.)

I'm happy to play from a mediocre starting position in an event. Just pointing out that I think the Mayan start, although not that bad, isn't as good as the 3 food and copper makes it seem. No forest means you start with 3 city output instead of 4 losing a bunch of turns until your first boat comes out, then you're using a clam tile that's only +2 output instead of the more typical +3/4 from a land-based food resource. Initial growth curve is therefore slooooow. Financial also loses a lot of its explosive economic punch with no river. Then you have a ~4 health penalty for missing forest and fresh water which more than cancels out Expansive. A sure sign of a slow start is the monarch AI beating me to wonders.

Hmm I have an idea for a mini-event, maybe I'll post one tomorrow to give people something to do in case the patch is late!

[Qwack]

Sulla, the Mayans had absolutely no source of fresh water for irrigation in this game. Sure the 3 food resources and ocean with financial trait has good synergy, but it leads to a 1-dimensional game, which Im assuming is not the intention. A source of irrigation (Usually freshwater in capital), is always a good idea. I actually think to make the starts harder/easier, you should modify the resources the player gets, but players should always have fresh water and/or a river.

[Zeviz]

Has anybody gone through people's reports to compare the AI performance out of these starts?

We could also compare human performance, but chosen strategy and play quality was a much greater variable for the humans.

In my game, with very few wars to confuse the issues, Ethiopians did the best, followed by Portugese. Khmer could have gotten cultural victory, but lost one of culture cities to a sudden Dutch attack. Mayans did ok, while Dutch were falling behind technologically, and Native Americans were hopelessly backwards. Byzantines started out strong, but were diplomatically isolated due to religious tension, and eventually got killed by the human.

If we compile data like this from all games, we'll get a more accurate comparison of starts, at least for the AI's algorithms.

[uberfish]

For me Ethiopia had the most cities and was top AI. Sitting Bull was next in city count, he had great production but poor tech. The Dutch started strong but only had 6 cities and fell behind in the Renaissance. They would have been taken over by Byzantium if I hadn't saved them. None of the other AIs stood out particularly.

[Qwack]

Nice idea Zeviz, although someone like Mansa Musa will always be leader int ech whatever start he has

In my game, Willem was leading in tech early, with Pacal keeping up barely. Both him and Pacal got around 6 cities (Pacal managed to grab six because I didn't push into the isthmus, I think that may have saved his situation in my game). Portugal and Hammurabi were the worst leaders at the start, but portugal became the strongest leader in my game by the end after he took over hammurabi. (Most cities and tech parity with other AI's). Khmer was right there around 3rd place the whole game, but never became the top AI. Justinian got screwed by Apostolic palace and never managed to do anything..

[blid]

I think AI performance is biaised by its relation to the human, impacting tech trades preferences. The human (generally leading on monarch) would trade with friendly civs and prefer trading with backward AIs when possible, to avoid feeding the runaway AIs.

But in general, I would say that both Zara and Sitting Bull made a good job of grabbing land early on. Sitting bull was a bit behind in techs but still competitive.

On the eastern side of the world, Willem was uncontested technologically and had a good lead with a 4 CC. He was quickly boxed though, and his 4cc caused a poor power ranking. Surya attaked him later and and was hurting him badly. The others were quite equal in performance

[Atlas]

In my game the Mayans and Ethiopia were leading with the Dutch and Khmer in the middle of the pack. When Ethiopia got taken out the Mayans were the most advanced Civ, I traded a bit with the Khmer to pick up some techs off my path. Hammurabi was terribly isolated by his aggression, he was constantly at war with everyone (including a number of phony wars with me at the behest off some AIs) and terribly backward.

[Blake]

In my game, the game was defined by a large Conf block.
Conf was founded by Willem who definitely played the most interesting game, he seemed to be having a lot of fun with his 3CC variant / founding nearly every religion. But he lacked staying power. His game was hampered by a bug, plain and simple.
Zara was the generally strongest AI. He's a strong AI and the AI uses creative and organized well.
Sitting Bull and Joao II came up next, roughly vying for 2nd place amongst the AI's. They were both Conf and both had plenty of land - their traits just aren't as good as Zara's.
Justinian performed well - for an AI who was alone against the world, but being the only Buddhist in a conf world with a Conf AP led to her inevitable downfall.
Pacal II was isolated by his Jewish faith and amounted to nothing.
Hammurabi got shafted in a number of ways. I recognized the "Creative Squeeze", being sandwiched between two creative civs is never fun (and he didn't really have a lot of land to being with). Sullla explained that he was also playing at a "higher" difficulty. Finally he was Buddhist for a while, before seeing the light and joining the Conf block - aligning himself with Justinian for a time did nothing to help his long term relationships as well as keeping him out of the early rounds of tech trades. In the long run he was sort of just tolerated as long as he didn't cause trouble - he managed to stay under the radar being too timid to take on the superpowers with his crappy tech and tiny army (if he had started trouble he'd have no doubt got dogpiled out of the game).

So for the most part, my game was defined by an uncontested religious super-block, with other religions restricted to single civs. In these games, the super block always prospers while the loners inevitably fall badly behind or get exterminated.

[Kodii]

My game saw Pacal lagging behind, as well as Justinian who was trapped by my Dutch lands. I took both of them out. The Khmer were very strong despite their lack of land and were on path to a cultural victory. Both Sitting Bull and Zara Yaqob were strong, following behind me in score, but they also had their fair share of wars against each other. The Portuguese and Babylonians were a tad behind due to lack of land, but Lisbon was a wonder whore.