Interesting start

[theGrimm]

So, I'm sitting here generating starts on different map types, and opening them in the worldbuilder, to get a feel for what the different maps offer.

And have a look at what I came across on a standard Terra map:


Toku and Alex start within two squares of each other, and poor Toku, who's a little slow on the uptake, gets hemmed in until Alex' culture expands...

As for Alex, assuming his people don't get sick of clams, imagine Parthenon + Caste System (for a philosophical civ)!!! That's a LOT of clams.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, the map generator really likes clusters of water resources for picking start locations. Check these out; the map is Continents, large size, five civs. (I wanted a builder game, that I turned into a 1615 AD cultural victory. Always Peace was on.)

My civ started at a nice fertile location - corn, ivory, stone, five flood plains.



But look where Japan started, down in the ice at a pack of crabs. It's pretty obvious that this city's terrain had a wee bit of help from the start location normalizer:



And Rome got it even worse -- he's got to travel about twelve tiles to even find a viable second city location! :



That's about as close to a pair of Epic 14 Dud Starts that we'll ever see in Civ 4, I think. Also there's the strange detail that four civs started together on one of the two continents, while Greece started all by his lonesome in the west. Not sure why that happened either.

[Sirian]

And have a look at what I came across on a standard Terra map:

With how many civs selected?

All the maps types are in good shape for default settings, but some will do harsh things on certain extreme settings (overcrowded, especially).


- Sirian

[theGrimm]

Standard settings.

I like the oases in the snow from T-Hawks game.