Damn You Sirian!

[Speaker]

From the finals of the Medieval event in the CCC (Civilization Clan Championship):



Some of the worst starting land I have ever seen. The only river anywhere in sight is behind, away from the enemy. I managed to eek out a pretty good MFG, but GNP was impossible, even after building Colossus and a lighthouse. My capital has 7 coast and 3 plains tiles, and a plains cow for a food resource! Thanks for nothing Sirian!

[Blake]

Nice usage of the clam resources there.

[Sirian]

Some of the worst starting land I have ever seen.

Then you have a lot left to see!

Of course you realize, in every game, some civ gets the worst of the starting spots for that map.


Take a look at Adventure Two, eh?


- Sirian

[Speaker]

Of course you realize, in every game, some civ gets the worst of the starting spots for that map.

Usually it is "worst" as in: "Pick the worst of Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman, and Keira Knightley. This time, I got stuck with Kathy Bates!


Teammate's land.

Take a look at Adventure Two, eh?

...fair enough

Nice usage of the clam resources there.

You have much to learn grasshoppa! In Medieval, you start with 2 settlers, and I was walking in Memphis on turn 3. The clams were not revealed until later. After that, it was impossible to fit them into another city. I probably should have built a workboat for the health, but I had other things on my mind. :shrug:

[Blake]

I always scout the coast with extreme priority out of mortal fear of blocking sea resources - going so far as to scout it with the settler if that's what it takes.

[Speaker]

The problem with founding a city on the coast there is that it would put me at a severe tactical disadvantage. As you can see in the picture, I founded toward the center of the land corridor. This allowed my culture to expand and cover the whole width of land, so my opponent could not slip some units around toward my back. Planting a two-city front is a definite because it requires 2x as many units to defend. Sea and food resources are important, but tactics and a defensible city always come first. That's just a MP/SP difference I suppose, where in SP the tactics don't really matter. The AI almost always gives you time to reinforce your city. Human opponents are not so kind.

[theGrimm]

Okay, maybe it's a MP thing as well, but your team mate seems to have four workers each improving a different square? Is there a reason that grouping your workers is a bad idea in MP?

[Blake]

The problem with founding a city on the coast there is that it would put me at a severe tactical disadvantage. As you can see in the picture, I founded toward the center of the land corridor. This allowed my culture to expand and cover the whole width of land, so my opponent could not slip some units around toward my back. Planting a two-city front is a definite because it requires 2x as many units to defend. Sea and food resources are important, but tactics and a defensible city always come first. That's just a MP/SP difference I suppose, where in SP the tactics don't really matter. The AI almost always gives you time to reinforce your city. Human opponents are not so kind.

Mayyybe. But I think you have to agree that on the Iron would've been a VERY sweet site and if I'm reading the map right that would've still allowed the front to be blocked off and with founding on the Iron you can't give me that SP/MP crap.

I am going to agree however that it is quite a poor site due to all the plains. Unfortunately the start-location code (aka city founding code) tends to result in some terrain types being dramatically over-rated... enough so that their presence can make up for a whole lot of *bad* terrain.

For example according to the code, the point value of a tile, excluding side effects like health/fresh water:
Grassland Forest: 270
Lake: 270
Floodplains: 235
Grassland River: 185
Plains Forest: 110
Grassland: 100
Plains: 50
Grassland Hill: 50
Coast: 50
Plains Hill: 40
Ocean: 20


In your case you were probably done in by the lake and grassland forests despite the valiant efforts of the single ocean tile to lower the score. In fact if you believe the startpoint code (and it knows best!) then you probably got a BETTER start than that one with the floodplains.

[Atlas]

From the finals of the Medieval event in the CCC (Civilization Clan Championship)[/img]

Will you be a doing a write up of the CCC Speaker ????

I need to start playing more MP- in some ways it is totally different. In some ways more formulaic, in some ways less. Definately fun though .

[Speaker]

Will you be a doing a write up of the CCC Speaker ????

Unfortunately I did not take enough screenshots to do it well. If there is interest in reading about MP games, I will start taking more pictures and writing up my games.

I need to start playing more MP- in some ways it is totally different. In some ways more formulaic, in some ways less. Definately fun though.

One of the major plusses to MP is that a variety of game types are played--different eras being the major hook, as variants like OCC cross over into SP as well. Unfortunately the AI is very ill equipped to play later than Ancient era, as shown by teaming with an AI in a Renaissance start.

In your case you were probably done in by the lake and grassland forests despite the valiant efforts of the single ocean tile to lower the score. In fact if you believe the startpoint code (and it knows best!) then you probably got a BETTER start than that one with the floodplains.

Very interesting information on the tile values. The 6 coastal tiles tried their very best to bring me down as well! I think my awful GNP begs to differ with the startpoint code!

Mayyybe. But I think you have to agree that on the Iron would've been a VERY sweet site and if I'm reading the map right that would've still allowed the front to be blocked off and with founding on the Iron you can't give me that SP/MP crap.

I agree that founding on the iron would have given for a better city, but it is problematic in a few ways.
1) It is closer to the capital than I usually like.
2) It is a second coastal, which I didn't want.
3) It would have taken an extra border expansion to cover the whole corridor, and I would have been at a sight disadvantage the whole game up until that point. One extra unit required for sentry detail is one fewer unit that can choke the enemy.

Seriously, when you are on the front in an Inland Sea team game, sub-optimal land useage is optimal tactically. I often give up juicy spots to keep a very defensible front. I stretched my "no two-city front" rule by founding Elephantine because I had little option with such poor/narrow land. As you can see, a stack of two-movers on my horse could threaten three cities! That is bad bad bad! So I built 1000000000 catapults all game to make sure no Chariots/Horse Archers/Conquistadors ever got into my land.