[no players] CiVI Lurking Part II: Sophomore Slump

[kjn]

On the other hand, this is part of what's fun here, with at least one player going far beyond the well-trodden path here on RB. Shades of Lord Parkin back in PB4, and it seems Woden has some plans for how to actually use any wonders he does grab.

[Krill]

If someone posted a civ 1 SP game I'd read it.

[MJW (ya that one)]

-Singaboy is seems pretty on the ball for a newbie.

Singaboy is not a newbie. He was known as "theRat" but lost access to his account.

Because this game is a CTON–if Woden copies LP he is dead.

[Sullla]

Alright, since it looks like the game has been set up correctly and the players are in the process of playing the first turns, let's take a look at the map here in the spoiler thread. The basic settings are over in the Organization thread: Small map, Pangaea, 10 city states, New world age (more hills/mountains), and Standard (not Balanced) resources. Here's an overview of the starting positions, beginning with oledavy:



Oledavy's Spartans are in the east-central portion of the pangaea. He has a ton of production at that capital (already founding on the starting tile) and good food output from the sheep and rice tiles. The northern area has no players up there and will be a safe backline for oledavy to expand into. Keep in mind that non-freshwater locations aren't that great in Civ6 for a long time, and there's very little freshwater (and a ton of desert) up there. The biggest downside to this start is that oledavy will have some difficulty connecting two horse resources. As for the later resources, I don't know where they're placed because they're all invisible at the start of the game. I'm just hoping no one gets screwed over, since I couldn't edit the map in any way.



Off to the south is Singaboy (ThERat)'s starting position. This one is weaker when it comes to production but stronger on food, especially if Singaboy moves a tile northeast to grab that floodplains wheat tile. The natural route for Germany to expand is along this lengthy river that heads off to the northeast, and Singaboy should have first claim on everything over there since no one started in the direct east. The western edge of that river is just where this screenshot cuts off, so there's room for something like one city to the west and then about a half dozen or so to the east. The running them for this game is that everyone has large backlines areas to settle, with player starts closer to the center near the other players.



This is TheArchduke's Athenian starting position, west of Singaboy and southwest of oledavy. While this region is slightly smaller than the territory in the backlines of those first two players, it's made up for due to the presence of so much freshwater. Almost every tile in the west sits on a river, plus nearly all of those tiles are hills too. This should be excellent terrain for a Greek player and their Acropolis district's hill requirement. TheArchduke also has the potential to expand northeast up the river towards oledavy, or grab that freshwater lake between him and Singaboy if desired. And unlike oledavy, TheArchduke has horses right at the capital. Overall, I think this start is a bit weaker than the first two, but still a very competitive location.



Then off to the west we have the other two civs. Alhambram's Russia has this southern starting position near a large desert. Like TheArchduke, Alhambram has slightly less land area from an absolute perspective, which I would argue is countered by having so many sources of freshwater: three rivers plus the oasis tile. He also has easy access to multiple city states, which if conquered open up a path to further settlement locations to the east. The biggest weakness of this location is a total lack of horses, and I dearly would have liked to edit one source into this area somewhere near the Russian starting position. Unfortunately there's nothing I could do about that. To compensate, there are four different luxuries here in very close range, plus those tundra tiles that would be useless for anyone else will be decent tiles for Russia. I think this is reasonably comparable to the other starts.



Finally, Woden's China is located in the northwest part of the pangaea, due north of Alhambram. The starting terrain here is also quite good, with the lack of luxuries being the biggest immediate issue I can see. The mercury is the only close luxury and it's pretty weak as luxuries go. There's a ton of land for Woden up there in the north, but it's also quite dry due to a lack of rivers or oasis tiles. That small river off to the east is probably the best place to go for future expansion, and of course Woden can get about four cities here at the start, then head south further down the river. Basically, this is a "more land but drier land" setup, and I don't know if that will prove to be an advantage or a disadvantage right now.



I also have to highlight this. The center of the map between all five players is a crazy wilderness, with mountains and hills everywhere. TheArchduke has the best claim on this, but I expect most of this will remain unsettled for a long time, with barbarians stopping casual contact between players. If anyone can set up here and find a way to supply food and fresh water, they're going to have all kinds of crazy production. I just love the way that the map randomly threw out this mountainous nexus in the center of the continent.



Here's the list of city states we have in this game. Notice right away that there are zero Religious city states, which means no one lucking into an early pantheon. I'm happy that it turned out that way by complete chance. There's also only a single Commercial city state in this game, and Zanzibar could be extremely useful to control. It's closest to Woden and he will likely score the free envoy. This game also lacks a lot of the most powerful city states, with no Stockholm or Geneva among the Scientific options, and no Mohenjo-Daro to give all cities the fresh water bonus (which would be insane on this map). Two of the most interesting ones that do appear on this map are Nan Madol (+2 culture for all districts on the coast, which is weaker on this land-heavy map) and Toronto (which causes factories/power plants to reach 9 tiles instead of 6 tiles). That could be interesting in a longer game. Finally, Carthage has a very useful bonus of making all Encampments grant a trade route, which might also be a game-changing bonus. It's tucked far away in the tundra though, the Military city state in the far northwest of the first screenshot up in the tundra. I don't expect Carthage to play much of a role until later on in the game, due to the difficulty of getting a unit up there and making contact.

One last thing I want to remind anyone who's lurking this game about the map. Despite the issues that I've highlighted here, this was far and away the most balanced of the maps that I rolled. Most of the maps crammed half the players together and gave one other player free run on 50% of the land mass. Others had wildly uneven distributions of city states or resources or crippled starts where one player wouldn't get any fresh water for a thousand miles. This map not only gave everyone a fresh water start of roughly even strength, it also distributed everyone roughly equally around the pangaea, and put the city states in places where one or two players couldn't dominate contact with them. This is the fairest map that I rolled by an order of magnitude, and I think it's about as good as we can hope for without having an actual map editor available.

In other words: yes, this map is unbalanced, but it's enormously better than all those maps I rolled that you DIDN'T see here.

[Dp101]

Man, it's a good thing that UUs are resourceless as a rule, or I would be quite annoyed if I was Alhambram. Overall though, the map looks great! Really, it just shows how important rivers are in civ 6, and the interesting natural settling patterns they promote. Instead of just settling for the most food, instead you have to balance going for more resources/luxuries vs getting the all-important fresh water.

[Commodore]

Woden lucked out with that desert presence.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I find it amusing that ArchDuke is the only gamer stuck between two others; including "good" Greece with a better start.

[Dp101]

Woden lucked out with that desert presence.

I dunno, he has expressed an interest in building Petra, so he would probably be more happy with more of it.

[rho21]

Woden lucked out with that desert presence.

I dunno, he has expressed an interest in building Petra, so he would probably be more happy with more of it.

Mm, it's not the best possible start ever, but what is? The most important thing by far is the need for a chunk of peaceful building time for the wonder strategy to pay off. With only Russia as a neighbour, it looks as though there may be a chance for that.

[rho21]

Can those with good eyes for Civ VI pick out natural wonders in Sulla's screenshots? I've spotted Everest NE of oledavy, and Kilimanjaro between Archduke and Singaboy. Any others? How many are there on a map this size?