Starting on Unfavorable Land Strategies

[Heliodorus]

Unfavorable land can be pretty broadly defined, but for basic argument, I'd describe it as a starting location where you have a large amount of tundra or desert around you, making expansion difficult.

Another unfavorable situation would be when you find more than one neighboring Civ close to you, especially where the Civs are competing with you for expansion in different areas.

I've spent a lot of time quitting games early in the hopes of getting better starting locations, but ultimately, this isn't going to help my play and won't prepare me for MP. So rather than saying "restart if you dont have a river, bonus food tile" I want to get some ideas for compensating for bad starting locations.

In the first situation, obviously you want to avoid expanding into the desert until better terrain is used up. But assuming you have a lot of plains and desert together, should you still try to expand and use the plains? What are the implications of having to settle in land that then requires a heavy worker investment to be habitable (let alone profitable)?

In the latter situation, where borders are abutted by opponent Civs, I am going to try an early warfare method, in which the sole effort of my war will be to prevent the enemy Civ (or Civs) from expanding into terrain that I want. I've tried to fight wars of conquest in the era of the Archer/Spearman, but it's so costly and difficult. I thought that attacking any enemy units OUTSIDE of their cities, especially when new settlers head out, would be a more cost effective use of the limited early game resources. Any other useful ideas for establishing toeholds in the ratrace?

[Velociryx]

IMO, bad starts fall into one of three (terrain driven) categories.

Jungle Starts: You're fried if you play on deity. With your slow growth, no shields, AND chance for disease, save yourself the trouble and restart. UGH!

Tundra starts: Manageable. Growth is slow, but many of the tiles are forested, and in the early game, that's pretty good for shields. Keep your empire small and tightly knit to combat corruption and plan on fighting your way into control of better terrain.

Desert Starts: I've never had a desert start that didn't contain a flood plain, and despite the chance of disease, floodplains are all about food. Even under despotism, you can gain an extra food by irrigating a floodplain tile. Little mineral production, but good food production means that pop-rushing will be your best friend in the early game (to make up for that lack of shield output). Your expansion can be every bit as brisk with a desert start as it is on the plains, but shield output will suffer by comparison. Still, expanding rapidly and TOWARD better terrain is certainly an option here. The strongest of the three "weak starts."

(Note too, that if you encounter a rival civ early, you can always use your good food output to poprush your way to a decent army and relieve him of some of his cities).

-=Vel=-