Starting Location on the Poles!

The Undertaker · December 16, 2000, 23:32

Unbelievable! In over a million games this has never happened to me. My starting location was on the South Pole! Small World, Diety. I saved it to put in my "files"! Has this ever happened to anyone else?

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"You're fired." - Jack Larkin

Wiglaf · December 16, 2000, 23:48

I think that happened to me a LONG time ago - if I remember correctly I had nothing but snow for ages. I was about to ask this same question, funny how things work, eh?

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The Year 2000 - dawn of the Cheery O's
[This message has been edited by SMACed (edited December 16, 2000).]

Scouse Gits · December 17, 2000, 03:32

This happens quite frequently on a Small World, but generally only applies to the purple or orange civs. The game places the tribes on the map in order of colour - starting with white and ending with purple. Sometimes the last ones placed are put on ice!

If you haven't seen this in a million games you have NOT been leading the orange or the purple civs very often when playing Small World! I have seen this once or twice on a medium map - never on a large one.

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SG (2)

Wiglaf · December 17, 2000, 11:14

I never play small world

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The Year 2000 - dawn of the Cheery O's

Andemagne · December 17, 2000, 23:45

I usually play greeks and it has happened to me
few times that starting location is on poles.

once I got five (5) starting techs and two settlers
and a small (less than 20 tiles) peninsula,
connected to south pole and I was playing
on a large map. the peninsula could only support
two cities. once I found another continent to
build my cities, I got my game going, but the start
was pretty hard.

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"Victrix Fortunae Virtus"

The Undertaker · December 18, 2000, 15:14

Yeah it was only my 5th or so small map game - I'm a large map only feller. I was the mongols (I only play the mongols) and the map was random.

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"You're fired." - Jack Larkin

Rimmer · December 19, 2000, 04:39

Ya this happened in a recent multiplayer game I was in. The player concerned complained and we told him not to be a wimp. Only when he circumnavigated the world without finding land did we believe him and restart.

It was very funny.

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Its cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere

I'm all alone, more or less.

East Street Trader · December 19, 2000, 06:55

Agree it's a small world phenomenon. In this cycle of obsessive play I've played always on large maps for a spell, then a stint always on small maps.

I accept polar starts. You don't have to find land to make them viable.

The development of the AI seems to be slower (that's just observation, not calculation) so it is my suspicion that there are more "balancing" features built in to favour a human player who is lagging behind early - over and above the bonus techs at the outset and the delay to the adverse balancing features cutting in.

Polar starts make for a different game. Lighthouse goes up in the pecking order of early wonders (getting an early wonder working a polar special is not difficult - there's not much else worth building), the tech path must favour seagoing advances and exploration obviously goes even higher in the priority list. Moving capitals is also firmly on the agenda.

OK, you won't always win but you won't be humiliated by that early barb incursion either.

Disappointingly I have not yet noticed anything noteable about the trading commodities produced.

Ken Hinds · December 19, 2000, 07:12

Are we talking about having both settlers on glaciers here or about those 8 tile peninsulas that hang off the poles? I've never had a start actually on the polar ring. I have had several on one of the peninsulas that were all forest and tundra and nothing worth starting with without some engineers, which I didn't have of course.

Ken

P.S. forgot to say that I don't play on small worlds. Standard large or 75 x 133 is the usual, plus whatever is in a scenario.

Ken
[This message has been edited by Ken Hinds (edited December 19, 2000).]

The Undertaker · December 19, 2000, 19:32

It was right on the bottom ring, where if you try to movie the unit "down" it says "Cannot move unit off map edge" or whatever. I wish it happened on a large map, I would have played it, but I don't really like small maps.

Bereta_Eder · December 22, 2000, 21:49

In the new game I started yesterday I was AGAIN on the South poles. I has happened to me a few times but this time I traveled half of the world to find 3 squares of exploitable land!!

Small World
Archipelago
Cool
Arid
3 bil. years
Greeks

just the way I like it

DrFell · December 27, 2000, 22:57

I started on the north pole on my first ever multiplayer game, small map, playing as the English... not very encouraging. We played to about 1000bc and by then i was supreme anyway so i wasnt too unhappy

[This message has been edited by DrFell (edited December 27, 2000).]

Bluevoss · December 28, 2000, 00:23

Even though I dont play much, I hit the polar game once. I usually play small worlds, since it causes a lot of BC fighting (I love trireme battles).

We walked around and finally found a single beaver square. The whole point of our civ was to get map making, then build beaver-skin boats, and get the heck off the ice. I was only clowning around in that game, but it was still fun.

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Bluevoss-

Wiglaf · December 29, 2000, 15:05

quote:

We walked around and finally found a single beaver square. The whole point of our civ was to get map making, then build beaver-skin boats, and get the heck off the ice. I was only clowning around in that game, but it was still fun.

Creative