You Never Move Your Settler! - Opening Strategy Splits Civ V Studio

[Drummodino]

I usually move my settler if there is an immediately obvious better location for it, even if it takes a turn or two. Always move your warrior unit first so you can see as much terrain as possible. Moving to the coast or river is always good if they're nearby, and getting early access to good production sites seems to work well.

 

[Drizzitdude]

Never ever move my settler, risk if often not worth the reward.

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

I move the settler to the best spot that I can see (and have in previous civ games too). I will happily spend a few turns.

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

i do this, moving my settler, i thought it was obvious, settling where you spawn is way too risky

do you seriously think a tundra civilization will get anywhere?

What do you see?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IjGNJPNyzU

 

[shadowmagus]

I normally move my settler, especially if there is a body of water nearby. It can open up other avenues of food gathering and if you're really lucky it will wind up being actually sitting on the ocean.

 

[Greg Tito]

Regardless, always more your warrior/scout first.

Then decide if you want to move the settler or not.

This is what I do, definitely. Then you can judge whether or not it's worthwhile to move the settler. That's why I think the civs which get scouts first are the best at the early game.

 

[TheMadJack]

Whether I move or not, that I found or not on the first move, the conclusion is still the same: I'm bad. But it's fun. So, I don't mind.

 

[Crazy Zaul]

I never even considered moving my first settler, I thought the game puts you in the best possible place for that general area to build a city. Sometimes when I'm building other cities though I look where the yellow thing says is a good place to build one and there really doesn't seem to be anything good there.

The worst place I've ever started a game was on an earth map with realistic resources and starting at the arse end of Russia. There was just nothing there.

 

[Pigeon_Grenade]

Sometimes the lands So bad, that i have no choice but to move and play catch up, other times its Bam. start that turn

 

[Wandrecanada]

I think it depends largely on your early strategy and build order. If you're playing on a larger map it pays to get scouts up and running even a single turn earlier just to cap those free villages. If you're playing as Shoshone it's even more important.

However running a 3 city strategy for maximum sci/social rates that first city's location is CRITICAL. That tells us that your first choice should be tempered by the Civ you use and the long game strategy you want to employ.

Either way... it's amazing to know there's a game where the first turn can be just as exciting as any other.

 

[Johnson McGee]

If you weren't supposed to move your settler why not just start the game with the city founded? Having your start position rely totally on luck with the world generation is antithetical to the whole 'strategy' part of a turn-based strategy game. I would say the optimal play is to explore with your other starting units and then weighing the benefits of the surrounding terrain against the turn penalty.

Personally, if I were designing the game I would put in an option to have 8 or so hexes from your settler explored at the start of the game so you can make an informed decision on where to put your starting city, it makes sense to me since thematically your people should have been hunting and gathering that area for generations before the game started.

 

[StHubi]

That was a really entertaining read! Firaxis Games did a great job with CiV and I start to understand how they could do it: Their emotional investment is really awesome

 

[RandV80]

Well I'm not surprised civ 5 was such a dissapointment and had so much less replay value than civ IV or 2 if that was the level of discussion going on.

Have you gotten into the Brave New World expansion? Vanilla Civ IV had way more replayability than Civ V, and the Gods and King expansion added a little but still behind. Pretty much for all the few good things they added to the game, most notable being the hex grid, a few extra things were lost and the game was less complex. I found with BNW though they finally brought in enough new things to get the complexity comparable with Civ IV, and overall it becomes a better package.

As for the topic it should be obvious that there's nothing wrong with moving your settler, the only counter really that with Civ V especially the game tries to put your settler in the ideal location to start with. But it's not 100% perfect, and when a start location means you can build some key early buildings in 15 turns or 30 turns (I always play on epic) the math is pretty obvious that missing a turn or two isn't that big a deal. Though that said the quicker the games the bigger the impact missing those early turns are. And things are also a little different in Civ IV if you want to be first to one of the early religions, then it's vital to plop down your settlement on the first turn.

 

[Covarr]

I started with a map with only two civs, and made sure the other civ was Venice and it was on another continent.

Barbarians were an early problem. Those rampaging fiends ruined the test's economic focus, so Beach turned them off.

Based on these concessions, these results aren't likely to reflect real-world games. All he's proven is that under very specific conditions moving can be a better strategy. But if you're playing with multiple opponents, or with barbarians enabled, this data is hardly useful. A more thorough study is required to gather any meaningful results.

P.S. Thanks

P.P.S. I wanna be clear, I'm not saying it's necessarily better not to move, just that this study was too limited to give a definitive answer. His results may well extend to a broader range of game setups, or they may not, but it's impossible to say for sure without actually testing under a variety of different conditions.

P.P.P.S. Edit:

If you weren't supposed to move your settler why not just start the game with the city founded?

Because the question isn't whether you're supposed to, but whether it's a good idea. There is no "supposed to" about it. Lots of games give the opportunity to make awful first moves, and Firaxis is arguing whether this is a decent first move or not. It's no different from The Settlers of Catan letting you put all your starting settlements on 12s and 2s. It's a terrible idea (and this one doesn't even need any studying to prove it), but it's important to allow players the opportunity to wreck their own chances even from the start.

 

[Spud of Doom]

This was a great article. Pretty interesting to hear it was such a polarising point of discussion.

 

[144_v1legacy]

The architect in me demands perfection in site analysis when choosing a city location. It hurts to move the settler, it's true, but each turn wasted is, to me, one turn of challenge I've given myself for the sake of aesthetic satisfaction.

 

[Yozozo]

I'm usually up for moving up to 4 tiles (mostly play on King difficulty, always Marathon matches). So maybe the length of the game makes up for the "wasted" turns. If I see ocean and/or river, I'll make a line strait toward it. The added resources more than make up for the temporary delay.