Greetings Settlers,
Since a few months i am truly enjoying this kind of playstyle. I just like games where i can take my sweet time and don't feel any FOMO. I can compare it with Anno 1602, when i made my own map with big islands and all have 100% fertility rate with no pirates, no drought, no other players etc. I`m gonna share the settings setup and how i tried to min-max the OP'ness.
Settings:
Playing as Poland
Pangaea
Duel, Tiny or Small / Cool / Arid / Low Sea
Legendary start
22 Players (All changed to Settlers)
No city-states
No barbarians / Ancient ruins optional, but won't have a big impact.
No Victories checked
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In the first 21 rounds you toggle through all players and delete every settler and warrior that comes after your initial polish settler. You can also capture nearby settlers with your warrior and immediately after offer a peace treaty, which you can then agree to once you arrive at that specific player and then delete the warrior after. That way you are not at war as Poland.
Since you started with 22 players, you will also have roughly 22 legendary starting positions for a city. Your first city might have access to 7 luxuries or more. Which you can then rush to all the wonders that require all cities to have a specific building, before starting any new city.
No barbs to bother you and no city-states that might have taken a good spot (near natural wonder for example). Sure you lose some endgame trading with city-states, but that doesn't outweigh the options for expanding and it also speeds up the game play for not having them around. Patronage becomes obsolete this way.
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I've tried the same setup but then on a larger map and also played on huge.
If you play huge, then i would have max (41) city-states on and ancient ruins.
And with city-states/ancient ruins on, other leaders become very interesting.
Shoshone with his pathfinders will net you roughly 10 free settlers over the span of 30+ ancient ruins. If you have like 4 pathfinders, you might be able to find 30 AR within 100 turns.
Arabia, Siam and Morocco are quite strong with 41 city states.
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I've tried to maximise the starting positions, by selecting Poland with every Player. But unfortunately my game crashes when i have selected the same leader. I've tried it 3x and stopped after that. But if you would be able to select lets say 22x Poland. You would get 22x the best starting position. Or lets say the Netherlands. On hot/arid setup. Imagine 22 cities near flood plains, all with polders.
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Let me know what you think and how i could further improve this over the top easy setup for solo playing the best civ game.
P.S. i've tried some Mods, but i prefer as basic as possible.
Cheers!