Hey all just wondering what your best starting town was in this game. Race doesn't matter just city position and bonus's.

Mine was a Myrran city with 2 Wild Game, 2 Gold Mine and a Adamantium deposit. Not to mention that close by there is another great city site with 3 Wild Game and a Adamantium deposit without the 2 having to share.

6 Forests, 5 Mountain Tiles, 4 Hills, 5 Shore and 1 Grassland.
Using the F1 Surveyer the town had the following stats using Highmen

14 Max Population (although I know I had this up to like 18 pop so not sure why it says cap is 14)
52% Production Bonus
10% Gold Bonus

I really hate starts that will not give you even 1 or 2 specials when, hey, this is supposed to be your capitol not just some crappy town u don't care if you lose. I mean for me when I waste 3 points to start with Myrran I will not accept a town that does not have adamantium, unless it has a crap load of other boni that will let me quickly get other towns up. Since I play on impossible only now this is a must.


[IMG]http://i1177.photobucket.com/albums/x344/EvilLoynis/Game%20Shots/GreatMoMStart_zpsfbdc2e27.png[/IMG]

This I can answer. The Surveyor doesn't factor in the population-expanding effects of the granary (+2) and farmer's market (+3) until they're actually built. So whatever it initially says, add +5 to the eventual population (up to the hard maximum of 25, of course).

Also, the official guide says that there's a calculation error concerning the population bonuses from nodes. I'm not sure whether this was ever addressed in Insecticide.

The formula is (or is supposed to be):

+2 for every river square, Sorcery or Nature node.
+1.5 for every river mouth or grassland square.
+0.5 for every hill, forest, shoreline or swampland square.
Nothing for tundra, ocean, desert or mountain squares, volcanoes or Chaos nodes.
+2 for each wild game, above and beyond the square on which it sits; no population bonus for any other special.
+2 for the Granary and +3 for the Farmer's Market, as mentioned above.
Half value for any squares shared with another city.
Never more than 25, also as mentioned above.

You calculate this using the 5x5 grid surrounding your capitol (or any other square in question) minus the four corners, for a total of 21 squares.

Also note that corrupted squares count as zero until taken care of, which means that you could actually start losing population (similar to the Pestilence spell) if you were already at or near your city's maximum.

On top of that, there's a huge bonus (which may be as high as +50%!) for any city under the effect of a Gaia's Blessing spell — before even counting the spell's corruption-purifying and terrain-improvement effects. Which makes UniversalWolf's eco-friendly "Landscaper" build sound better and better. (Of course, the downside is the risk of a Famine-like die-off should an enemy wizard happen to dispel it.)

By playing that build I got to know all the terrain types inside and out. Later in the game I would change some plains squares to forests as buildings took up the slack for food. I never had a problem with enemies dispelling the Gaia's Blessing. I'm sure it could happen, but I'd just re-cast it right away if it did.

In addition to everything else, GB also doubles the production of forest squares, making them flat-out better than hills, which otherwise have the same food and production values. GB actually makes forests have production better than mountains (6 to 5). I would keep one hill square just to maintain access to the mining buildings. One other thing to note is that Change Terrain doesn't affect river squares, which are always plains.

As for my best starting area, I had one great one once with five specials...I think it was on Myrror, where resources seem to be more plentiful. I generally don't scum good starts though. I don't have the patience.

It seems that having a food capacity higher than 25 is still useful for improving output per farmer (they don't fall off to producing only 1 food as quickly), at least once you have an animist's guild (and presumably the halfling's racial bonus works the same way).