Silly challenge

[johnmcd]

If you were only allowed to build a single type of improvement throughout a whole game (and had to raze any you couldn't build when you captured them), what would you build and how high a difficulty do you think you could win at?

Roads I think I'll allow.

[Ming]

Too bad you didn't include forts

[LDiCesare]

Windmills are nice but come too late. Early on, cottages are the best improvement. You'd have to keeo your forests though. Actually, farms let you build specialists, so they might be a good bet.

[Blaupanzer]

Mines are key. Give you strategic metals (copper, iron, aluminum) and gold, gems, and silver as well as uranium late. Suspect you'd be hard pressed to win even at Warlord without any food resources or happiness resources beyond those named. No horses or elephants. No oil-based units beyond those who could also use uranium, and no quarries to help with wonders.

Ming, do you use a lot of forts? I usually hide my border minders in available terain and only end up with forts that give me a resource my city can't reach. As I type this I go "D'oh" forts would give you all resources on the city boards even if not on the map itself.

[johnmcd]

I went farm for the specialist economy.

Which nut job opted for watermill?

Should have included forts. I was working out how many options and counted off ten and then when it came to it I could only remember nine so I whacked in banana plantation. Should have done eleven really.

[johnmcd]

Crap, totally forgot quarries and camps. Still that would have been about completeness not, real options!

[johnmcd]

Blaupanzer, you can buy most of that stuff though, get the shrines and you can totally load up on bought in specialities. Maybe vasselise people or is that cheating?

I reckon I could do Noble with only farms.

[Blaupanzer]

You have to be pretty non-threatening to get the AI to sell you strategic metals or horses. I am never non-threatening.

[johnmcd]

Hmm, they're always falling over themselves to sell me iron...but I'm always last on the power graph to a degree that makes me think it's broken.

[Blaupanzer]

Last is not good. You will attract psychos, wolves, and sharks. Much scarier than "lions, tigers, and bears, oh my."

[joncnunn]

Cottage, because they can be built in the most tiles among the choices. (They can be built everywhere a farm is + on grassland hills)

[Ming]

I would probably do farms. Do the ole specialist economy, and make sure I stay ahead on techs that lead to non resourse units.

All archery units (except crossbows)
Muskets (Musketeers, Oromo or Jans)
Grenadiers
Rifleman (Red coats)
Infantry
SAM's
Marines (Navy Seals)

And you can still build:
Cats
Tribs
artilary
(you have to skip cannons because you need iron for those)

I would play on a pangaea map, so I could keep it to a land game, and not get screwed by the later naval units.

Probably play as either

Eithopians (creative/organized - osomo warriors)
English - Churchill (Protective/charismatic - Redcoats)
North Americans (protective/Philo - Dog soldiers, no copper required)
Or any other protective civ except the Japs since you can't build their special unit.

You would have to go for a fast conquest or domination victory.
If you stay ahead on the techs, that shouldn't be a problem. But if you let them stay in the game long, you are going to lose a space race or die once they get tanks.

(you could probably play for culture or diplo victory as well, but those would almost be like cheating since I think both those are easy victories no matter what you are doing)

The smaller the world, the better...

I think it can be done at at Monarch or Prince. I don't think I'm good enough to do it at any level higher than those, but I'm sure some of you could probably do so.

Just my thoughts on the subject... I might actually try it.

[Theben]

Farms or cottages. Probably farms, and run a specialist economy.

As for Mine resources, I'd settle on them.

[Ming]

As for Mine resources, I'd settle on them.

Now that's an idea. But that kind of makes the challenge too easy.

[jnh140]

Obviously oil wells.

And if you think my strategy is flawed, wait until i've cornered the market and you can't drive to your precious mines or windmills!!!!!!!


-insane evil laughter-

[wodan11]

I don't get the poll. Farms are the only sustainable improvement, allowing cities which don't have a lot of grass or water. So unless you want to limit your empire to spotty city sites, farms are the only choice.

Cottages come in second but you're screwed if there isn't a lot of grassland or FP.

[eris]

I would use farms. And for strategic resources, I would cheat and put cities on top of them. You could then increase your military options greatly.

[johnmcd]

Well, I've started a Pangea game at Noble with Gandhi.

I reckoned Gandhi was a good bet because you get the extra GPs for being philosophical and I imagine I'll want to swap between civics quite frequently for production reasons, slavery, org religion, police state, nationhood etc. The turns saving is probably worth it.

No vassels, no tech brokering, no random events, marathon.

Edit: Well, I've played 50 turns and it's quite cool. It's like a new game in some ways, totally different set of rules for valuing things. I think you could do it with mines though, enough flood plain and food specials to get cities up to five or six quite often I think. If you go the Khmer for the extra food especially so.

[fani]

You are playing a game building only farms? now thats crazy...I voted for farms btw...

[rah]

People said something similar the first time OCC was tried and now it's an official option in Custom games.