The "One Amazing City" Strategy

[Dominae]

Hi all,

I was wondering about the merits of creating a really great city early on, at the expense of growth/expansion. Does putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, help you gain a significant advantage, or is it better to have a lot of equally powerful cities?

After my recent foray into OCC territory (to those of you who haven't tried it, it's a great learning experience; trying to remain competitive with just one city will certainly force you to think about things a lot more thoroughly...no military!), I started thinking if it would a good idea to build up one amazing city as a sub-goal in a normal game.

The general idea would be to initially only build one Settler, then pretend as though you were playing OCC with your capital, and a normal game with the rest of your empire (founded on the back of your second city). This entails making sure your capital gets the Colossus, the Great Library, Shakespeare's Theater, Copernicus' Observatory and Newton's University, along with all relevant city improvements. It would also involve putting resources into your capital as a top priority, improving all squares around ASAP, joining Workers when until pop limits are reached, etc.

Of course, the downside to doing all this is that your early game is severely crippled: your best city is no longer contributing to expansion or warfare.

I know that a lot of players (myself included) try to put all the Science Wonders in one city if at all possible. What I'm talking about here is a little different: I'm referring to strategically maxing out your capital (almost) right from the start.

Has anyone tried this? Does it work? If OCC is possible, it seems to me that some of the lessons learned from those games could carry over to "normal" Civ3. Plus, it's a lot of fun to have the best city in the world, bar none!


Dominae

[Aeson]

I always start out my games with a goal to build up a 'good' city or core of cities. I think a good time to start building one up would be at 4 or 5 cities. This won't cripple your expansion, and other than on Deity should give you time to still grab one or two Ancient Wonders. I always get sidetracked though, a 'one more settler' syndrome. I almost never have a city in the top 5 until the AI are all mostly dead... When all the other AI are destroyed or in ruins, even my 'developed' size 6 cities make the list though!

OCC is a very good environment to learn some aspects of the game. Before I tried any Civ 3 OCC games I tended to place too much value on defensive military strength. If you can survive with just a handful of units with a small empire, you can do it with a larger one as well. Also it helped me figure out how to time prebuilds, exactly which tiles to improve first, and how to predict AI tech beelines. Since very little is happening each turn (for the player) there is plenty of time to devote to these sorts of pursuits.

Now I try to apply the same things in my regular games, just applied to many smaller cities instead of one large one.

[lockstep]

I've used this strategy in my only successfull attempt for a cultural victory (the 20.000 points-variant) with v1.17, regent. Due to the AI's tech trading, the game normally ends around 1800, which makes a cultural victory rather difficult (at least for me). So I decided

• to build only one settler with my capital,
• to max out its pre-industrial shield production
• and to rush-buy as many improvements as possible after switching to Republic

so I could grab the maximum number of wonders. The delayed expansion resulted in a small 8-city-empire, but I managed to build 12 of the 24 great wonders in my capital (no.13, Longevity, was under construction when I hit the 20.000-mark).

I've also tried this on monarch three times so far, but missed some wonders every time due to the AI's production advantage (at least I could switch to another wonder). My best attempt resulted in a capital with about 17.000 culture points when space victory (either for me or for the AI) became inevitable.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Aeson
OCC is a very good environment to learn some aspects of the game. Before I tried any Civ 3 OCC games I tended to place too much value on defensive military strength. If you can survive with just a handful of units with a small empire, you can do it with a larger one as well. Also it helped me figure out how to time prebuilds, exactly which tiles to improve first, and how to predict AI tech beelines. Since very little is happening each turn (for the player) there is plenty of time to devote to these sorts of pursuits.

You've vocalized precisely the things I've learned about Civ3 through my OCC games. All those skills are pretty important, which is why I think all players should try a game with only one city at least once.

Never managed to win the OCC though (I was only playing Monarch). I think a lot of luck is involved in actually getting a launch. In my last game, I couldn't trade for Aluminum, no matter how hard I tried; the AI civs were trading all the sources amongst themselves just perfectly, and I never got an "in". No Aluminum means no Apollo Program. Game over.

Constantly during the game I wanted to spawn off a couple of little cities just to get some key resources, which is what got me thinking about the One Amazing City strategy.

I think you're right Aeson about the timing of building up a core of good cities. Ideally, you've good 2 good food-producing cities that build Settlers until expansion is over, and 2 good shield-producing cities. These last ones become your Wonder cities. I've never played this way myself, but I'm anxious to try.


Dominae

[Coracle]

I would think a core of good cities would help with the corruption issue what with most of your production being centered around the Palace. Sounds like a good idea worth trying.

[Tenchusatsu]

I think if you ever want to pursue a Builder or even a Hybrid strategy, this strategy is very effective. It all boils down to one thing:

Corruption.

If you want to max out your production, you will want to do it in a city where every shield is put to good use. Pop rushing can only get you so far, and the resulting lower population and increased unhappiness will hurt long-term (though if you're playing the higher difficulty levels, it always helps to pop-rush a temple).

I always like to have a couple of workers start improving my capital city as soon as possible. The only job of my other workers is to build roads, both for trade and for a military network. Maybe some irrigation for cities that produce nothing but units like workers, settlers, or pop-rushed Swordsmen.

But the first mines I build will always be in the capital. There I can be sure that the extra shield I'm getting isn't going to waste. Then from here, I can decide whether to go for an early Wonder, or whether I should just stick to building city improvements.

And here's the good thing for Hybrid players: If there are no improvements or Wonders available to build (say I'm well behind in early tech, which is usually the case in higher difficulties), at least that city can crank out units like there's no tomorrow. Then you can use these units to go beat up on a neighbor while you wait for the next tech (either through research or purchase).

Of course, the main thing to this strategy is sacrificing some early growth and expansion in favor of building up the capital from the beginning. If that's too much of a risk, you could wait until you've founded a handful of cities before going back and improving the capital.

I used this strategy in my most recent game on Monarch. I was the Persians, and I was shooting for a Cultural victory. I found myself alone on a medium-sized continent, so I took a little extra time to build settlers and colonize the whole island before working on my capital. Then I was able to grab the Pyramids and the Great Library, all through brute-force production. It did help that my capital was founded on a river with a couple of food bonuses nearby. Because of this, I was able to pop-rush a temple early on and still recover fast enough to go for the Wonders. Not only that, but because my capital was also the most populous city of my early empire, it was also the first to receive city improvements like a library and a marketplace. What good is the bonus to tax or science if you don't have a strong commerce base in the first place, or if it's crippled by corruption?

My conclusion is that this "One Amazing City" strategy is probably the most effective strategy for Civ3 builders and hybrid players. Though a variation of this strategy, "A Few Amazing Cities," could also prove effective. However, momentum players might not want to sacrifice the expansion and unit production for early domestic improvements.

[DrSpike]

As long as you expand to at least 4 cities first building up a wonder/tech city whilst continuing to expand from the others sounds pretty sound for all civ games, including civ3.

The wonders now though aren't that potent, and you'll get tech easier through military means early on, even if you then backpedal and play a builder game.

[Giovanni August]

In my games i usually have the best or maybe the best 2 cities. (usually my capitol is one of them).

I always create 2 settler farms and than 2-3 worker farms (generally in plains terrain that usually can't grow very much at the beginning), that way I can improve lots of tiles and in a few of turns I made up the penality for building workers instead of improvments/military!

This workers first taks is to build a luxury road network and improve the capitol and the biggest coastal city tiles.

Than this two (or one if capitol is on the coast) became my "amazing city" that later in the medieval time get almost all wonders and become the best of the top 5.

Of course if my capitol is not in a good spot I usually chose a good "grassland city" as my wonder killer and use my capitol as a settler farm.

Couldn't use this strategy succesfully enough at Emperor since the AI bonuses are too powerful, You can do it only after you crushed your neighbors.... but at that point the others civ-capitol are already too developed.

Saluti

[DrFell]

Although it might work on levels lower than deity, I think such an early city growth would hurt you too much on higher levels.

[kimmygibler]

I tried a variation of this that was basically a two city game. I just won very easily on emperor. My capital was in a pretty good location, but there was an even better one about 10 squares away. It had 3 cows and a river. In this city I focused on production, in the capital I focused on gold. I did build military units to destroy cities that the ai would build too too close to my borders. I wanted my borders to reach max expansion in case resources were nearby. Built the science wonders in the capital, the other ones in my othe city.

On a related note, I was thinking of this strategy. Build one super city and then build another very far away or even on another continent. To do this, you would have to temporarily take over enough citied to build FP. I think I may try it. Not really practical, but it could be fun.