OCC (One City Challenge) at Monarch and above

[solo]

For sure, the type of map being used makes a big difference in research speed. Also in production, as can be seen in Diadem's plains map game.

Very nice game, TT. I did not think it would take you long to produce an Emperor win on this type of map.

Meanwhile, I think it takes a good sense of humor to want and try to compete with the AI at Deity level!

The first few games I tried, all I could do was watch while they simply took off and never looked back! The best I could do was build the Oracle first, just in time to get CoL along with everyone else! So much for its bargaining power.

In my last game, I got a fairly good start with Gandhi, with Stone nearby. This gave me Stonehenge, the Oracle, and also the Pyramids! I was also first to Meditation, and founded Buddhism, too, along with Confucianism with the Oracle slingshot.

I think I blew any slim chances I had by making some tech trades that helped the AI more than myself, but I desperately needed several techs and was made to pay to get them when I wanted them.

I think a very uneven trade with the Russians allowed them to beat me to Education and Liberalism, but I did manage to maintain a tech lead over most of the rest for a long period, which was kind of a novel feeling at Deity.

Towards the end, I was never able to trade for Aluminum, Coal or Copper, and only had Iron and Uranium in my radius. However, I was heartened at being able to build Apollo and the Internet and even 4 SS parts before Peter of Russia finished up early, in 1957.

He simply took off, and got way ahead of everyone, leaving me to wonder what might have been had I played the tech trades tighter earlier in the game.

In any event, I think with Stone nearby, Gandhi may have a chance, especially if his borders come up with additional strategic resources later on. With an almost ideal start and some "slow" AI opponents, I think there's a very slim chance of doing this.

However, I will not hold my breath while trying!

[Diadem]

I haven't had much time to play the last few days, but tonight I had some time, and used it to get my second win at emperor.

Again playing Saladin, again a small Great Plains map. This time I started in the western forested region. A novelty for me on the higher difficulties (On these maps, with settler I almost always start in the west, on monarch and emperor almost always in the middle. Interestingly your starting location seems to depend on difficulty!).

I had fresh water and 5 forest in my city radius, so a very good health to start with. There were both health and hapiness resources in my fat cross, among which corn and pigs. Good food!

My production was pretty poor though, but with a lot of forests around I decided chopping would make up for that. Bronzeworking and a few workers allowed me to get Stonehenge, The Pyramids and The Oracle. I never bothered about Pathenon by the way, it gives Great Prophets and its bonus is pretty slim (because mods are additive the +50% is pretty much dwarved by the +100% from pacifism, +100% from philosophical and +100% from National Epic).

I didn't chop any of the forests in my fat cross though. Lumbermills are good, and the health bonus is very important. So I kept those. Plenty of forests just outside my fat cross though, luckily.

Because I failed to get any of the early religions, i had no enemies. When the AIs started warring I picked the winning side, joined in a bit (declaring war on request, but not actually fighting, of course), gave them some free stuff, etc. Result: 3 AIs were pleased with me, and the 4th was hated by all (he died later on). I only got a religion when one of the AIs came brining it to me. Switching to it improved my relations with the winning side even more

Also because I had no religion I did not get any of the religious happiness bonusses. So while I had enough health, I was really short on happiness. So I figured I'd beeline for the Globe Theatre. Over the previous games, I was getting less and less enthousiastic about the Globe Theatre, because with a few religions and resources, you usually don't really need it, and it generates Great Artists which you don't want. But this time I needed the happiness.

Once I got it, I traded away all happiness resources I had for health resources. This gave me a total health of 18 or so (which is quite a lot, that early in the game, on OCC). I removed all specialists in my city and focussed on food. With 12 or so surplus my city starting growing like mad. Within a few turns it was size 22 or so. That allowed me to use almost all tiles in my city radius (cottages!) and have 4 science specialists. Meanwhile I beelined to Education (and liberalism after that) for university and oxford university.

The effect was completely amazing.

My science rate went up like a thousand tons of rocket fuel. I've never seen anything like it. 400 beakers, 500 beakers, 600, 700 beakers and just kept going up. Near the end of the game I was producing over a 1000 beakers.

I was going through the techtree so fast it was making my head spin. I actually checked the settings of the game to check if I was really playing on emperor. I was.

The end of the game was almost boring. I had something like 7 SS parts finished by the time the first AI built the Apollo Program. I also got the internet of course, and it still gave me some techs, but less than usual. I had to research most of the late SS techs myself, so I had to spend quite a few turns waiting. I finished my Spaceship in 1962, a bit later than the previous game with the same mapsettings, but with a huge lead on the AI.

This game went far better than any I've ever played before, including the ones on monarch. I'm really amazed at how smooth things went.

I think the combination of not founding any religion and exploiting globe theatre to the fullest is really powerful. It may even be that magical key we need to win on deity!

[solo]

Great game!

I think I must try one of these small Great Plains maps.

[Diadem]

You should

Since the starting position of my previous game was really good, I tried using it on deity.

The start went ok, I got pyramids and stonehenge, but I missed Oracle by 2 turns. Perhaps I shouldn't have built stonehenge in the first place... Oh well.

I beelined even more directly to Globe Theatre, and it still worked amazingly well, though somehow my city got a bit less big. I think it's due to difficulty level and less resourcese I could trade.

Still I outteched the AI for a while. I was first to liberalism, first to economics, first to physics. First to have Apollo Program as well, but by that time the AI was rapidly catching up.

I was about to discover Fiber Optics when Alexander declared war on me, and came knocking with a billion tanks and infantry. Quite deadly. I was very good friends with the other two remaining civs (The Germans died, again, this game), but Alexander never went as smoothly. No surprise he was the one to declare. By that time Ghengis was already a few parts ahead on the spaceship though, so it would probably ahve been very tough anyway.

I think I can do deity on this map, but...
1) I shouldn't go for stonehenge. It's not important on OCC games, I normally only go for it because of the GP point, but it's not worth missing Oracle for.

2) I wasted too much time teching to railroad. I wanted to optimize my lumbermills. But teching directly to rocketry would probably have been better.

3) Diplomacy needs even more attention. Alexander needs to be kept friendly at all costs. That also means not accidently clicking the wrong option when he makes one of his demands like I did in the last game


Am I the only one who suffers from that by the way? Sometimes I think my new turn has already started, and while I'm already clicking somewhere to do something, a diplomacy screen pops up, and, because I am clicking, disappears again. Several times already that has lead to interesting developments in my civ games

Anyway, I'll give this map a try sunday evening. I'll let you guys know how it goes.

[Diadem]

Of course I completely forgot to attach the savegame I was planning to attach. And it seems you can't fix that by editing. Weird. Well, a new post it is, then

So here you guys are, beginning and starting position of that emperor game I described above. If you want to try it on deity you'll have to take it through the world-editor yourself, because I'm too lazy to also attach the scenario file

[solo]

Diadem,

I think when you use an Emperor save and convert it to a scenario via Worldbuilder, the game does not add the extra units the AI nations start with at Deity, when you play from the scenario file.

At Emperor they start with a free worker and free scout, along with a defending archer in their first city. These will be the starting units received in the scenario even if Deity level is selected, unless more units were added manually using Wordbuilder before the scenario file was created.

At Deity the AI start with more archers, plus a second settler. This allows them to found a second city a few turns into the game, an additional advantage they get over the human player.

Perhaps you are aware of this and gave each AI their extra starting units, but then again, maybe not.

When they get a second city within a few turns of the start, the AI begin building wonders much sooner and are able to do their early researching almost twice as fast.


Oh, I also suffer from time to time by inadvertantly cutting off a diplomacy session, usually when pressing Enter too quickly to end a turn during a series of turns where I have nothing else to do.

[solo]

Originally posted by Diadem

Again playing Saladin, again a small Great Plains map. This time I started in the western forested region. A novelty for me on the higher difficulties (On these maps, with settler I almost always start in the west, on monarch and emperor almost always in the middle. Interestingly your starting location seems to depend on difficulty!).

I had fresh water and 5 forest in my city radius, so a very good health to start with. There were both health and hapiness resources in my fat cross, among which corn and pigs. Good food!

My production was pretty poor though, but with a lot of forests around I decided chopping would make up for that. Bronzeworking and a few workers allowed me to get Stonehenge, The Pyramids and The Oracle.

I am very envious of that starting position. Besides the extra health from forests and fresh water, I counted 8 resources within your city's fat x, which when revealed at the start using Worldbuilder were:

iron
fur
2 pigs
deer
wine
corn
and spices!

Just on the outside corner of the fat x was:

coal

Way out on the periphery of all this was another lone coal, which rounded out the resources falling under your city's control during the game.


Two latent resources popped up from mines in your city's fat x during the game:

uranium and gems

There was hardly any spare space left for the two or three towns you made!

[ben_sphynx]

Well, just completed my first OCC game on monarch, with Elizibeth, and with a 1960 spaceship victory.
I used a balanced map, all 5 civs ended up on the same continent, and my cultural boarders managed to include every late game stategic resource except oil, which helped matters significantly.

One player got wiped out, but I managed to avoid wars all game.

[Diadem]

Originally posted by solo
Diadem,

I think when you use an Emperor save and convert it to a scenario via Worldbuilder, the game does not add the extra units the AI nations start with at Deity, when you play from the scenario file.

(...)

Perhaps you are aware of this and gave each AI their extra starting units, but then again, maybe not.

No, I was not aware of this. So that explains why I did so well. Oh well. I'll try a true deity game someday then

I did notice though that on deity techs were more expensive beaker-wise. Is this another artifact from converting from a scenario, or is this normal. If the latter, are techs more expensive for AIs as well?

[Buskerdu]

Damn this thread all to he*l, I'm now officially obsessed with playing OCC games Unfortunately I am having NO luck in winning the Space Race at Prince level after several tries.

The results are usually the same, great start only to quickly slide into last place around the middle ages. And there is no recovery from that point. I have read through most of this thread (excellent btw!) and have tried many of the tactics and suggestions. I just don't know how you guys are pulling this off!

My last game was no different, playing Qin Shi Huang I got off to a blazing start building most early wonders (except Pyramid and GL...hmmmm....), setting up my city very well and pumping out the GP. I have attached the end-game save (right before Washington built the SS) and would appreciate some feedback on the good, bad, and the ugly as you see it. You'll see that I founded 3-religions and built all applicable buildings along the way, was this a big mistake? It almost happened by fluke based on tech-path but it did seem to help a great deal in the early stages (3-monastaries can't be bad in any game).

Any comments are welcome!

Thanks, Buskerdu

[solo]

Nice game, ben_sphynx!

I have downloaded your zip file and will take a look.

Diadem,

I'm afraid all advantages accrue to the AI on a random Deity start!

From what I have surmised, they get an additional research and production boost, while the research times are increased for the human player. (However, I think this is used in the scenario deity setting). They all start with Hunting and Archery, too, in addition to any nation specific techs! Their extra settler and archers mean more cities twice as fast as at the Emperor rate!

In one deity game where I grew my city to size 8 as quickly as possible, I still was way behind, so I gave up. Before quitting, I looked at what the AI had done in the meantime using Wordbuilder. The average for them was a core 3 well developed size-10 cities and a few more smaller ones approaching the size of my own!

Meanwhile, I search in vain for a random deity start with the ingredients I feel are needed to mount a competitive challenge. I may be wrong, but it looks to me that the map generator is less generous with resources in random deity maps.

I spent a whole day trying to generate a start comparable to some that I had had success with at lower levels, but my efforts were in vain. As a minimum, the ingredients I was looking for were:

1) At least 5 forests in the fat x for a boost of 2 health.

2) A source of fresh water for another 2 health.

3) 3 good sources of extra food of different types within the fat x.

4) 3 or more other sources of health within my 5000 culture boundaries.

5) 2 or more strategic resources useful for SS construction within my 5000 culture boundaries.

6) Early access to either Stone or Marble.

(And yes, I was checking these (4 and 5) with Worldbuilder to save myself considerable time playing a promising start far enough to find out about strategic resources. At lower levels (4 and 5) were nice to have but not necessary).

When I was finding starts with many food resources, they lacked almost everything else. For example, one start had 5 clams and 3 gems, but I was confined to an islet with only one more tile, a forest. Research and growth would have been great, but production was utterly dismal!

When I found the other things I was lacking, I'd come up very short on food producing tiles!

I tried various kinds of maps. On plains, my luck was not much different than on other maps. I often found clusters of resources, but most often these would consist of a group of similar ones, such as cows. For the size city needed to compete in deity, a variety of health producers is needed, so as not to waste too much extra food.

I have not given up looking for a competitive start, but am starting to get the feeling that these may be few and far between on random deity maps.

A win at deity in OCC looks more and more unlikely to me, unless standards being used so far in previous games are relaxed, but what would be the point in doing that?

I'm sure that scenarios could be conjured up that would make deity wins very likely, but again, what would be the point of stacking the deck just in order to claim an OCC victory at deity?

I believe that to count for something, an OCC attempt at deity should use a random deity start on standard size map. If this proves to be impossible, then I think we must just give up trying.

[Diadem]

Originally posted by Buskerdu
Damn this thread all to he*l, I'm now officially obsessed with playing OCC games Unfortunately I am having NO luck in winning the Space Race at Prince level after several tries.

The results are usually the same, great start only to quickly slide into last place around the middle ages. And there is no recovery from that point. I have read through most of this thread (excellent btw!) and have tried many of the tactics and suggestions. I just don't know how you guys are pulling this off!

My last game was no different, playing Qin Shi Huang I got off to a blazing start building most early wonders (except Pyramid and GL...hmmmm....), setting up my city very well and pumping out the GP. I have attached the end-game save (right before Washington built the SS) and would appreciate some feedback on the good, bad, and the ugly as you see it. You'll see that I founded 3-religions and built all applicable buildings along the way, was this a big mistake? It almost happened by fluke based on tech-path but it did seem to help a great deal in the early stages (3-monastaries can't be bad in any game).

Any comments are welcome!

Thanks, Buskerdu

If you fall behind during midgame then having a midgame save would be best. It's hard to see what went wrong after the fact.

Still, I can say some things about it.

First of all, wonders. Stonehenge is a nice wonder because it generates Great Prophets, but it's bonus is pretty much useless on OCC games. Getting stonehenge but not pyramids is a very bad tradeoff. Better then to skip stonehenge alltogether.

The Great Library is an important wonder. If you missed it, you should priority it more in the next game, I think. Remember that you can always build national wonders, but not world wonders. So you want to prioritize world wonders over national wonders in 90% of the games.

Now, back to your game. A quick glance at the F4 screen shows you are hopelessly behind in techs. That makes it hopeless. There's not a thing you can do to make up for it once you're so far behind. So we need to improve your mid-game performance.

It looks like you founded Hinduism, Christianity and Confucianism. There is nothing wrong with founding three religions, of course. But you can only use one as your state religion anyway, and since you don't need many temples (with the Globe Theatre) you don't really need many religions. It's nice to be first to Theology, but it's probably the reason you missed the Great Library.

Worse though, I see you built the Church of Nativity, the Kashi Viswanath and the Kong Miao. That's three great prophets you used on those buildings. But for what purpose? There's only 5 cities in the world who share your religions. Those three world wonders together give you maybe 10 gold. Less than a single super specialist would give you.

Only use Great Prophets for those world wonders if you really plan to spread your religion. On OCC games, you often do not have time for that though. Maybe for one religion, but never for three. So that is a big waste.

Another points I noticed is that you aren't running free market. But traderoutes can give you a lot of commerce. If you have open border agreements with AI civs and a traderoute with them, of course.

Your starting position is not terribly good, because you lack good food resources. That makes early growth a bit harder, and makes running a lot of specialists a lot harder. Being in the middle of a small continent hurts your trading relations hugely though. That is probaby the most important reason why you lost. I think you had no contact with AIs for a long time.

Don't play continent maps, for exactly that reason. Play island maps so you start at the coast, or play pangea (incl. balanced) maps. Or Great Plains, like I do

So:
- Don't play on a continents map!
- Religions aren't bad, but but don't bother about getting many of them, and don't bother about their Shrines, except maybe one, and in that case spread to word everywhere.
- Make sure you get pyramids, it's more important than Stonehenge. And beeline for the Great Library harder.

There's not much else I can say right now, judging from an end-game save. If you want some more imput, save your next game every now and then (and don't overwrite them :P) and post saves of periods you think were pivotal here.

[solo]

Welcome Baskeru!

I guess your post was just added before I finished my own.

I will download your game and take a look.

I think OCC games at Prince and Monarch are still difficult to win, especially with the increased research and tech costs introduced with the first patch.

At higher levels, when you build the Internet, the faster AI research speeds may actually help more than hinder, as long as you beat them to Apollo and get a few SS parts done first.

Now I see Diadem's excellent advice and concur.

[Diadem]

Originally posted by solo
I have not given up looking for a competitive start, but am starting to get the feeling that these may be few and far between on random deity maps.

I just got the following:
In fat cross:
- 4 cows on plains
- 1 cow on plainhill
- stone on plains
- diamonds in desert-hill
- 1 floodplain
- a river
- one forest

Within cultural access are
- copper
- iron
- horses
- oil
- wheat
- wine

It's not the perfect start you were looking for, but it looks pretty good.

[solo]

Thanks!

I'll take a look.