OCC (One City Challenge) at Monarch and above

[solo]

korn,

Yes, I'm lacking rivers and some extra woods to chop on most starts, plus the extra resources usually found outside the city limits.

I've also noticed that little quirk where a light defense is sometimes overlooked, but when an attack comes, it's all over very quickly!!! Normally peaceful Hatty took me out very quickly in one game!

However, if you are going to fight a lot in deity OCC, you'll never progress far enough to finish a SS first. Some chances have to be taken.

amicus,

It might have been 8 or 9 parts if I had not been attacked by the French! They knocked me down from size 20 to 15, before I could make peace.

[Buskerdu]

FINALLY!

My first OCC victory (albeit at Prince level but I'll take it). I only won by 1-piece and the year was 2040 but who's counting I played as China (wanted to give him one more shot before flipping to Ghandi) and was up against Asoka (the other Indian), Mr. Khan, Bismarck, President Roosevelt, Russian Pete and the royal pain Tokugawa (who was all bark the whole game).

A good starting position definitely helped with Stone, Ivory, Fish and Sheep in the city cross plus Copper Corn, Uranium and ALUMINUM (x2) within cultural borders. With Stone I was easily able to get off to a great start with Pyramids, Great Library and Oracle all built plus Colossus and Angkor War for good measure. I made a beeline for Beauracracy (really think this is THE best civ for OCC) and then picked-up Liberalism before darting for Computers (tried this strategy instead of Rocketry first...it worked this time but I may have been lucky). I did NOT build Internet as I had a sizeable tech-lead and had already built all 5-casings and 2 1/2 thrusters when the AI finished Apollo). By this point I only had 1-SS tech left so it ended-up being the right call in this game.

This has been a GREAT thread and added more fun to an already great game! I see allot of mods being published over the last few weeks and I for one am not interested. If I wanted to play CIV 3 (as many of the mods I have seen are trying to mimic) I would re-install it! To me CIV 4 is a great game with some "interesting" changes for sure compared to previous versions but to me the game is very enjoyable in its off-the-shelf form (okay I did install the updated "Power Graph" mod but that's it and I didn't even use it for this game). My opinion only of course so go modders go!

Well if anyone is interested (I know that most of you have moved on to Emperor, Deity or some level I can only dream of at this point) I've attached the starting location and 2nd last turn.

Long live OCC!

Buskerdu

[Diadem]

Wow, lots of interesting developments. The first ever deity win. Wow.

I should try this starting position. I haven't played island maps for a long time, as I usually play Great Plains. I'm still not sure if island maps are actually easier. So let me try

[amicus curiae]

Man I don't know how you guys are getting such great starting positions. I guess I'm not that patient. Starts with 4 cows, or with stone ivory fish sheep copper corn uranium and aluminum...

[solo]

Buskerdu,

Great game. I have downloaded your file and will take a look, as I am always interested in what people were able to do with what they started out with.

My hopes for this thread have been exceeded by a long shot, as there seems to be many of us who enjoy the new Civ and its OCC implementation. Many thanks to all so far who have contributed.

amicus,

I agree about how the right starting location can make all the difference. Lately, my own computer has gone very cold in generating any decent deity ones. This is a good reason for having people post the good ones they find in this thread.

I know that back in the Civ II OCC days we were usually using remarkable starting positions that either people had found by chance or had set up as a scenario. PLaying those comparison games was a lot of fun.

Diadem,

I think you'll find island games easier militarily, but less generous with starting resources of the variety and types you are used to on plains maps.

I think I will give korn's a try, just to see how it compares to what I've been trying so far on deity. I started a few games of my own using his map style, but with 7 random civs. In each game so far, the AI have been completing the Pyramids very early.

[Hauptman]

I have a confesion... In occ games first turn i enter the world builder to see where i should place it for future resources... wich sometimes even makes me sacrafice a few turns to move to another location...

[Diadem]

I just did it! Victory on deity!

It's not the kind of victory you normally aim for though. Perhaps it's even a bit lame. Duel size map, so only 1 enemy. I switched barbarians off and also domination victory (when you can't expand the AI can win one in 2000 bc or so on deity. That sucks :P).

I wanted to try to rush the AI. Romans looked good for this at first, but caesars skills are absolutely worthless, and it takes too long to tech to Iron Working. So I took Kublai Khan. The Mongolian UU is the Keshik, an upgraded Horse Archer. You can tech to them very fast, you can easily build them in large numbers, and they are fast, having 2 movement and no terrain penalties. I only realised later that I wouldn't get a free promotion on them, because aggressive doesn't work on mounted units. Kublai Khan is creative, which is good, because on deity level the AI is good at pushing your borders back early game. And since I wouldn't be building any world wonders or other buildings I needed the culture.

My starting position wasn't terribly good, but it had horses, and a some other resources, so I thought I'd manage. I beelined for Horseback Riding immidiately, and started building keshiks, doing having chopping to speed up production.

I had 9 of them when i declared war, and I immidiately took his 2nd largest city, killing 3, but dealing a major blow.

I had done a lot of early scouting, so I knew the map. After I took his city, he had 1 iron, 1 horse and 1 copper left. I went straight for these, and pillaged them. In the meantime he rebuild his city, giving him a new horse, but I managed to pillage that one too, just before his city expanded.

After this he could only build archers. He had an awful lot of those though, and still some earlier built chariots, spearmen and swordmen. I couldn't touch his cities, so I went on a mad pillaging spree through his country. Having 2 movement points and no terrain movement penalties really helped a lot there. I would most likely have lost without that.

I pillaged basicly every resource he had, and most of his roads. Meanwhile picking of any unit of his foolish enough to leave his cities. I think I lost only a single unit during this entire stage of the war. So things looked good. War weariness was starting to get me down though. So I made a final assault on his capital, costing me two more units, but razing it, and after that made peace.

Score of the first war: All his resources and almost all of his farms and cottages pillaged, 2 cities razed, 20 or so units killed, 6 units lost.

After 10 turns of peace I redeclared immidiately, and pillaged his strategic resources again. He might have been able to build 1-2 new spearmen, but certainly no more. I had swordsmen by now, which can have the anti-archery upgrade, so I could take cities a bit more effective. I razed 3 more cities during this war, bringing him down a lot.

However war weariness was going through the roof. My city had size 5, and 4 unhappy faces. I was starving, and my units were about to go on a strike as well. Luckily he accepted peace, and even gave me two techs for it.

Immidiately after getting Iron Working I had beelined for Drama. That saved me, because I got it a few turns after the end of the second war. This allowed me to build culture.

Still things almost went wrong. I didn't have pottery, so I couldn't build cottages for commerce. During the final war I had to run 30% culturerate to counter war weariness. The remaining 70% wasn't enough to pay for my unit expanses though. No science and still not enough money! I razed his last city 2 turns before my units went on strike again.

My first ever genocide victory!


Rushing the AI on a duel size map is a viable strategy at deity. But it's still not at all easy! War weariness and upkeep cost are a real *****. I don't think it's possible to defeat the AI in a Blitzkrieg. You have to wear them down slowly, and that's hard.

I'm not sure if I used the best possible strategy. It's a completely different game as anything you normally play. I don't think I did it perfectly on the first try. Getting some religions and also pottery to counter hapiness and money problems might be an idea. But that delays your rush. Hmm. Perhaps beeline for monarchy? But that doesn't solve money problems.

[amicus curiae]

Originally posted by solo
amicus,

I agree about how the right starting location can make all the difference. Lately, my own computer has gone very cold in generating any decent deity ones. This is a good reason for having people post the good ones they find in this thread.

I know that back in the Civ II OCC days we were usually using remarkable starting positions that either people had found by chance or had set up as a scenario. PLaying those comparison games was a lot of fun.

That's true. Although back in those days it was usually trying to find the most difficult possible starting positions adn still win. Although it would be interesting if someone set up the ultimate OCC starting position on an otherwise random map. I mean have resources covering every square. I wonder if it would still be difficult on deity? I would imagine that you could trounce the ai given an ideal start.

[fluffyflyingpig]

Well, finally racked an emp win for me. Ghandi, standard, great plains. Started in NW corner, Incans expanded to completely surrond me. Used them as a shield and had them attack anyone getting close to launching. Alex was on the oposite side of the map and could be bribed to attack others as well. Game spent hunkering down in my little floodplain valley and watching the rest of the world kill each other. Spent the last few turns bribing Hunya to attack Mansa and waiting for genetics. Luanch in 1975.

A few random thoughts on the OCC

I still an unsure of how to best go about research. Much of the early game is dedicated to whatever slingshot you choose to go for, but then what? Alphabet and trade to backfill? Or research things yourself? I tend to go for the CS slingshot then get alphabet and mathematics and philosophy. After that, I tend to loose focus. I try for fudalism for longbows and meander along towards scientific method, getting gunpowder and astronomy along the way, while avoiding drama/Globe thatere as long as possible. I never am quite sure when to get Scientific Method or delay it to try and grab banking and keep my monastaries/great library. After SM, the computers -> rocketry -> fiber optics/internet seems to work best. Can you describe your early/midgame tech stratagies so we can compare notes?

I tried getting the SC slingshot using a Great Prophet to learn CoL. It doesnt work, the only option is to learn theology. Bah.

Any thoughts on worker first vs early wonder yet? I tend to go for wonders imidiately, and am wondering if its worth it.

I #$%^&*%^&* hate the random map generator. So many bad starts. Start location influences the OCC too heavily. I always am tempted to enter the world builder and give myself a stone plains hill as the starting tile for my settler. >.>

[solo]

Originally posted by fluffyflyingpig

Any thoughts on worker first vs early wonder yet? I tend to go for wonders imidiately, and am wondering if its worth it.

I #$%^&*%^&* hate the random map generator. So many bad starts. Start location influences the OCC too heavily. I always am tempted to enter the world builder and give myself a stone plains hill as the starting tile for my settler. >.>

Fine game, fluffyflyingpig!

My mid-game tactics vary, depending on the situation and difficulty level, but in some games where I have dallied too long picking up older techs, the AI have steamed ahead and beat me to an SS completion. If in doubt, I usually go deep as possible into the tech tree, so that I'll at least have some tradeable techs later.

If I'm playing Gandhi and start near Stone, I'll build Stonehenge, the Oracle and the Pyramids and hope to add Hanging Gardens afterwards. This means delaying a worker for quite a while.

If the start has tiles that need work or there are a lot of forests on the fringes that can be chopped I'll go with a worker first.

I am also tempted to enter Worldbuilder to tweak starts that just miss being very nice. Some come with everything I want except lack any extra food, etc.

So far, I've been able to resist the temptation, but see no problem if others want to go this route to save some time trying to get a "lucky" random start.

However, if posting results, please make sure to include a disclaimer listing any "liberties" taken, just as korn did when qualifying his deity win or as when Hauptman "confessed" to using Worldbuilder to check on resources.

For fun we might consider playing a "design your own start" game, where players are free to use Worldbuilder to try and optimize their starting position and then compare how various ideas worked out afterwards. This may end up being the only suitable way to play games on deity.

Looks like Diadem solved how to win deity duels, and that this might even be tougher than deity SS wins! Very interesting description!

[Diadem]

Lol, I tried that one game, a completely optimized starting position. My city had 20 grassland-floodplain tiles with gold on them, and all other important resources just outside my fat cross. I got slaughtered very badly by the AI. Really embarrassing, cheating and still loosing!

My map design was pretty badly though, looking back. Gold on grassland-floodplain gives plenty of food and commerce, but only 1 hammer. And production is very important! And all my good resources I had placed just outside my fat cross where stolen by the AI, who just pushed back my cultural boundaries. Also you seriously lack health due to having no forests and a lot of floodplains around. No problem once your city is a bit bigger so it works a lot of those 5 food tiles, but it hurts your early growth.

It should be possible to score a win on a cheated map. You just have to cheat intelligently

[amicus curiae]

I would say you would want probably five or six hills with iron and coal and the rest floodplains with gold. And of course rivers through every square and all other resources surrounding your city. I'm pretty sure someone could win a deity OCC launch on an other wise standard continents map using such a start.

[solo]

Yes, I guess there would have to be some limits on a design your own version!

Meanwhile, another random, standard-size map, deity game I played today started very well and I was first to Liberalism, which I haven't managed to do before, but could not maintain that lead into Physics. Later on I was also first to Electricity, Radio, Computers, Satellites and Fiber Optics.

However, my city lacked food, and could not grow any larger than half size. There were not any health resources available by trade. I did not end up with any of my own Aluminum, Coal, Iron or Copper! Along with these minor problems was my major nemesis, Mansa Musa. If he had not been in the game, I might have been the overall tech leader for awhile and may have been able to build my SS first.

There was one bright note in this game. None of the GP's produced in my city this game were Artists! Mostly scientists and engineers.

On deity, 6 AI opponents may be too many competitors when using random starts, but I'm not convinced yet!

[fluffyflyingpig]

Weee. OOC Deity win, gandhi, standard, terra, completely world edited to my favor. Founded on a peninsula, made the entrance a single forest/hill. This feels so dirty.

Edit:
OOC Deity win as well, Cyrus, Duel, terra. Horrible start location for me (jungle grew over my rice plot!), but I had horses near enough and Gandhi had no copper, or horses. Fairly straight-forward tech up to Immortals followed by a mad rush through India burning everything in the way. Cities on hills and walls around Delhi were the only things that slowed my advance. I had to declare a cease-fire after razing 3 of Gandhi’s cities to regroup and heal before finishing the destruction of India in 975BC.

Thoughts on OCC conquest wins. I like terra maps since they tend to be smaller and trap the AI on a peninsula more often than Pangaea, giving the AI less space to expand. Immortals >> Keshiks. Half the cost for same power vs. archers at a lower tech (Immortals replace chariots). Likewise Cyrus (Exp/Cre) > Agr/Cre. Unfortunately, both civs require horses for a chance to win. Praetorian rush should work as well, though Caesar’s traits suck and Iron takes a while to get and isn't always in range. The other Civ to consider is the Inca for a Quecha rush, but the deity bonuses will prolly allow the AI to produce just as many archers as the single city can make Quechas. Bottom line: winning an OCC on Deity--either by conquest or by spaceship--is highly map dependant, but quite possible. You seem to need less of a map advantage for duel conquest though.

[Skatterbone]

Oustanding thread here...it should come with a disclaimer about the highly addictive nature of OCC...as if regular Civ isn't addictive enough. There is a focus and pace of play that seems unique to OCC. Its also a powerful learning tool.

Now to my late game OCC problems....
I have been playing monarch and emporer games on island and great plains maps with mixed success. But the AI's founding of the UN and subsequent resolutions (loosing buearocracy to free speech and/or loosing the game to Diplo victory) have been a recurrent problem. Without population(votes), I see no defense against this. I am beginning to think I am still to slow on tech advances through the mid and late game. It seems the only way to avoid being pushed around by the UN is to already have a SS victory secured by the time the UN is built.

Any thoughts or stratagy tips for this issue?