OCC (One City Challenge) at Monarch and above

[Diadem]

I'm currently at -9 war weariness. I've never seen that before. Wow.

And only 10% culture needed to compensate. But if things keep up like this I think I might build Globe Theater after all

[solo]

Many thanks to Ixthod for explaining how gold and commerce interact with Prophets and the various city buildings. By the way, I still value Prophets highly in OCC games, and in my last two ran short on gold a few times, since it cost a lot of gold to "rent" some of the resources I needed. I just think that for an OCC Space Race that Scientists and Engineers are the most useful, with Prophets almost just as welcome.

Interesting Diadem, that you have teamed with Alexander. Whenever he appears in my games, he always attacks me sooner or later! Alex seldom does well, and most often falls into last place in the rankings. I guess he can be a firm ally if you can get on his good side. Good luck in the remainder of your game.

I think I will continue with a few more Immortal games, but am wondering how much of a difference Deity level is. Does anyone know whether the AI receive another substantial research and production boost at the Deity level, or do they just start with a few more extra units?

[Thoth]

Solo: A quick look in HandicapInfo.xml shows that the AI on deity produces at 60% of normal costs, vs 80% on Immortal. And they get more units. I won't be playing this level for a long time yet.

[solo]

Here's another Gandhi game on Immortal, but with a start lacking Stone. There were 3 food resources, and forests and a short river added 4 extra health.

In this one I just started on wonders first, without building any work boats or workers. I was first to Meditation and after finishing the Oracle, was also first to Code of Laws, so was able to found two religions and get two temples and monastaries out of the deal.

Another change I made was going to Philosophy instead of Code of Laws next in order to get Pacifism sooner.

Later on, I was first again to Liberalism. When trading techs I acquired Literature and noticed the Great Library was still not built so I was able to get this wonder, too.

I had a good tech lead by now, and wanted to get some mileage out of that wonder, so delayed going to Physics, and instead researched many of the techs I'd normally trade for.

Even after doing that, I was first to Physics anyways, and went on to Rocketry to start Apollo. In this game the AI were very slow in research and I don't know why, but even after building the Internet, I had to research up to Fusion and Genetics myself, to get them in time to build their SS parts.

The space ship was ready in 2107, and the nearest AI this time was still 5 SS parts behind.

One more thing I want to try at Immortal, now that I've got the hang of playing at this level, is try for a SS win without using an Industrious leader. I think this would be much harder to do.

Thanks, Thoth, for those encouraging words about Deity! I will wait a bit before trying a game at that level.

Below is a zip with the start and finish of this game:

[amicus curiae]

The big thing on deity is that the ai starts with 2 settlers. I think this is the hardest to overcome. They get a big tech lead right away. I have found much more of a need to get alphabet right away. You pretty much have to go for it immediately or else you are stuck researching every early tech yourself and you get way behind early. I think on deity you pretty much know if you have a chance within the first 50 turns.

[Diadem]

Aaargh! So frustrating!

OCC game on emperor, on a plains map (my favorite :P). Small, so 4 opponents.

I started next to a hill, and it looked like 3 cows in a fat cross around it. So I settled my city on the hill. Copper also turned out to be in my fat cross, as well as horses. Perfect! I started very well, founding 3 religions, being first to liberalism and economics (or whatever tech the free merchant one is).

Competition came from Elisabeth, Cyrus, Frederick and Monty. Monty was luckily at the other side of the map. I got in a few wars with him, when others asked me to help, but I never actually fought him. I had good relations with the other three civs all the time.


I took solo's advice and beelined for Computers, and after that the internet. That worked well, got a lot of techs from it. I had aliminium as well, so I started building spaceship parts like mad.

I was 1 turn away from building my final spaceship part when cyrus completed his spaceship. Aaargh! 1 damned turn!

I reloaded an earlier savegame to optimize a few things, only to have cyrus snag away a diplomatic victory. Double Aaargh!

Cyrus finished his spaceship in 1950, one turn before me. How the hell can you be 5 parts ahead by 2107 on a higher difficulty solo? Am I so damned unlucky that the AI was so fast in my game?

[solo]

That was a very unusual game, Diadem. Usually I only finish my SS when a competing AI has just one more part to go. They were unusually slow at research in my last game. I really can't explain why, since there were not any more wars than usual.

I have had several games, also, where I have just missed by a turn or two, so have felt the same frustration. I have played many, many games so far, and for some reason have forgotten to post all of those losses!

Another reason for my success so far on Immortal is that I am using Archipelago maps. I think this slows down the AI somewhat, since they do not expand as quickly as in a land based game. It's also easier to defend an island and the sea around an island provides a good buffer from encroaching AI culture boundaries.

My estimate is that the AI on a land based map at Emperor are probaby as tough to beat as the Immortal AI on an Archipelago map, but I plan to move to some games based on the land fairly soon, so as to get a better idea of how they compare. I like to take the difficulty on one step at a time.

[Merzbow]

HOW ARE YOU GUYS DOING THIS?!?! I've tried half a dozen times so far on just Prince. I get almost all the wonders I want - Pyramids, Great Library, Space Elevator, etc. I beeline for Education, Liberalism, Computers, Rocketry, etc. My city is a 500+ beakers research monster. But still I CANNOT grab all of the techs needed for space before time runs out. I've looked at some of these saves (presumably post-1.09). How can you guys be on Future Tech at 1998 on cities with just 350 or so beakers? Fusion, Genetics, etc. are all 15-plus turn techs. What the heck?

[Risa]

Simple: AI's research. On higher level, AI can research faster than on lower ones, thus speed up the game.

[ToeTruck]

Originally posted by solo
Another reason for my success so far on Immortal is that I am using Archipelago maps. I think this slows down the AI somewhat, since they do not expand as quickly as in a land based game. It's also easier to defend an island and the sea around an island provides a good buffer from encroaching AI culture boundaries.

I agree with solo's points here - Archipelago slows the AI significantly. However, I have noticed that land based games do have a couple of advantages:
1) More likely to have access to fresh water - Health is key!
2) Greater likelihood of cultural expansion pulling in key resources like Aluminum and Copper.
3) More forests to chop - those extra shields come in handy.

Lately, I've been playing "Islands" games which has some of the advantages of "Continents", plus likely access to the health things like crab, fish, and clam.

BTW Merzbow - I haven't won yet either, but I'm having a great time.

And...I've been playing v1.09 - I upgraded a while ago hope to get an OCC win under my belt soon.

- TT

[Diadem]

The big advantage of playing a plains map is the resources. If you start in the forest (western part of the map) you're screwed and doomed. If you start in the mountains (eastern part) it can be playable, but it's usually pretty hard as well.

But starting on the plains is often very good. I rarely see less than 3 cows within my city's fat cross. And often some other resources as well. Iron, horses and coal are almost always within cultural range. Oil and aluminium sometimes as well.

I have noticed that on the lowest difficulty levels the game almost always throws you in the forest. On monarch and above however, I seem to land mostly in the plains. Maybe it's a coincidence, but it's typical.

There's often rivers so fresh water. Usually there are no forests, but that just saves you the bother of beeling for bronze working

And being cramped in is interesting as well. The enemy expands very fast on the higher difficulties. Doesn't take long before you are completely surrounded. Avoiding war is tough. Of course my culture is always a lot stronger then theirs. I usually culture-raze a couple of cities during the game.

Which, incidently, is a funny thing. I wonder how those citizens reason: "Oh, we're so in awe of Delhi's culture we want to join the Indian empire! Wait, damn, we can't join them. Well, let's just raze our city to the ground then!".

[solo]

Originally posted by Merzbow
HOW ARE YOU GUYS DOING THIS?!?! I've tried half a dozen times so far on just Prince. I get almost all the wonders I want - Pyramids, Great Library, Space Elevator, etc. I beeline for Education, Liberalism, Computers, Rocketry, etc. My city is a 500+ beakers research monster. But still I CANNOT grab all of the techs needed for space before time runs out. I've looked at some of these saves (presumably post-1.09). How can you guys be on Future Tech at 1998 on cities with just 350 or so beakers? Fusion, Genetics, etc. are all 15-plus turn techs. What the heck?

The other wonder you want to add to your list is the Internet. The AI are so quick in research at the end, that they usually will fill in all of the remaining techs you need if you have built the Internet.

This way the only SS part techs you need to research yourself are Rocketry, Satellites and Fiber Optics, as long as you have also researched up to Computers.

The higher the difficulty level, the more valuable the Internet is to the human player, who as you have noticed, will run out of time to do all the research alone.

Also remember that beakers are reduced at the end of games when the emphasis is placed more on hammers. I typically run over 600 beakers when research is maxed out earlier in the game.

(Except for the very first result posted, all of my subsequent games have been using the v 1.09 patch.)

[solo]

Just after recommending the Internet, it has failed me in my last game, but I thought I would post details anyways of this unsuccessful game (one of many, by the way!) where I came up a little short at the end.

In this one I played as Saladin (Phi,Rel), and this was my first attempt on Immortal without using an Industrious leader.

I'll start near the end. By 1970, I was starting on the Internet. At that time I had already built the casings and thrusters. The Chinese were close behind, having built a few casings, but I was feeling confident I could build the remaining SS parts quickly enough, as long as there were no delays in picking up SS part techs.

When finished the Internet only gave me one more SS part tech, so I was in trouble. The Chinese already had two others everyone else lacked, so I began an aggressive campaign of tech giveaways to the others, hoping they would do their part and help learn the remaining SS part techs.

This was a novelty to me, trading away things like Satellites and Fiber Optics for tiny amounts of gold and World Maps, and the strategy almost worked. The Chinese were just too smart and too quick, and the others became like dunces. I came up 8 turns and 1 tech short of winning, but had wasted over 10 turns waiting for SS part techs.

I think I might have won, had I played the mid game a bit differently. At that time I had delayed researching Scientific Method because I wanted to get the most out of the Great Library and my monastery.

In the very beginning, as soon as my settlers founded Mecca, Stone came in to view, so I started by building a worker, in order to make use of it. I was able to start on the Pyramids afterwards, which were put on hold to build the Oracle after Preisthood was discovered.

This game I used the Oracle to get Alphabet as the free tech. I wanted Literature, with the idea of adding the Great Library and National Epic as quickly as possible. This worked very well. I was able to build the Great Library first and generated a lot of early GP's which help speed up progress afterwards.

I was first to Education and Liberalism, picking Astronomy as my free tech. The addition of Universities and an Observatory helped me increase my tech lead for awhile and lulled me into dallying too long accumulating cheaper techs. I was not first to Physics, as in other games, and soon lost my tech lead to the Chinese, too.

Still, I liked the Great Library - National Epic combination so much that I may be using the Oracle in future games to get me Alphabet instead of Code of Laws, as I had been doing in previous games.

This start is fairly unique in that my big island had an abundance of trees. I was able to get a lot of mileage out of wood chops in this one, a rarity on Archipelago maps. Wood chops probably accounted for my being able to finsih early wonders ahead of the AI using a non-Industrious leader.

The start and finish are attached below. I suspect someone else may be able to turn this great start into a win. All it lacked was good food resources, but a pond helped with health and allowed several farms.

[Merzbow]

Someone explain the Internet to me... does it CONTINUALLY give all techs to the builder that any other two civs know, or just once at the time of build? And does it do this only for the builder or for all civs? One thing that's tough about the Internet is that it can only be rushed - with 9000 gold at that! I'm finding that I can only pull close to that amount of gold with multiple religious shrines. The money difference with a couple shrines versus none is huge, don't settle those early prophets.

[solo]

The Internet works like the Great Library in previous versions of Civ.

If you build it, you will be given any tech as soon as two other civs know it.

Right after building it, you are likely to get several techs, since there are probably many that you don't have that at least two of the others do.

After that, you must wait until at least 2 civs have acquired a tech you lack to get it yourself by having the wonder, so the answer to your question is Yes, it is continuous.

It only works for the builder.

I believe it is classified as a project and can not be rushed. With Copper, I was able to build it in my last game in 10 turns, so without Copper it would have taken about 15.