OCC 2005 Game 1

[Elephant]

For our less patient friends...

Our OCC series starts with the White player, here Cunobelin of the Celts. The starting location is not bad, with rivers, two visible Whales and another hidden, but a location with four specials should be to the east if you are interested in looking around. Do you settle immediately or see what else is available?

I suggest we each decide on starting city location and play to 2000BC, by which time we should have made the transition to Monarchy or started researching Republic. A pause at that point will let us compare our starts and decide then how to proceed.

Normal size map
7 civs, Restarts On
Deity difficulty level
No starting techs

OCC game rules apply, with rehoming of bribed caravans permitted. Victory by earliest spaceship landing.

Early Landing play also possible, but please start a separate spoiler thread as your progress will likely be faster.

And the starting save (Classic/2.42 version):

[Peaster]

Elephant - where can we find the "OCC game rules"?

Also, is this to be best ball... so people can offer opinions now about whether to settle or explore, etc ? If so, I guess everyone should play Classic/2.42, or we should talk about teams some more.

[Grigor]

Sorry - as a Mac player I must use MGE because nobody can read my 2.42 saves.

So it looks like de facto teams (if only grigor vs. the Civ2 world...)

[solo]

Thanks Elephant for the start. I liked the starting position and decided not to wander looking for something slightly better.

I’m at 2000 BC now. I decided to skip Monarchy and head straight for Republic, but still have about 10 more turns of research to discover it. I am at size 3 and have built a library and 2 warriors. Here is the log:

4000 Cardiff
3950 hut – 50g
3800 Alphabet
3500 settlers (using size 1 trick)
3450 warriors, Cardiff now size 2
3350 warriors, start on barracks intending to switch to a library after Writing is discovered
3300 Code of Laws
3150 Grass mined to silk, one settler joins city, now size 3 and working the 3 specials
2900 Writing, barracks switched to a library
2850 2 barb archers land
2800 barbs attack, no damage!
2700 library, partially rushed
2550 Bronze Working (on path towards Trade, the next vital tech after Republic, start on Colossus)
2050 Literacy
2000 stop point, with 84 shields accumulated so far in the Colossus wonder.

[Peaster]

I played 2.42, and am willing to join Grigor's MGE team or not. All I ask is a little RCC.

I think RJM asked in the other thread whether black-clicking etc is legal... (?)...I didn't do it, but don't mind if others do. Also, I don't use utilities, but I took E's hint about the hidden special.

4000BC - Cardiff. I will follow Paul's advice and go for BW, then Monarchy.
3950BC - hut 50g (didn't notice this makes the c1 trick possible).
3900BC - I rush a warrior for 8g (and repeat this for 2nd w). I don't see any urgency to irrigate, so my settler is exploring the river system (but finds nothing).
3750BC - BW->CB.
3700BC - Have 2 warriors, and switch to Colossus.
3450BC - Growth to c2 and 5s/t. My settler is back, irrigating.
3350BC - CB->Alp
3250BC - hut 50g
3050BC - Barb horse attacks my busy settler, but loses.
Hut = WC.
2700BC - Ooops! Cardiff has reached size 3, and riots; warrior #2 is still away.
2550BC - Alph->C.Laws
2000BC - Warrior 2 has been back a few turns, so Elvis is retired and the silk is worked.

Will build Colossus and get Code of Laws in about 6 turns. Have 2 techs off the monarchy path. I think my biggest mistake was making only 2 warriors, and I am not sure hut-popping was wise. I feel a bit unlucky wrt huts, but was fairly lucky my settler survived.

[Peaster]

My save................

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Grigor
Sorry - as a Mac player I must use MGE because nobody can read my 2.42 saves.

So it looks like de facto teams (if only grigor vs. the Civ2 world...)

Why don't you play it in MGE and if we vote for one of your saves, we switch and old fogeys such as me will just have to put up with finding the CD and substituting it for our favourite music CD. (I assume that you can load the 2.42 saves into MGE ) That should allow you to join in any discussion or voting.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Grigor]

The MGE team is off to an absurdly rocky start:

Initial observations: Whales means size 1 settler not possible. OTOH, building Warrior - warrior - settler will allow exploration and still do the jump to size 3 when the city again reaches size 2. Clearly this site needs some settler work by our extra NONE. Road and Mine the special, make 2 rivered forests, irrigate. Lots of that needs to happen early, so the extra settler will be useful. The big issue in OCC will be managing trade. We are at (9,45) on Continent 3. Must look up trade delivery expectations in GL. (ha)


4000BC Found on the site. I don't trust exploration.
3950 Resarching BW as in my recollection of Smash's games long ago - the idea is to start building Colossus really fast.

Wait! A hut! maybe I will get my size 1 settler after all! hut: barbs. Oops...
3900* Horse kills NONE settler. This is not going well.
3850 Looks like warrior will come online in time.
3800 Warrior built, and fortifies. I am now safe from barbs.

3750 BW=>Alph
3300* Build settler. This may be a terrible plan.
3250 Alph=>Writing (Republic plan)
3050 hidden special site roaded. Exploration warrior sallies forth
2950 The same injured barb horse reappears. Evidently, Barbs never rest.
2850 Barb horse immolates on sturdy warrior.
2800 Oh - the explorer finds the site I really wanted. Whale, corn, spice - pretty juicy. I hope somebody else finds it.

2650 Size 2. Barbs appear in NE. Start Colossus. The hidden special irrigated to Forest. Wait - No Special! I must have done the wrong square...Oh well, it needed to be done anyway.
2500* Writing=>CoL

2300* Mining the second hidden special square.

2050 Barb Pirates land right next door. Uh-Oh. And I just posted a serious dissertation about haw we no longer worry about Barbs in the early game.
2000 They kill my settler. What a spectacularly disastrous turnset!

But here it is anyway.

[solo]

I also have MGE and could switch to that if we continue from an MGE save. Of course, those only having MGE can use either kind of save.

Anyone with 2.42 but without MGE? If so, why not pick up a cheap copy of MGE? It's worth having just for the MP feature.

[rjmatsleepers]

Well I seem to be the only one who opted to explore. I think my site is better (but in the imortal words of Mandy Rice-Davis, I would wouldn't I?)

My turnset was uneventful (a mini log follows) except for an intrusion by a couple of barb archers. I had bad luck with the first hut, but the secon enabled me to get to monarchy quicker than I was expecting. I should have put a mine on the wine hill insted of faffing around with so much irrigation, but no long term harm done.

4000 BC
Great starting position, but I suppose I better explore a bit.

3950 BC
Pop a hut for 25 gold

3800 BC
Possible city site discovered

3750 BC
Three specials including a whale and a wine hill - looking good.

3700 BC
Cardiff founded. Start researching alphabet

3600 BC
It's a 4 special site with some spice as well!

3500 BC
Alphabet -> code of laws

3200 BC
Get Horseback riding from a hut at the second attempt - advanced tribe the first time.

2950 BC
Code of laws -> ceremonial burial

2500 BC
Ceremonial burial -> monarchy

2000 BC
Monarchy -> bronze working

[Grigor]

No contest - RJM has clobbered us.

Especially me.

[solo]

I've compared the saves posted so far:

Grigor: Better luck in the next series. Too many disasters to overcome.

Peaster: Best progress on the Colossus, but will be too late to Monarchy to compare favorably. Some bad luck here with an unwanted tech.

RJM: Best site, which will pay off later on. Early Monarchy, too, which makes this save the best contender so far. Only problems are lack of anything good to build for a while and having Warrior Code hurts research a bit.

Myself: My library keeps my research equal to RJM's pace at 7 beakers a turn, and I have made good progress building the Colossus. No unwanted techs so far, either. I will get Republic earlier and will probably win the race to Trade.

So far I see it as a tossup between RJM and myself, but we must wait for Elephant and other players to reach 2000 BC.

I will attach my save again, using a more friendly file name that will not accidently overwrite the cu_b2000's of other players downloading it.

[Peaster]

Thanks for your comments, solo. Please feel free to correct any mistakes you see in my logs or remarks.

I tentatively conclude that playing OCC means you take some risks - your settler is exposed to barbs, you should tip huts, and it isn't easy to decide whether to explore for better sites. I guess the tech path is pretty flexible, since solo and RJM didn't follow Paul's advice about BW first.

I wonder if using my extra settler to explore for huts was a bad idea...not sure whether the terraforming work is urgent or not.

[rjmatsleepers]

I think the save from Grigor is 3950 BC not 2000 BC. Can you re-post it? Are we expecting any other contributions? (I've just noticed that the start position has only been downloaded 4 times, so unless elephant is planning to join us, it doesn't look like there will be many others in the first round.)

As far as bronze working is concerned, I'm used to treating it as an off path tech on route to monarchy. Getting horse riding from the hut acted as the off path tech instead. The net result is discovering monarchy at the cost of no progress towards colossus.

As far as exploring with settlers is concerned, I think the non settler is too valuable to risk losing to barbs from hut. Of course, this does mean that you may miss some huts. (Actually AFAIK, there's no problem tipping huts before founding the city.)

RJM at Sleeper's

[Elephant]

Well, here's mine:

4000bc: explore east along river
3950bc: Hut(14,44): Archer
3800bc: found CARDIFF at 4x
3600bc: ALPHABET; start CoL
3450bc: disband Archer for...
3400bc: Size1 Settler!
3200bc: 1st Warrior
3150bc: CARDIFF size 2
CODE LAWS; start Write (7t)
3000bc: join Size1Settler to CARDIFF size 3; chg 0.5.5
WLTED! chg 0.4.6 4t
2900bc: 27g,25b,4t
WRITING: start CerBur
2800bc: 1st Diplomat
2600bc: 19g,45b,6t
Tacitus MOST POWERFUL #7=Celts
CER-BUR; start Mon
2550bc: 25g,0b,20t@3b/60b
...Hut(28,40): 50g
2nd Dip
2300bc: 81g,40b,6t
...CARDIFF size 4
2250bc: 81g,50b,6t
MONARCHY (missed by 1-@#$%&*!!); start Bro
2100bc: 81g,22b,7t
REVOLT-MONARCHY! chg 0.3.7
2050bc: 81g,22b,6t@13b
WLTKD!
2000bc: 81g,35b,6t

CARDIFF is size 4, and is 3 turns from building a
Library (or RBing it immediately). A pesky Barb
Archer is lurking to the west, heading southward.
I did not execute my moves in 2000BC, as I've got
two unpopped huts each with a Dip next door. I'm
half-way to Bronze, having used my off-path tech
to get Writing (but declined the Republic path for
now). Along the way I roaded and mined the Wine,
too.

The save: