What do you think about another type of OCC?

[Harovan]

Not the One City Challenge. The One Civ Challenge. I was inspired for this idea by the What is seed thread, and it was influenced by the Tarzan PBEM.

What would happen, if we play a game with only one civ. Conquest victory would have to be turned off. I tried it, it works. Now you may ask, what would be the point of such a game? I'll tell it to you:

- The game would have to be played on a big map. I'm thinking of a large pangea or something like that, so you have a lot of space.
- The Tarzan PBEM mod would have to be applied, may be a bit watered down, so it's hard to found many cities, and tactical choice is added.
- The game would be played with raging barbarians, who are your enemies.

So far it sounds pretty easy, doesn't it? But...

- Normal barbarians are Riflemen, advanced barbarians are Cavalry. May be watered down to Musketmen/Knights, but I wouldn't go below. May be we create 2 mods, the "normal" mod and the "ironman" mod?
- It should be played with PtW, as barbarians there are a huge nuisance, while Conquests barbarians are, unfortunately, complete pushovers.

So prepare to be attacked, hampered, pillaged and ravished by raging hordes of units, which you won't be able to fight for a very long time. Feel like the native Americans did, in their time. Survive this nightmare and win a cultural victory. There's no competition, but you got to research all these techs needed for the improvements and wonders you need on a reasonable rate. Resources will be scarce (PtW level, but only one civ) and widespread, so the supply will be hard to secure.

How does this sound? Anyone up for it?

[Mountain Sage]

Did you try it first?
The obvious drawback is that you won't make any money (stolen).
If the barbs also pillage the city tiles, you can forget about even putting a mine or a road.
Which level do we play?
What about Barbs galleys? Ironclad as 'normal', BB as advanced?
What's the Tarzan PBEM mod?

Might be fun...

[Harovan]

I didn't play far into it yet, it's just an idea. I played a few turns to check, if the game doesn't interrupt it and claim a conquest, and it didn't. Even if it did, we could make it working by giving some AI a 1 tile island without resources, deny it access to ships and forget it.

The level doesn't play a role, since corruption will be rigged anyway and there's no AI competitor to get advantages. I would, however, prefer to see the combat bonus against barbarians well toned down, may be even set to zero, which can be edited.

There are no advanced barbarian ships. I'd prefer them to be privateers. May be even frigates, so they can bombard you.

The Tarzan mod adds wheeled to all fastmovers, forbids settling anywhere except grassland, plains and floodplains (although for this game I'd prefer to allow hills, too), doesn't allow planting, chopping and cleaning wetlands, decreases distance corruption, but increases rank corruption and has you pay taxes for every citizen (not only units), so your expansion is hampered and you have to think well if you want to found that additional city or not.

[Arrian]

So the idea would be to weather the storm of the barbs and manage to build up enough to hit domination? Oh, no, your post says cultural...

Only I'd imagine that wouldn't actually be that hard. If you manage to found 1 ring of cities around your capital, and then have your capital do nothing but build cultural things while the outer ring absorbs the barbarian beating, you would win eventually. I think making the player survive and then push back the barbs to claim 66% of the land is more interesting.

Raging with rifles/cav

No point in building any sort of military, or saving any money. Anything you sent out to fight would be slaughtered, any money would be stolen. The main issue is how to expand and develop terrain when you've no hope of protecting your settlers and workers?

I wish there were more than 2 types of barb land units. It would be cool to have more of a progression.

Interesting idea, though...

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Oh, just read the second post...

I would, however, prefer to see the combat bonus against barbarians well toned down, may be even set to zero, which can be edited.

There are no advanced barbarian ships. I'd prefer them to be privateers. May be even frigates, so they can bombard you.

The Tarzan mod adds wheeled to all fastmovers, forbids settling anywhere except grassland, plains and floodplains (although for this game I'd prefer to allow hills, too), doesn't allow planting, chopping and cleaning wetlands, decreases distance corruption, but increases rank corruption and has you pay taxes for every citizen (not only units), so your expansion is hampered and you have to think well if you want to found that additional city or not.

If you turn off the combat bonus vs. barbs, isn't even your "wimpy" choice of musket/knight too tough?

Is there any way to give the barbs regular units instead of conscripts? If so, you could go with swordsmen/mounted warriors with zero combat bonus. That would still be very difficult to deal with, but somehow seems better than 2hp rifles & cav.

Oh, by the way, since the trigger for barb uprisings is 2 civs reaching a new age, this scenario wouldn't have uprisings, correct? Probably a good thing, but if you want them in, you should probably add that AI civ on a 1-tile island w/o access to resources, but give them great trade tiles (built on gold hill, maybe give them 1 more tile and have it be another gold hill) and make them seafaring/commercial for the stacked commerce bonus to the city tile. They will probably still lag behind the player, but so much the better, giving the player a little time to maybe muster some pikes before all hell breaks loose.

-Arrian

p.s. Personally, I'd very much dislike the rules against terraforming wetland and the changes to corruption and whatnot (taxes on citizens?). But to each their own.

[Harovan]

You can't exactly build many cities, because the mod makes each citizen (laborer or specialist) cost money. So all these one-gold cities are going to bankrupt you if you let them grow, and if not there's not much of a point to build them (by the way I forgot... can barbarian raids destroy improvements? I think they can...)

I haven't put much effort into the game balance yet, so it's possible this game is a complete idiocy (it probably is). However, if I play it, I wouldn't play it in some cheesy way, but try to play it like a true hero.

[Arrian]

If you have no money, then the barbs will nail pop points and improvements, yeah.

In the PTW, with idea FP/Palace placement (in this case, that would mean a palace jump via disbanding the capital), you can control 1/2 the world and not have any totally corrupt towns. EDIT: nevermind, you mentioned the mod changes corruption, so my experience with normal PTW is invalid.

That 1 gold upkeep for each citizen is ROUGH.

-Arrian

[Harovan]

I wouldn't play it the easiest way, but probably the way it provides a maximum of fun. Without fun, there wouldn't be a point to play it at all. So I would try to be a valiant hearted indian chieftain, who fights the hordes of palefaces and longknives. May be I'd even play the Iroquois.

After getting a core of 3-4 cities, I would try to monitor my closer environment, so that there can't spawn encampments, that threaten my core directly. Occasional wanderers I'd try to fend off with mobile troops of defenders and bombardement units, moving on special built radial roads. As fearsome as these attackers are, they can't kill more than one unit per turn, so if I bring on enough units, I can redline their remainders the next turn and try to kill at least a few of them.

I don't know if this would work. It needs to be made playable and enjoyable, maybe by adding free unit support to some degree. I will tinker with it.

[Arrian]

I'd be interested to see the results of your tinkering, even if I never decide to play along.

-Arrian

[zorbop]

Finally, this may provide a good use for barricades and fortresses. I think i would build a ring of them around my main cities and plant a few tough units on each one. I would be greek, of course, so no real need to get other recources. All i need is culture to win, and hopilites/riflemen could hold of the barbs.

[Mountain Sage]

Can you try to put put a game together (map and rules, maybe on a small map). We could then give it a try and see how things evolve...

[Harovan]

I played into it yesterday for a while with the Iroquois. The Tarzan rule (1 gold per citizen) was very harsh. I got lucky twice, getting a city from my first hut, and a city (even ok placed) a while later. I played till ~2000BC without having seen a single barbarian. Then I ran out of time. I played at regent difficulty (2 content citizens), with combat bonus vs barbarians set to 0%. So far it didn't play out very well.

[GodKing]

You can also make the UU from some unused civ(s) into special units for barbs. Mod the barb anyway you like into the so called perfect unit.

Sorry to see that the concept didn't work. would have been interesting.