OCC complete - the diary of a newbie

[freshman]

I did it - my very first game completion - and it happened to be the Basic OCC. I got to familiarize myself with the technologies, secret projects, improvements, eco-damage, specialists, terraforming, and diplomacy.
Let me tell you here and now - this is the best computer game I've ever played. I was awestruck with the gameplay, storyline, and movies. I really felt as though I had transcended when I won. I don't know how poor my result was because I have nothing to gauge against, but I transcended in 2379 on a medium map, Transcend level. I thought I would share some of my experiences here for those interested starting a game of OCC; and also to remind veterans of what a first game feels like (like a virgin).

First of all - the rules I used were
1) keep city given at beginning - add second colony pod to it (I got lucky - on river - port city)
2) only legal units to build: probes, transports, supply, formers
3) probes can bribe units and cities - any units gotten from bribes, gifts, captures can be kept - and even upgraded
4) cities captured/bought must be given away, starved, or destroyed (atrocity!)
5) play at Transcend level
6) build 16 Secret Projects
7) win by transcendence

-oh and I used SMAC - I don't have SMAX. In preparation for this game, I had played a handful of OCC with CivII - so that's my background.

I played Morgan, and found him extremely versatile in terms of the different combinations of social engineering I could use. The +1 econ given intrinsic to him meant I could run Wealth alone for the +1 energy/square; I did play him in character and ran FM/Wealth for a while, but +4 versus +2 economy doesn't make a big difference in energy (except in the beginning) when you only have one city. I also made sure to get Merchant Exchange, essential to transcending with one city IMHO. At one point in the game I abandoned FM to Green for two reasons: 6x eco-damage really brings on the worms when you haven't yet discovered Tree-Farms, and the Gaians were a little snippy with me (they refused to talk to me, and only wished to mention they'd have no problem wiping me off the face of the planet). Besides I could still sustain the +1 energy per square which is the important thing. At another point in the game I wanted to befriend UoP because Zak was taking out my supply crawlers, so I switched from Wealth to Knowledge. I was still able to maintain +1 energy/square without EITHER FM OR Wealth, by simply running a Golden Age with using only 10% Psyc allocation. Now I had a good planet rating, +20% research, AND +1energy/square. The GA also pop-boomed me up - but I kept it going even after I'd maxed my pop. But more importantly, the Gaians and UoP left me alone - and peaceful neighbors are key to playing OCC.

I knew of the supply crawler's importance (akin to a pop-boom in terms of resources) and so I beelined for IA. Then I beelined to getting energy restrictions lifted. Then I started pulling in 5 energy per square from building Tidal Harnesses. This was my first time using supply crawlers, (since CivII has nothing like them), and I was kind of dreading moving them around and terraforming (it seemed like it would be 70% of the gameplay doing this kind of stuff and I feared it might get tedious.) However, it wasn't too bad - and I even used the crawler crawl to get immediate benefit of putting them in place. I turned out I only needed about 30 or 40 of them the whole game to get 1 turn advances near the end.

Then things started to get interesting. Eco-damage made sea levels rise. My base was in danger of sinking so I terraformed an adjacent square up - but was disappointed that it didn't raise my city square. After I found out about elevation levels needing to be within +/-1 level with adjacent squares, I tried to raise again - but couldn't because territory issues with my Pact-mate. Luckily my base didn't sink (had a Pressure Dome just in case) but got "washed" instead. I learned what causes washing too. Nothing like this ever happens in Civ II. A lot of my land got washed because a river got re-routed around my lifted square and created newly endangered squares. I lost a borehole too. It took some time to re-form my land - and I really felt that sense of challenge weighing on me. A good game should be challenging. As a programmer and a mathematician, I understand and can truly appreciate some of the algorithms that must have been used to deal with sea-rises, river-reroutings, washing, etc... There are a lot of things to update after major land changes. It sent chills up and down my spine - I could very well be playing the best game ever written, I thought.

Anyway - that wasn't the end of the challenge. Soon UoP was taking out my energy farm with Needlejets. I had to weigh whether or not to upgrade them to armored supply crawlers, replace them, or retreat temporarily. I chose to retreat my farm, then play out my hand diplomatically. I also thought about buying his city out to stop it from being a nearby airport to my farm - but unfortunately Zak cleverly got Hunter Seeker. Challenge = FUN!! I heard about setting up SE settings to make friends. Unfortunately that wasn't enough - because Zak refused to talk to me even after I switched to Knowledge. The AI seems to have a need to give you a demonstration of their military power, then talk to you and demand stuff before making friends. So I let him take out some more units - then he talked to me and I played the weak submissive part giving into his demands for peace's sake.

Shortly after, the council overwhelmingly voted in the solar shade. My entire energy farm was now considered endangered. And you can't repeal it - you can only increase it. Terraform down couldn't solve the problem - pact trouble again. So I was only able to reposition 4 out of 20 supplies before I lost them. My city also lost its status as being a port city. I'd have to energy farm forests at 4 energy each (I had Hybrid forests). So I had to rebuild yet again.

The rest of the game went on relatively smoothly - I beelined for research improvements and SP's so that I could get quicker advances. I had a few minor attacks from Miriam - but my pactmate Santiago - who I had surrounding me, kept a nice buffer and protection. I ran low eco-damage and so my worm troubles disappeared; 30 mineral production seemed sufficient to pump out supply crawlers and start SPs up. Once I had an energy farm, cash was plentiful, and so SPs were easy to buy.

I didn't know that Voice and Ascent were both SPs needed. I also thought that Transcendent Thought tech was the goal for transcendence - so I researched the whole tree. Now I know that the Ascent SP is the true goal. The movies for these SPs are simply awesome. The most silly movie IMHO is the movie for the Citizen's Defense (a cartoon).

There were about a billion cool things I learned from playing and reading stuff here on Apolyton; but suffice to say, there is a new SMAC addict amongst you now.

And to all you CivII players out there - come and see for yourselves - you'll develop a new love.

[mark13]

Wow - first off, congratulations! And, to be honest, I hadn't considered that Morgan would be a viable candidate for an OCC attempt. The pop limitations had always made him a 'tough' OCC player - you've certainly shown us the way there

I'll tell you what else struck me when I tried a Civ2 OCC - it's a completely different game. The AI is more aggressive in SMAC, and the food can be hard to come by until tree farms - though you do have one big equalizer - crawlers.

Still - huge congratulations - I remember what an experience my first OCC was

[RedFred]

Great work! I have had a few OCC successes but NO WAY that I would win on the very first SMAC game. Heck, I wouldn't even attempt it! I didn't even attempt Transcend level for several games.

On regular-sized worlds, you should be able to get your transcend time down in future attempts. My range has been in the 2310 to 2330 range for OCC in SMACX.

On repealing solar shade, voting to melt the icecaps can approximately negate it. Or you might just want to crank your eco-damage up a little for a similar effect.

[freshman]

I would agree that CivII OCC and SMAC OCC are mostly different but there are a suprising amount of common principles and heuristics.
1) economy economy economy:
build up improvements to support a roaring economy as early as possible - use money to rush improvements and SPs
2) peace peace peace
can't afford to have war
3) resources resources resources
pop-boom, supply crawl as soon as possible
4) go for techs which support the above 3 ASAP

Am I bold in playing my first SMAC game as an OCC? Maybe. But, hey - its just a game and I'm not going to suffer if I loose - so why not just go all out and learn a few things along the way. Besides I had the sum of all the knowledge here at Apolyton to give me pointers along the way - so I really wasn't alone

In a way, playing OCC seems easier because I can get improvements much more quickly and I don't have to think about how to spread my resources over more than one base. The dynamics are a little different - SPs which improve all bases moderately aren't as important as SPs which improve only the one base, but much more significantly. Also, I only have to deal with 1 energy farm. I have only one front to defend. SE choices are more clear, because there's only one base to consider and its effects are a little more clear cut.

I had a number of difficulties because it was my first time. I am confident that I can do it in much less time. I forgot to cash in my supply crawlers to help out with Ascent - and so that ate up about 4 turns instead of doing it in 1. The rebuilding my energy farms really ate into my game. I have more of a sense of what to expect diplomatically and planet wise to stem these negative effects next time. Also, next time I won't research the whole friken tree!

[mark13]

Well, the thing to focus on in an OCC is production, I think. In the early game especially, you're looking at having at least 15 mins per base to start throwing up infrastructure As cash can be thin on the ground (with most of your resources going to research) you're going to have to build most things manually. And in an OCC, you have to build everything.

Having said all that, pop booming can be done fairly effectively early on. Indeed, one OCC I played as the Gaians - after PlanNet, went straight for EthCalc, (Demo/Planned) threw a creche up, and I was away - pop boom before 2135. I was even elected Planetary Governor in that particular game

[freshman]

mark,
come to think of it I think you hit upon the biggest difference between CivII and SMAC with OCC - and I was blind to it in my game. In Civ, you could get external gold via caravans, barbs, and alliances - and use it for rushing. In SMAC there is less access to free external gold - though there is "borrowing". In Civ, I would fuel my expansion by lowering science rates so that I could rush buy improvements, then jacked them back up again after major science improvements had been built.

In this SMAC game I played, I kept science roughly at 50% for a long time because I didn't want to live with inefficiency. The money I got came in handy - but I think I was too stingy with my science levels. The money I was pulling in represented turn potential I was wasting. Next time I'll live with less money - and I'll put more efforts into actually building stuff with minerals - should give me a faster game overall. I need to choose my science rate so that I don't waste research points. I played very loosly - I'm not sure which research rates to believe : the city view, the science-advisor-view, or the social-engineering-view.

[Googlie]

There's no inefficiency penalty for a headquarters base, and with OCC, your one base is the HQ base (Distance from the HQ is a key multiplier, and where distance = 0, inefficiency = 0)

G.

[mark13]

The problem is, even with an OCC, efficiency means you can toggle your allocations. Having less than about +2 efficiency means you are effectively paralysed to 50/0/50 - not always desirable.

[Googlie]

But the inefficiency numbers you see in the 'toggle window" (ie in red, -12% etc etc) are meaningless in an OCC environment - these percentages are the raw percent energy loss to inefficiency before applying the formula per base. As the HQ base is a zero-loss formula, no efficiency is actually lost when applying those raw figures to the HQ (or OCC) base.

(That's why it nearly always makes sense to make your HQ your super science city - or to change your HQ to your SCC if it isn't)

[mark13]

Is it really? Jeez....why didn't anyone ever tell me this?

Off to check it....

[freshman]

This is untrue. Play any OCC. Have less than +2 efficiency. Crank up science to 100% or so. Look at your city view. Next to the allocations list, under the "bonus" category you'll see a MINUS value being subtracted off. Do the same with energy, you'll also see a MINUS value being subtracted. You still must live with inefficiency even with your headquarters. Even if you have labs or an energy grid, the bonus is less than 50% because of inefficiency. This does go away when you raise your efficiency rating through SE settings, however.

[mark13]

Yep, I can verify what Freshman has just said - it is not the case. I had my doubts, to be honest, because I remember losing a lot of energy to inefficiency in one of my Lal OCCs...

[freshman]

IIRC there are two types of inefficiency mentioned in the manual.
.

Theres:
1) raw energy lost
2) high allocation settings inefficiency

I think that the one type 1 DOES go away in the city with headquarters, but that type 2 is still affected

[mark13]

Getting back on-topic tried an OCC as the PKs today - and had forgotten how hard it was! There I was, strolling along....when Miriam shows up with three elite 4-2-2 rovers. Suffice it to say, I didn't last long

Which makes the achievement all the more remarkable to try your first game as an OCC

[freshman]

I don't want to dimish to others that just because I was successful doesn't mean it wasn't hard - it most certainly was. I've just finished my second game ever - also OCC this time with UoP in 2348. Still haven't found a way to build Ascent in 1 turn yet, so that eats up a few turns. I thought I was going to meet the advanced challenge by not even building any native units, but I had to break down to fend off worms which were eating into my farm.

In fact, I have to say, the thing I find the most challenging with OCC is maintaining an energy farm. So many things seem to hinder it: worms, AI making a base smack in the middle and forcing you out, sea level changes, AI attacking it.
I haven't as yet had problems with the AI taking on my base.
This last game, I had a huge problem keeping a consistent energy farm, and near the end I only had 4 crawlers! Thank god my transcendi were giving me an advance every 2 turns - that has really opened my eyes to a specialist approach!