Newbie OCCer-- some questions

[cbn]

I played OCC games to completion twice this weekend with landings in 1931 (first attempt) and 1926 with a 15-3-3-1-1-1 spaceship.( standard small world /deity/raging hordes/ 7 civs)-- My second attempt was actually a worse start position so I was happy with the improvement in landing time. I made some stupid mistakes in each game ( popping a hut, finding a tech and finding myself six turns further away from discovering monarchy, -- incrementally rushbuilding caravans but on two occassions finding I had actually built cannons or something equally useless) so I can see how simply paying better attention would shave some years off my score.

I wanted to try again but for about 10 straight attempts I could not find a decent city site (wandering till about 2000BC). As a minimum I look for at least 4 river squares, at least 3 specials, and no more than 4 of desert,glacier, mountain etc.(maybe I am too particular and should try a game with a not-so-good start). Based on these games I have some questions (I read the Paulicy and related threads before my OCC attemps but don't remember these points and would appreciate some guidance.


1. Would customizing the world (making it wetter/older etc) lead to a greater chance of a good city site.

2. Does the CIV you choose make any difference to whether you get a good starting position? I play as Romans.

3. Should you place your city on a coast so that ships may be built? In both my games the good city site was inland and I had to bribe a ship (would have bribed more but the Barb ships kept an unit inside and wouldn't disembark-- AI civs ships never seemed to come near).

4. Are alliances important? I stayed out of them while in Monarchy, keeping peaceful with everyone and getting gifts of 50-150 gold from pretty much all the AI every second or third time I asked.

In my second attempt I allied with one civ (Americans)to keep the gifts coming once I hit republic-- but this allowed this civ to build cities closer than I liked. ( I had a ZOC screen of NON units about 2-6 squares out fron the edge of my city radius.

5. I learned about the specials pattern and mining grasslands for specials here (Thanks Civvers). Is a special ever "hidden" by anything other than grassland??

6. I gifted techs like crazy to start, refusing to take any in return until I got monarchy. I then traded and gifted about two thirds of the way up the tech tree. I then stopped gifting and only traded (careful not to give up space flight techs or their predecessors). Is there a proper time to stop gifting techs?


As you can tell by my questions I am pretty new at this OCC thing. Any help would be greatly appreciated

[SCG]

might not hurt to periodically reread paul's page, http://members.home.nl/paulvdb/occ.htm

1) sometimes customizing of the world will help. There have been a couple threads here that discuss that (somewhere in the stratagy forum anyway - did you reset it so you view all topics instead of just hte last 10 days?)

2) Romans and other white civs get first random picks, so yes, but you already are choosing white

3) According to Paul, sea is neutral (and above desert/mountain etc). You'll see that whales are considered one of the best specials in any case. They provide good trade and eventially decent food and production.

4) Alliances can chop centuries off your landing dates, although it sounds like you are managing reasonably well giftwise without them. In terms of city building, if you have an alliance, their units can't take away control of your land if you are already working a particular tile.

5) only grasslands can hide specials, since only grasslands don't have a special terrain type.

6) you probably have a better grasp of how to trade techs than i do - i keep accepting trades early on and it takes me millinia to get to monarchy I have yet to figure out when to stop gifting, and while i stop earlier than you do for the most part, I generally have to research several techs (feudalism/chivalry etc) that others can trade for. Most people will avoid gifting combustion until they have discovered flight to keep the colossus in effect.

have you tried any of the comparison games or fortnight games yet? playing them and then reading others' logs afterwards can often show why people do certain things, if not why they discovered certain things in a particular order.

[Scouse Gits]

I think SCG said it all - most succinct summary SCG.
My only addition - later in the game it is much harder to achieve alliances so it is my style to go all out for alliances very early (preferably before the AI has met itself) and then hang on to them if at all possible
Good civin'

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Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor

[cbn]

Thanks SCG and Scouse Gits

I appreciate the help from more experienced players. I will continue to read all the old threads since they contain SO MUCH information. The OCC games I mentioned were the first two I ever tried so I think I will try SCG's advice and try a comparison game. The logs of others will show where I might be going wrong.

One thing that I am still not clear on is whether there is a clear point when people stop gifting techs. I gifted all techs to all Civs until I was a fair distance up the tree (avoiding gifting the prereqs to Flight since I wanted to keep Collossus). This allowed me to trade for a tech or two that I had bypassed in my beelines to certain goals. However I do not want to assist the AI too close to the space techs or some key military ones since its greater numbers of cities (and various ways to cheat) could be decisive