Not OCC, but FCC or SCC (4/5/6/?)

coming from an expansionist background, I've found OCC actually easier than TCC/FCC/SCC. The main reason for that is that in OCC, you have several special condions that don't apply in any other games. The main one of course is Shakespeare's Theatre eliminating any possibility of ever having an unhappy citizen in your civilization. Remove the unhappiness factor and OCC on diety actually becomes somewhat easier than in other levels because of your reliance on AI gifts. Other factors involve more skewed demographics so that you appear weaker or stronger than you should to the AI.

Anyway, to take a stab at a difficulty relationship, i would say it is parabolic (quadratic), at least from the perfectionist standpoint, with the most difficult being around 2-3 cities since you no longer have the OCC special advantages, and yet don't have the power and flexability of larger civs.

From an expansionist/conqueror standpoint, i would venture that it is logarithmic, since it is very difficult to conquer with only 1 city, but there is a lot of diminishing returns for each new city after a while.

Of course since there are so many different ways to play and win the game, you really have to stick to a single approach, or your hardness graph will turn out to be rather flat (linear)

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April Cantor: Sire, in order to expand further we must first gain favor of the King

SCG: darn, I've never really got the hang of that tribute thing, guess it will be a long time until i make prince

*goes off and starts gifting gold and techs*

I just played a game with eight cities (plus the random useless captured one that I starved out). Normally I do 12, and found this to be much more challenging.*

My question is, where are the various cut-off points for difficulty? I realize that the level of challenge is hard to quatify, But I can say that using 8 cities instead of 12 made the game at least 33% "harder." Is there a linear/quadradic/logrythmic relationship (don't ask me what the last two mean)?

I know I should try OCC, but as much as I have the overwhelming need to micro-manage (thus never having >12 cities) that is one challenge I can't take.

*I was the Romans and used the Europe map with the Germans, English, Persians and Egyptians. I wanted everyone to have some room to start, but the Egyptians sort of got screwed. The poms took all of France and threatened Berlin, but by the mid-1700s the Germans drove them off the continent.

The Perisans did well, but got militaristic in a bad way. They picked on my allies the Egypitans and so I had to stop them. Of course, all I had to do was take their only med-access city; they quickly changed direction. They also wasted a lot of troops defending a few far-flung cites in Russia. Being fundy aslo hurt.

The only thing that kept the huge sprawling German empire from beating me in the space race was that they did not discover Supercondutor in time.

But it was also a very fun game. My small elite army is taking Germany apart as 20K Romans spend 9.3 years en route to Chiron/Planet.
[This message has been edited by n.c. (edited August 28, 2000).]

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