ICS & OCC tougher in civ3

[Inverse Icarus]

it might be fun to play as esypt on the world map against one AI civ (americans) and try to get all the resources in Europe/Africa/Asia with only one city

[Bill3000]

I know this may seem a bit unorthodox, but OCC is One City Challage. Colonies are not cities: Couldn't you just use colonies throughout the world to get resources?

[Skanky Burns]

True, but each colony costs one pop point, not to meantion that they all have to be connected to you city by road (unless you use another civ's ariport/harbour perhaps), each resource guarded from barbarians and other civs, and all the roads kept in good shape from the barbarians.

Not impossible, granted, but nevertheless much more difficult than in Civ 2

[Nemo]

i must have missed a few threads somewhere. but, what is OCC?

[Executor]

ICS is unstoppable. Even if democracy + We Love the President no longer causes your population to skyrocket, I'll just use size 3 cities to build settlers. Since they're small, they will return to their former size faster than losing 2 citizens from a size 25 city.

Originally posted by Nemo
i must have missed a few threads somewhere. but, what is OCC?

I'd like to know too.

[Sabre2th]

OCC = One City Challenge

[Father Beast]

something from the computer games magazine thread:

After a city reaches 100,000 cultural points, it achieves a cultural victory, if that is allowed. that could be another way to OCC. forget the starship, just become culturally magnificent (which you generally do on the way to AC anyway).

on another point, we don't know what happens when a colony of yours is engulfed by another civ's culture radius. is it disbanded, or does it continue. can BOTH of you draw off it then?

I can see this running into problems if you're doing an OCC and have colonies all over the place to supply your city. you could put a defender in each one, but that would be difficult to maintain as they become islands surrounded by another culture. especially if that phalanx in there is way outclassed. leos may become a neccessary wonder.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by connorkimbro
I love it when people say something is impossible, and then proving them wrong.

Originally posted by Executor
ICS is unstoppable

OCC and ICS dont have to be "impossible" or "unstoppable" - It just have to be "not worthwhile", or "not justifiable".

You play the game how ever you want, and let others play the game how they want.

If some veteran-civers want to play OCC successfully on cheftain-levels, thats fine by me. But WHY should this be possible on emperor- an deity-levels? I think this OCC-enabling request of yours is rather absurd - dont you want a more challenging AI on the 2-3 highest levels? Dont you want to be surprised by the fact that your old sleepwalk-routine Civ-2-strategies perhaps doesnt work anymore? (God forbid!)

Personally, I want to be surprised. Dont you?

Artificial rules to correct non-existant problems are needless.

There is nothing more artificiall then OCC in multiplayer games. And what is possible or not in MP-games should be the leadstar in SP-games as well, as much as possible.

Originally posted by Father Beast
After a city reaches 100,000 cultural points, it achieves a cultural victory, if that is allowed. that could be another way to OCC.

You cannot build multiple culture-improving city-improvements of one and the same type, in an 1 city-empire. Only one library; only one church, and so one, is allowed per city. So it looks like your neighbor 15+ city-empire, with 15+ librarys and 15+ churches automatically can produce both more cultural points and much faster.

Im however all positive to the idea of adding anti-BAB (bigger always better) measures in Civ-3. Hopefully small 6-12 city-empires is compensated by being allowed to grow really large cities, with less happiness-problems. But everything within reasonable limits, of course. Game-winning OCC-empires is just plain ridicules - at least on higher game-levels.

[JellyDonut]

Originally posted by Ralf
You cannot build multiple culture-improving city-improvements of one and the same type, in an 1 city-empire. Only one library; only one church, and so one, is allowed per city. So it looks like your neighbor 15+ city-empire, with 15+ librarys and 15+ churches automatically can produce both more cultural points and much faster.

As I see it, it's like science in Civ 2. With the right city improvements and wonders in your city, the one city can generate huge numbers of beakers, surpassing a good-sized empire in getting techs. In Civ 3, if you build a few wonders and improvements early on, they produce more culture as time passes, keeping in line with the exponentially increasing culture growth numbers. The culture victory is not only tempting, but perhaps the preferred way of winning OCC. You don't have to worry about taking the direct path to Space Flight or increasing production to build spaceship parts, just getting a number to 100,000.

[Edward]

Originally posted by Ralf
You cannot build multiple culture-improving city-improvements of one and the same type, in an 1 city-empire. Only one library; only one church, and so one, is allowed per city. So it looks like your neighbor 15+ city-empire, with 15+ librarys and 15+ churches automatically can produce both more cultural points and much faster.

One could similarly say that in Civ2, you cannot build multiple science city-improvements of one and the same type in a 1-city empire. Only one library, only one university, and so on, is allowed per city. So it looks like your neighbor 15+ city empire, with 15+ libraries and 15+ universities can automatically produce more science beakers and do so much more quickly...

Yet somehow people are still successful at Civ2 OCC. Just as any security system is defeatable, any set of game rules is corruptible. (Wait! I meant to say any set of game rules can be elegantly mastered...)

[Inverse Icarus]

occ, one city challange.

build one city, and improve the terrain asap, then pump out wonder after wonder.

you can get into space in the 1800s i believe.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Edward
One could similarly say that in Civ2,

The comparison with Civ-2 is simply not relevant since Civ-3 is an different and updated game in many ways.
Base your arguments from what you know from Civ-3 instead.

By the way - why no comments on below quote also?

If some veteran-civers want to play OCC successfully on cheftain-levels, thats fine by me. But WHY should this be possible on emperor- an deity-levels? I think this OCC-enabling request of yours is rather absurd - dont you want a more challenging AI on the 2-3 highest levels? Dont you want to be surprised by the fact that your old sleepwalk-routine Civ-2-strategies perhaps doesnt work anymore? (God forbid!)

Personally, I want to be surprised. Dont you?

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Ralf
If some veteran-civers want to play OCC successfully on cheftain-levels, thats fine by me. But WHY should this be possible on emperor- an deity-levels? I think this OCC-enabling request of yours is rather absurd - dont you want a more challenging AI on the 2-3 highest levels? Dont you want to be surprised by the fact that your old sleepwalk-routine Civ-2-strategies perhaps doesnt work anymore? (God forbid!)

Personally, I want to be surprised. Dont you? : confused:

Yes, i agree that the AI should make this impossible on higher levels.

There, you happy now??

[isaac brock]

do you need 100 000 culture points from one city? Thats what i thought, but I'm wrong two thirds of the time anyway, so...

[Edward]

Ralf responding to connorkimbro
If some veteran-civers want to play OCC successfully on cheftain-levels, thats fine by me. But WHY should this be possible on emperor- an deity-levels? I think this OCC-enabling request of yours is rather absurd - dont you want a more challenging AI on the 2-3 highest levels? Dont you want to be surprised by the fact that your old sleepwalk-routine Civ-2-strategies perhaps doesnt work anymore? (God forbid!)

Personally, I want to be surprised. Dont you?

Yes, I would like a new challenge that forces me to come up with new ways to play. I agree that it would be good if the AI (and game as a whole) were more challenging than in Civ2. I'm a little concerned that we've heard a lot about civilizations, units, graphics, etc. - but not a peep about the AI. Not even some PR hand-waving about how the AI is vastly improved. I'd much rather have a smarter AI than new graphics, units, techs, etc. I'll try and hold judgement until we get a chance to play Civ3.

I don't think connorkimbro was saying that he wanted the game to be designed so he'll still be able to win via OCC. I think he was saying that no matter how they design the game - even including specific counter-strategy coding, someone will be able to achieve just about anything. Despite our lack of knowledge about Civ3, I think past experience really supports this point of view. Civ2 chariots were intentionally reduced in power from Civ1 chariots to stop early global conquest. Did this end early global conquest? Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly) players still achieve incredibly early Civ2 bloodlust wins.

As isaac brock alludes to, regardless of the rules - players will develop clever strategies that exploit those rules. Playing "better" is a natural instinct. The desire to continually play better will lead many players to fine tune their strategy until it exploits one or another aspect of the game. I'm not saying that creating lop-sided narrow repeatable strategies is a good thing, just that it's an inevitable thing. If a given player eventually finds some unbeatable strategy boring to use (ICS perhaps) - he'll switch over to a new (and perhaps less efficient) strategy to increase the challenge and fun of the game. If a given player finds that repeating the same strategy still gives him enjoyment and a challenge (OCC perhaps) he'll continue to use it.