how are you supposed to win these games? Cultural victories are obviously impossible since you dont have 3 cities to get 50k culture with, domination is also impossible. Conquest seems hard because when you raze a city, 2 turns later someone builds another city on the same spot. Space race seems far fetched because other civs have 10 cities to work on space ship parts when you only have one, Is the only option to build the UN and get a diplomatic victory?

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isn't the 1 city challenge that everybody has just 1city?

no only the human has one city. space isn't all that hard because your city builds really really fast and conquest also isn't that hard, it could be called easier because you don't have to defend their cities

Diplomatic is possible, and if you plan ahead, easier than space.

vassalizing makes conquest relatively easy - if everyone is your vassal you win

Tiny map with only one other civ conquest is doable.

You can conquer a lot more than than, I've done conquest on small maps with 6 or 7 opponents, I suspect a normal map would really put the challenge in OCC, but through vassalizing it should be quite doable...

how are you supposed to win these games?

There are a couple guides around, but to cover the basics...

(1) because you aren't training settlers and extra workers, you have more hammers available during the BC era to invest in wonders.

(2) because you aren't paying a lot of money into maintenance, your economy is more efficient.

(3) because the national wonder limit is higher, you can combine their benefits more effectively.

(4) You are supposed to choose a suitable leader and map type (rather than taking something random).


The basic game plan for a space race is pretty straight forward - you build a super city by generating as many specialists as you can and settling them, concentrating as best you can on beakers (because you have much research to do) and hammers (because you need a lot of them to build the ship, and you don't have parallel capacity you are accustomed to).

A continents map tends to be a decent choice, as it gives you land while simplifying the diplomacy.


I don't know much about conquest OCC - lean on the research rate to get a significant combat advantage, then stomp. As the game plan doesn't require tracking so far down the tech tree, you are more likely to lightbulb key techs for an exploitable short term advantage. You'll shuffle up which of the national wonders you prefer, perhaps focus more on hammers (priests) than on beakers, maybe a few other things.

Actually it is possible to win culturally, using a permanent alliance with another civ with 2 legendary cities.

I don't know much about conquest OCC - lean on the research rate to get a significant combat advantage, then stomp. As the game plan doesn't require tracking so far down the tech tree, you are more likely to lightbulb key techs for an exploitable short term advantage. You'll shuffle up which of the national wonders you prefer, perhaps focus more on hammers (priests) than on beakers, maybe a few other things.

My experience with OCC and conquest wins ( mainly in OCC AW ;) ) is that , besides what VoU says ( besides that bulbing in a OCC is normally a bad idea and that any specialist you can hire is a good :p ) is that you should focus on making your units to die as less as possible, because you invariably will have a smaller prod basis. This means that you should bet in a highly promoted units and that you need to avoid stryed units, that are easy pickings for counter-strikes. In one OCC I played, we ( the SG team ) even developed some units whose only task was to kill the last defender of cities and then to go back to the SoD ( commando for flatland , Guerrilla III for hilled cities ). We also got some march units to have always some units in conditions to defend the stack and some other promo tricks to have a strong and highly productive ( :devil: ) SoD. Those highly promoted units are not that hard to get: your units will suffer a much more higher share of combats than in a normal game ( because you don't have so much prod, you'll have definitely less units, hence more combats for each one ), making them more prone to win XP... and as you only have one city , you only have 1 city to settle GG, leading to highly promoted units out of the bat as well.

OTOH you have tha advantage of not having to worry about garrissoning and to only have to defend a city, making AI attacks quite predictable. It is quite posssible to have 2 wars one, of each side, where you're smashing one enemy while defensively ( not passive defense, that doesn't work in Civ IV.... active defense ) grinding other in the other, if the terrain allows it......

In resume, as you can't bet on quantity ( as I see so much doing in here in normal game :( ), you need to bet in quality. Ah, and some clear sweeping also helps: it is better to push in one direction at each time :p If you go from one side to another, you'll never kill anyone and will make a lot of pissed neighbours .

well i did manage to eliminate every opponent (5) in a tiny map, but not before my last victim voted himself a diplomatic winner ~~

In addition you can stay in war forever. It wont affect your economy, because you wont suffer from WW. In normal game WW become unmanagable at some point and you are forced to make peace, or run high culture slider.

I just won my first OCC by conquest on a standard map at noble level the other day. What I focused on was while units do generally go obsolete after awhile, siege units have less forms, and therefore last longer. So I could get to cannons (not artillery, takes too long), and just keep making cannons, one every turn, until I had like 80 cannons. Then, when I got to infantry, I cranked out enough to front multiple wars along with the cannons. If you are at war with everyone at once, they will build troops instead of settlers. Troop maintenance gets high, but you are taking cities everyturn and razing them (obviously) getting more money to fund the soldiers.

Also, whoever said above about promoted units being even more important in an OCC is right. Protect them at all costs! That's where having so many suicide cannons came into play for me. So I had like 4 fronts going at once, just steamrolling 4 cities from 4 different civs every turn. You have to vassalize everyone really quick, or they'll just break away soon enough again.

sgotm 7 (nearly finished) was deity occ... http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=196 Check out some of these threads for ideas.

how are you supposed to win these games? Cultural victories are obviously impossible since you dont have 3 cities to get 50k culture with, domination is also impossible. Conquest seems hard because when you raze a city, 2 turns later someone builds another city on the same spot. Space race seems far fetched because other civs have 10 cities to work on space ship parts when you only have one, Is the only option to build the UN and get a diplomatic victory?

I played out two Role Play Challenges as OCC. One win was a diplomatic pulled out at the end. The other was a conquest during the Cossack era playing as Stalin. See the Summary on my signature or the stickied summary game list on the first page.

The general idea is to build alot of wonders, produce Great People, and settle them in your city.

The general idea is to build alot of wonders, produce Great People, and settle them in your city.


Really, this is how it's done at the beginning when GP are cheap. But later, you need to make sure that you have the hammers to make a large military or the SS parts because GP will be fewer and further between.

Good Diplomacy is even more important than it is one level higher in a regular game, too. At least, that's my take on it.

Conquest seems hard because when you raze a city, 2 turns later someone builds another city on the same spot.
Simply not true. The subject of your attack will not build settlers because you have hostile military in the area. If they happen to send out a settling party 1) it will be easy to kill and 2) it will deplete the defenses in the city which produced it.

Third-party AIs will eventually settle in the unoccupied land but it takes them much longer than 2 turns and every settler they build hampers their military outuput. Also, you can slow down the re-settling by negotiating AIs to close borders with one another. So, if you are diligent in warmongering and diplomacy, you can pick them off one-by one. The last one will be the hardest, of course, but that is true in non-OCC games as well.

Space race seems far fetched because other civs have 10 cities to work on space ship parts when you only have one.
Tougher than usual, but, as others have noted above, not too far-fetched.

No one said this was going to be easy. It's called One City Challenge for a reason.

When I was playing a OCC game, I was way ahead in techs, then suddenly, I was way behind. More cities allow more beakers, therefore reduced times for researching techs. In OCC, you don't have this advantage and it is a big issue.

Unless I don't know about a strategy, OCC balances out the game with a huge tech lead you get in the beginning with a terrible research output you accomplish in the late game.

On the other hand, I wasn't focusing on research output in my city, I was determined to win my first cultural victory until, I realized that you can't win one in a OCC (and no, I couldn't win with permanent alliance since I didn't enable them).

Ouch. Also something I picked up: Specialists > Cottages, because if you get into a war on a higher level, you're going to get pillaged to hell and back, and your economy dies.

When you reach the Happy Cap (Pre-Globe), assign Specialists to stagnate growth.

Also, I find that I can stay ahead, on Noble (Where I play most) before Oxford U comes up. After that's up, then I just get way ahead. I end up with a Religion from CoL or Philo, so I spam it, and get Shrine Income to run at 100% Slider in addition to the specialists and still make a profit.