"One City" is a challenge now?!

H

Hesha

Prince
Joined
Jan 3, 2011
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I've just returned to Civ5 after about 4 years of taking a break (because the game was neither fun nor challenging at the time), because some people have assured me that it's now much better. I have all DLC available on Steam.

How much has changed? I remember (rather fondly) how I won a game with Egypt having just one city and building literally every Wonder in the game on Monarch or King. I tried that again and failed miserably - I am way behind technologically and there isn't a hope I will ever get to build a Wonder again, the AI usually have the Wonder finished before I have the Tech I need for the Wonder.

Is playing with just one city (tall game) no longer a valid strategy for Cultural Victory, but rather a challenge (i.e. handicap)? That'd be a shame!
 
Cultural victory = Tourism = Great Works which require buildings to store them in (amphitheaters, opera houses and museums) so only having one city can be a severe handicap for culture.

I have had success on middling difficulty (emperor), with only having one city and focusing on the patronage tree and allying City States to get sufficient science. If you get Growth and culture wonders, you can rocket through the tree's and fill out Tradition & Patronage fairly early, then go into Rationalism. Not a cultural victory though, diplomatic (won on first vote for world leader).

Without an AMAZING start (4-5 banana's on jungle, marble, 3 salt, confluence of 2-3 rivers and a one tile wide ocean inlet), I don't think it's doable on Deity. It MIGHT be doable on Immortal.

Now I'm intrigued, going to try this!
 
You can do a Culture victory on OCC but you need a pretty good start. The DCL #18 was considered quite easy by some, not so much by me though! I succeeded with a CV but much later than normal.
 
Hesha said:
I've just returned to Civ5 after about 4 years of taking a break (because the game was neither fun nor challenging at the time), because some people have assured me that it's now much better. I have all DLC available on Steam.

How much has changed? I remember (rather fondly) how I won a game with Egypt having just one city and building literally every Wonder in the game on Monarch or King. I tried that again and failed miserably - I am way behind technologically and there isn't a hope I will ever get to build a Wonder again, the AI usually have the Wonder finished before I have the Tech I need for the Wonder.

Is playing with just one city (tall game) no longer a valid strategy for Cultural Victory, but rather a challenge (i.e. handicap)? That'd be a shame!
Click to expand...
The cultural/tourism victory is now a wide strategy victory.

It is still a viable strategy to go tall for some types of games. For diplomacy games it can work well, because you get the same number of spies/diplomats, and having one supercity shouldn't slow you down in tech too much. Make sure you have plenty of food, and that you settle next to both a river and a mountain, because the extra buildings are imperative.

Check out the current Gauntlet in the Hall of Fame forum. It is an OCC science game, and there is a lot of good discussion in the thread. The game is on a low difficulty level, but maximizing the potential of your one city is the same on all difficulties. It may be even easier (or at least quicker) to win a science or diplomacy victory OCC game on higher difficulties, because research agreements will be more valuable.
 
Cultural victory in BNW is essentially a science victory with different window dressing. So much of tourism relies on getting to lategame techs fast that unlike pre-BNW, you can no longer win CV by concentrating on culture over science.

Heh, if you want a real challenge though, you can go for the zero city one: you cannot found any cities and must win that way. Quite fun, though obviously very start- and civ-dependent (Huns and Germany are obviously a lot more suited to this challenge than other civs).
 
I won a cultural victory with one city about a year ago; playing as Ethiopia. This would have been at Prince level. I was landlocked, so I couldn't do diplomatic (couldn't reach a lot of the CS's with trade routes) OTOH, I only needed a tiny military, so I saved a lot of gold per turn and a lot of hammers.

Play like you're going for science victory, but you'll need to build a few wonders: Eiffel Tower is a big one, and Louvre, and Broadway. Maybe Hanging Gardens too, if you can get it.

Once you get to Plastics, beeline The Internet tech (rush buy a hotel as soon as it's available), then come back and fill in the lower part of the tree to get Radar and build/buy an airport.
 
Occ in Deity sounds like a challenge and it is because I have tried it out.
 
It is a challenge on a "normal" start. For a relevant OCC you need some high profile food resources, top notch diplomacy, a metric ton of RAs and at any point, at least 5 city state allies feeding your growth and science
 
I just tried it once more, just to be sure. I started a new game, disabling both BNW and G&K on a huge map with 12 players, maximum CSs, normal speed on difficulty Emperor as Egypt.

I didn't restart for a better location or anything and won a Cultural Victory with a single city no-problem by AD1944. That is despite me not having played Civ5 in 4 years and making loads of mistakes (like not utilising Research Agreements until the late Renaissance)... so yes, it has definitely become far more difficult to play with a single city.
 
Not really, getting a CV as Egypt in vanilla/GnK was possibly the easiest combo to pull off. You simply went Tradition and beeline GL, use the free tech for Philo, NC, beeline for Petra, make HG in between, time Petra with D&P to get free amphi and the snowball takes over
 
stormtrooper412 said:
Not really, getting a CV as Egypt in vanilla/GnK was possibly the easiest combo to pull off. You simply went Tradition and beeline GL, use the free tech for Philo, NC, beeline for Petra, make HG in between, time Petra with D&P to get free amphi and the snowball takes over
Click to expand...
What do you mean, "not really"? You seem to confirm, that it used to be much more possible to play with a single city than it is now...
 
No, I just said that is was very easy if you wonderwhored as Egypt, and reasonably challenging otherwise
 
Oh, I see. So you think the 20% made the difference? Could it not also be fairly easy with a fast techer or a civ with a culture bonus?
 
I suppose, but the CV was much different in vanilla anyway, everything else is around the same anyway
 
The difference is that with a tourism victory, you want more cities. Getting enough tourism before Internet is near-on impossible with one city. The quickest VC with OCC still remains DomV.
 
consentient said:
The difference is that with a tourism victory, you want more cities. Getting enough tourism before Internet is near-on impossible with one city. The quickest VC with OCC still remains DomV.
Click to expand...

What happens to captured capitals on OCC, btw?
 
stormtrooper412 said:
Not really, getting a CV as Egypt in vanilla/GnK was possibly the easiest combo to pull off. You simply went Tradition and beeline GL, use the free tech for Philo, NC, beeline for Petra, make HG in between, time Petra with D&P to get free amphi and the snowball takes over
Click to expand...

There was no Petra or amphitheatre in the Vanilla version! I havn't tried a culture victory on BNW so I can't comment, as regards vanilla, I have to agree with Hesha that OCC was the way to go.
 
NiceOneEmlyn said:
There was no Petra or amphitheatre in the Vanilla version! I havn't tried a culture victory on BNW so I can't comment, as regards vanilla, I have to agree with Hesha that OCC was the way to go.
Click to expand...

I just think it's a shame they changed the CV. It was the one good thing about Civ5 - the fact that there was a victory condition that in contrast to all others didn't require you to tech like a maniac. Now they're basically all the same.
 
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