Is OCC easier?

Title says all. I find OCC easier but not sure about other players.

So, what do you think about that?

Depends on how you define easy. It's easier in terms of less management. Your rules are simplified because you can build your NC and other national wonders just by building the base building. You don't have to worry about building them in other cities.

In terms of how fast you can achieve victory, not so much. Population is power. More cities means more power. With BNW, 3-4 cities is optimal because it allows the highest amount of population. Before BNW, it was as many small cities as you could fit and having a huge puppet empire.

I do find it "easier" on lower levels, in the sense that builds are simplified & streamlined. And it maximizes wonder production never building settlers. But that is only viable as long as you can out-tech the AI with only one city.

So when you get up to higher levels, OCC becomes pretty tough. You don't even get to use food trade routes to help your city grow. Diplo victory may be within reach with the right policies, or domination with certain civs, but culture and science wins are both challenging. You can't generate as many great scientists in OCC, and your base GPT is capped at a low rate so science victory would be very, very slow. Science also affects culture profoundly...you will probably get beaten to the crucial Renaissance wonders by the AI, and it's tough to recover from that.

If you don't have BNW (you either have G&K or on on vanilla), then OCC for old cultural victory is easier. However a semi-OCC [only founding one city but conquering other cities and leaving as puppets] is even better for old cultural victory.

OCC does seem easier since you get to build more buildings. The only issue in OCC is not having another city to trade for food and loss of production from too many units.

I'm playing on Emperor and have all the DLCs. Still, find OCC easier for any victory (maybe except science victory)

It's easier to play but it's far from being better.