One City Challenge Club (OCCC): Darius

If you settle in place without exploring west you will have 1 Ocean tile in the BFC that will forever be 1 food/3 commerce.

Settling further east and/or SE may give you something else but may cost you something, depending what you do

Prince/Epic

Moved scout 2S and found more green, rice, but fewer hills & forest. Decided to settle 2SE. Lots of riverside green so I plan on going hybrid with Financial riverside cottages as well as some specialists until biology then all farms.

After researching Animal Husbandry got a great surprise with Horse in the BFC.


The next techs were the Wheel, pottery and then writing .

Started with Worker->warrior->worker->Granary->Library.

After Writing, set up Mining, Masonry, then Bronze Working, Mysticism, Polythiesm, Priesthood, Mathematics, Code of Laws followed by an Oracle shot to Civil Service in 455BC.

Then on to Aesthetics, Literature, Paper, Education, then back up to Drama & Music. However, got the darn Barb event in 260 BC. Luckily I was able to detour to archery and they were only axemen so my 1 archer and 1 immortal were able to kill them all. In 65 BC someone was able to trade Alphabet so made a single turn of research detour so I could open up backfills for the lower half of the tech tree.

While researching up to Education, barbarians, namely spearmen and swordmen, became a heck of an issue since with the move there is no Iron or copper close enough. Will get both with the next border pop, which will be the 5th ring, but that is too many turns away. Traded Feudalism and built a couple of longbows. Problem solved.

Couldn't make any good trades after Music so I set the city for maximum hammers to finish University and Oxford ASAP while "slow" researching Monotheism and then Currency since no one else had it. AI teching seems to be exceptionally slow, even for prince, so I queue up Metal Casting since I need Machinery to open up Engineering then Chemistry for the Liberalism to Biology slingshot. After MC I realize that I don't have any trade routes so I hit Sailing. Trade for Construction then head to Machinery. Then onto Philosophy. After that it was basically just hitting enter and self researching every single tech for the remainder of the game. Built the Internet for denial but the latest tech it provided was Democracy.

No Aluminum again and no other AI was up to Industrialism before I launched. Brutal. Just Brutal.

I had such a huge techlead for the entire game diplo was really easy. Religion was a nightmare with most everybody in different ones so I stayed in Free Religion most of the game and just gave into every tech, gold, & resource demand. Didn't hardly build any wonders, as can be seen from the last screenie. In the beginning I didn't have the hammers plus I didn't need GLib or NE since I wasn't running any specialists. Steam Power was a huge tech for me since I had either 14 or 15 riverside tiles.

Got lucky with forest spreading and ended up with 7 for the NP prior to chopping for parts. Research was at +/-1400 bpt.

Peter was only 21 turns from a religious victory when I started my 18 turn space journey so I bribed everyone into a war. I joined in and razed his 3rd legendary city so it wasn't an issue. My tanks and mechs vs. his MG's & Inf.

Final look at City.

I settled in spot, creating a Hammer-pumping war machine! 6 hills, lots of plains, and with every grassland/pigs farmed or pastured, my beakers came only from the GP's and my +225% science multiplier.

So anyway, I went for an early tech lead-ish, doing the usual specialists, great persons, ect. Picked up the first 4 wonders of the game, including the +50% GP Points one.

I took a late militaristic approach once I hit cuirassiers, Spamming and razing citys quickly as the enemy had only medieval units. Continued this with Calvary and Riflemen, again ahead of everyone military wise.

I finished off the Native Americans and killed most of the Russians with Infantry/Cannons.

Have a look at all the screenshots

Never played a OCC before so I went 1 difficulty down. Settled 3S2E which got me riverside rice, grassland riverside pigs, and eventually horses in my bfc. Mainly chose this spot because it had a lot of riverside and I wanted to start with some early cottages.

Took oracled civil service (can't remember the date, fairly late for the oracle though). My tech rate was good with the early riverside cottages. Liberalism -> biology in 1420, a risky date to be going for a late tech like that but I figured it's prince so I'd give it a shot. After biology I let my city grow with globe theater + national park, and settled/ran specialists to get my tech going. From here I kept a lead in tech until the end. Warred constantly with GK/Toku and their vassals once they were discovered, but I was best friends with peter who was dominant this game.

Had a bit of a scare around 1900 when I saw peter at 80 turns until his 3rd city would hit legendary, but I used my tech lead to bribe him out of free speech every time he went back to it. Random events were generally bad (2 naval based ones, lol), but I got -25% inflation which was fairly nice, as well as some decent +gold to buildings ones.

Founded sushi + mining inc and eventually got up to 36 pop (and growing). Ran max engineers and the rest merchants/priests and traded for aluminum, had pretty decent production by the end.

Chose NE, GT, NP, IW (traded for iron), and Oxford as my national wonders, and got parthenon + glib + oracle + space elevator as world wonders. My tech rate was at ~1k for most of the game post bio, could have been higher with maxed scientists but production ended up being the limiting factor as I expected. Might have gotten a better date by going max scientists and just building 1 of each part + whatever else I had time for before all the techs were in, but I ended up building all the part instead because I rarely go space and I'm not really sure which is better.

Fun game, my score was terrible but I guess that's usual with these My civics were rep/bureaucracy/caste/free market/pacifism the entire game (after unlocking them of course).

Couple of screenshots:
Lib:

Arty+immortals:

Great random events!:

End stats:

Cut it very close though



That was with 1 turn on my ship to arrive. I had to manipulate Hatties civics quite a few times. Definitely needed to keep her out of free speech for about 80 turns. Still just managed it.

As for the game itself. Managed a few early wonders. Mainly the Mids and GLib. I also built Sistines. Without that either Hattie or Peter would probably have won a cultural victory. Later on I built the elec/radio wonders and the Internet. Unfortunately I didn't get much from them and still had to tech medicine myself when heading for genetics and the last space part. Probably should have gifted a few techs around although I did gift Indust around to see if I could get some Alu. Good old Hattie won me the game in more ways than one.

One small war with Tok and his vassal WK. Both had cities to the North and South but with there best units Inf my Modern Armour soon razed those and eventually got peace for 5 gold.

Another fun game thanks for hosting this Mad Scientist.

Looked around and saw all those rivers. You need lots of commerce in OCC, so I went for it. In vanilla, that would be a harder choice, because you also need lots of hammers to do a space race. But since levees, not a hard choice. Settled 2W2S. [Edit: reading others, I see White Dragon did the same thing!]

Early game I thought I was isolated for a while, getting to 4 or 5 goody huts before I finally ran into the other distant civs on my continent.

The early religions set the course of the game. Hattie got Hindu and Judaism; Buddhism went to one of the distant civs. It was unclear how this would work for a while, because Sitting Bull went Hindu and stayed there. (Maybe he founded it? Not sure.) But luckily Judaism spread to Persepolis fairly promptly, as well as going to Peter. So I converted into it. With Hattie and Peter pleased/happy, I was safe. Stayed in it all game right to the end, with the exception of the few turns spent in Daoism to make it the AP religion.

After the three early religions, pretty much everything else I wanted went to me. I founded all the other religions to keep them out of AI hands but also to make Persepolis into a monster culture pusher. And to get all those nice monastaries. This included the Oracle --> Code of Laws. Also I spent many long turns building the Pyramids, allowing me to run Representation early. Flash-built the Great Library. Then yadda yadda, right to the end of the game. Hattie did get Hollywood while I was busy cranking out the spaceship.

Sitting Bull DoWed me relatively early, but I easily fought him off. The AIs teched horribly -- I kept waiting for them to catch up, but they never did. Anyway, he attacked with Dog Soldiers and archers, against my immortals and archers (this was before my borders had expanded to get to iron). After the first small SoD (8 units) was easily crushed, he came with spearman, which were a problem for me. Fortunately I was close to the border pop. But he came with enough catapults and spears that I just made peace with him.

Sitting Bull then attacked again later, a war which I continued right to the end of the game. He sent in many small SoDs, never anywhere near a challenge. I had riflemen killing swordsmen most of the game. Towards the end it was infantry and tanks killing riflemen. I could have had peace any time, but I kept it going because of the Great Generals -- each one was that much more science I got. As you can see in the screenie, I had 7 of them by the end, one of them from Fascism and the others from all that sweet Injun killing.

I teched everything I could before Scientific Method, except for the two dead-end military techs. (This kept the benefits from both the GL scientists and my monastaries.) I kept waiting for an AI to do it, but they didn't. So I did eventually. My research dropped in that turn from just over 1000 to 850 or so.

I saved the GM from Economics for Sid's, allowing me to get the ridiculous city size of 31. After finding no aluminum, I decide to found Alcoa, which may have been a mistake. It seems to remove the coal, so gets you +100% for space parts but -50% (from Ironworks not having it) for everything else. Probably would have been better off founding Mining Inc.

While I later saw the iron that would have been in the BFC, I think my move was a good one, rice, riverside horses with financial is quite good and the iron will be mine soon enough for cannons.
Also all those extra river tiles were a major bonus for commerce early on.

Tech path was AH, mining, pottery, writing.
Got those riverside pigs working asap then the horses for quick commerce, then mined the pigs and started going nuts for cottages.

Turn 56 I finally meet peter and Hashput. I was starting to think I was Isolated! Each is a founder of a different religion, this should be interesting... I've OBed with all to try and get religion spread but so far I've only got Jewdaism (Hashy) and Buddhism (SB).

I met SB on turn 87.

My rivers and cottages gave me an early tech lead, alphabet came in 1750BC, after trading up the religon line I oracled Monarchy (something I've never done!) for a quick happy boost and now have the 'mids though I'm not going to run rep until I get the globe. On second thought I probably should have just taken MC from the Oracle, I think the mids were only 40 turns later. But in this food happy cottage crazy land getting a really big city right off the bat will be huge.

I've just got CS and revolted in, the plan now will be to get GLib, Parth (please only 1 artist...),NE, Globe in roughly that order while building a few more Imortals to keep happy and the Barbs away.
Victory is looking very spacey right now.

The current land: