The "Expanded OCC" and it's negative effect on measuring the effectiveness of buildings and corporations

[Bibor]

I think it would be fair to say that the developers of Civ4 gave us plenty of options on how to play this game. Over the years, as we, the players, learned the game and it's mechanics, combined with the fact that the development on this game ceased a long time ago, meant that certain strategies started to first take shape, then solidify and ultimately crystallise in our playstyles.

The best known of these is probably "The Bureaucratic capital" play, which in this post I call "Expanded One City Strategy" (for reasons that I will present shortly). In this strategy, the main city is the capital, with the ideal one having as much food as possible (taking up as few tiles as possible, ideally corn or flatland pigs), while also having as much grassland flatland riverside tiles as possible, for cottages. Around this city there is a first ring of cities, overlapping with tiles workable by the capital. These cities are also focused on food, and the triple role of these cities is to "work the cottages" of the capital while also providing infrastructure and military units for the rest of the empire (whipping). The second ring of cities (and beyond) is almost exclusively tied to food (and sometimes other resources), and serves again as infrastructure for the capital, as well as whipping points for units.

The goals of this strategy are to get to Civil service as soon as possible (for Bureaucracy), to Oxford University (for science boost) and to a size large enough to work all the cottages "prepared" by the capital and it's first ring of cities. Other cities are there "just to prepare the terrain", either by providing infrastrucutre, worked cottages or whipped units, whereas the capital serves to provide the brunt of the research (science) to a point where this research will unlock units (usually Cuirassiers, Cavalry, Infantry and/or Cannons) that enables overpowering one or more (preferably all) AI players for a victory.

As many players will point out, this strategy heavily relies on buildings essential for growth (Granaries, Lighthouses) for frequent whipping, with the rest of the production queue being filled with workers, settlers, military units and merely an occasional building, like a barracks or the 5+1 universities needed to build Oxford. All this means that cities other than the capital are basically whipping outposts. And little else. It's not uncommon to see cities with population 3 in the middle of the game, with 40+ unrest turns remaining.

This "Expanded One City Strategy" is a very valid one, probably the most powerful one, it's not the only one. Playing on the Deity difficulty level tends to push players into optimal strategies such as this one. That's the main reason I don't like Deity: a world where everyone's has a finance PhD, because that's the optimal play, it becomes boring real quick.

UN victories, space race victories etc. favor growth, development and powerful cities. These strategies require buildings and corporations, because these games don't rely on conquest as much, but rather on total population and its productivity (and possibly diplomatic relations).

While this game is way past its prime, I still believe there is room, especially for new players, to experiment, try and play this game as the idividual players "feels" it could be played. As such, I'm a strong advocate of not resorting to simple answers like "Build granaries and whip" when asked about the strategies on buildings and corporations. Or "get to cav and whip" when asked about how to win militarily. These questions come up relatively often (as often as they can after all these years) – let us provide some context and variety when appropriate. This game deserves as much.

 

[Fippy]

State Property counters corps cos it's often just better.
I don't really see the connection with Bur.

You forgot one important task for potentially all cities:

 

[jnebbe]

I don't really get your point, almost every building is either bad or very situational, basically every good player here has experimented with buildings and as they improved and rose through the difficulty levels they found that most of them aren't that good.

It's true that space victories require strong developed cities but that doesn't really have anything to do with buildings. On lower difficulties tech is so cheap and maintenance is slow low you're better off whipping almost only military and settlers/workers and expanding as fast as possible. You can end up with 40-50 cities by 1AD and have a fantastic techrate. On higher difficulties you'd probably rather build military anyway and conquer ai cities. Its a lot better to capture a size 6 city with 3 buildings in it than to settle your own city starting at size 1

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I don't really like this strategy. I see absolutely nothing about it that could not be improved by simply spacing the cities out by a tile or two to avoid overlap and maximize productivity.

 

[Fippy]

Doesn't matter what you like or not in this regard..overlap is an important strategy part especially for high level play.
I just repeat this for potentially newer players trying to learn something.

 

[sampsa]

Playing on the Deity difficulty level tends to push players into optimal strategies such as this one. That's the main reason I don't like Deity: a world where everyone's has a finance PhD, because that's the optimal play, it becomes boring real quick.

Not the first time I hear (=read) this argument, but to me it's a rather bizarre one. How exactly is striving to optimize something boring? I would rather claim the opposite - putting hours into something without trying to do it as well as you can is boring. I mean you might as well watch TV if you want to relax, but you chose to play a strategy game. I know nothing more boring than putting a lot of time into something without any improvement. The real reason why you don't like deity is because it is difficult and outside of your comfort zone. If the real issue is not deity, if it's just that you want to play a game where it is optimal to build a lot of buildings, try winning via space.

Also, I don't understand how having a finance PhD is optimal.

 

[Bibor]

Not the first time I hear (=read) this argument, but to me it's a rather bizarre one. How exactly is striving to optimize something boring? I would rather claim the opposite - putting hours into something without trying to do it as well as you can is boring. I mean you might as well watch TV if you want to relax, but you chose to play a strategy game. I know nothing more boring than putting a lot of time into something without any improvement. The real reason why you don't like deity is because it is difficult and outside of your comfort zone. If the real issue is not deity, if it's just that you want to play a game where it is optimal to build a lot of buildings, try winning via space.

Also, I don't understand how having a finance PhD is optimal.

I can't speak for others (you say you heard this argument before), but for me playing civ4 is like playing piano. I don't play it against the AI. I play it against – and for – myself. That's why I don't care about deity. Because the only thing I really care are my personal wins. Perhaps it's building the perfect science city. Perhaps it's building the optimal number of transports. Perhaps it's finding something new, in a game where I already know all the keys.

Just as is the case with piano, the faster player isn't winning. He's just... playing faster. There's skill, sure, but that's usually capped at one point or another. The rest, well, that's the most important thing: personal touch.

If all the game features of Civ4 are the full keyboard of a piano, arguing that the "two middle octaves are the bestest" is just ... I don't know. Silly. If that was the case, pianos would have two octaves. Yet they have seven.

So, when someone asks me "what's the best way to play on the remaining five octaves", I won't answer with "play the middle two". Because that doesn't answer the question, and is probably also rude.

 

[sampsa]

On your piano, you can keep playing the same songs you already know, you can learn to play more difficult ones or you can come up with something entirely new by yourself. I would use your arguments exactly as to why you should be pushing yourself to play more and more difficult settings. That exactly is discovering new things and playing all octaves.

I've played games competitively all my life, taking some more seriously than others but in general, trying to improve and enjoy. I've noticed that people are very good at coming up with excuses as to why they won't improve. Or that clearly stronger players are stronger just because they are doing thing x which is insanely boring so they won't do it. Denial and fear of failure. Cheers.

 

[Thrasybulos]

I find self-imposed variants (or even in-game variants like OCC, Always War, Always Peace) an easy way to experience situations where you have to come up with different solutions, and get to make use of game mechanisms discarded as non-optimal for standard play.
A simple variant like "May not Whip" pretty much kills off that economy model, by definition.
It may require lowering the difficulty level, but who cares. As long as winning requires figuring out the right choices and making the correct optimizations, it doesn't matter where the difficulty slider sits.

 

[need my speed]

Denial and fear of failure.

Moderator Action: *SNIP*..no personal attacks, please. -lymond
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889, as if your way of playing is the only valid way of playing, as if your thoughts must be truths and other explanations must be excuses.

You are wrong. I play for story-telling and immersion. And to add to the piano metaphor, in real time strategy games I can like to build pretty bases even though the optimal strategy is 1) to rush units to attack, and 2) to almost never build static defences or do other things that may look pretty but are actually bad.

Just like some people play platformer games to explore every milimeter, see if they can reach areas they're not supposed to enter, enjoy the beautiful atmosphere and graphics, enjoy everything the game has to offer - and others speedrun through it using every glitch they can find to skip large parts of the game.

So you see, there are other ways of enjoying a game than trying to be the best, fastest, most efficient.

 

[sampsa]

You are completely missing the point. I am not telling you what to do, how to play or what to enjoy. You are free to use a strategy game to tell stories, enjoy the view, whatever you wish.

I responded to "deity is boring, because it pushes you into optimal strategies", because to me that is a ridiculous statement. I did not say that anyone in particular is in "denial and fear of failure", so it's not a personal attack in any way. You however chose to make it personal with a false assessment of my character. No worries though.

 

[Bibor]

On your piano, you can keep playing the same songs you already know, you can learn to play more difficult ones or you can come up with something entirely new by yourself. I would use your arguments exactly as to why you should be pushing yourself to play more and more difficult settings. That exactly is discovering new things and playing all octaves.

I've played games competitively all my life, taking some more seriously than others but in general, trying to improve and enjoy. I've noticed that people are very good at coming up with excuses as to why they won't improve. Or that clearly stronger players are stronger just because they are doing thing x which is insanely boring so they won't do it. Denial and fear of failure. Cheers.

That's not how piano works. For a "deity level piece" like Chopin's Polonaise op. 53, you start really slow and first learn all the keys. Then you add speed. As you are adding speed, you're also adding mistakes. Then you work on fixing those mistakes. Usually for dozens of hours practicing a single phrase. Then you start playing from beginning to the troublesome phrase. Over and over again. Once your fingers truly learn the piece, your own consciousness is not needed anymore. In fact, if you think about what you play, you'll start making mistakes again. That's your deity skill right there.

But it doesn't end here. Beacuse what we went through so far, that's just the keys and the technique. Now comes the real thing into play: how you weave your own personality into the piece. How you interpret it, how you feel it should played. Once you do that, and you like it, hopefully the audience will also like it. Because they've heard this piece played over and over again, by different pianists, and every time it was a bit different.

The same, however, applies to way "easier" pieces than op. 53. The whole process is still exactly the same, including the part where you must go beyond the keys and technique and make it your own. That's music.

In Civ4 terms, I spent the last three weeks playing a single spawn to turn 100. Over and over again. On prince, on monarch, even on deity. Without barbs, with barbs. Adding marble in map editor to first city, to second city, removing it. The only two things I wanted to know is how fast I can get to oracling Civil Service, while also combining four civics changes into two separate turns (Bureaucracy with Organized religion, and Slavery with Representation). Was I playing civ4? Yes. Was it hard? Well, yes. Did I "win"? In the scoreboard sense – no.

 

[Fippy]

Deity is simply for those who know they would win 99% of their immortal games.
Where does the confusion come in? When those who struggle with deity (or know they would) think it's limiting everyone in their decisions etc.

Not true..i have done all kinds of crazy rushes - space races - AP/diplo - HoF games - always peace - always war - poor maps and so on in my dozen years of playing on deity.
Things can get very difficult ofc, but that doesn't mean you have to play in certain ways.
I couldn't play in LOL worlds
But i wouldn't say oh it's boring how they play on the highest level, cos they must follow certain patterns. I know it's just me who cannot do that.

 

[Bibor]

When those who struggle with deity (or know they would) think it's limiting everyone in their decisions etc.

I'm confused as to why my statement that deity is limiting is so controversial. It has not only been repeated many times by deity players in video recording, but it follows the same rules as every other system. I've been in the same situation many times in my business, which I now play "on deity" for quite a while.

If you have a time frame of lets say 20 turns to prepare for an AI attack, an event that comes not only sooner on deity than you would expect on lower difficulty levels, but also with more units, it's absolutely logical that you will be forced to allocate way more resources to building military units. These military units come from the same limited resource pool you'd have otherwise for building (say, a grocer) or growth.

Deity is a chain of subsequent "all ins" with the hope that the "all in" pays for itself, at the very least. This high-risk high-reward scenario is in itself very interesting, because it builds resistance to instant gratification. I, however, have "deity" in the real world, so for me, Civ4 is about what I don't have in the real world: a life of a wage worker. The "make every move satisfying", don't worry about it too much, and walk away at 5 PM.

 

[Fippy]

I'm confused as to why my statement that deity is limiting is so controversial. It has not only been repeated many times by deity players in video recording, but it follows the same rules as every other system.

Maybe they are overreacting..for video fun purposes, or some cos they are actually still learning.
Lain wins the crappiest starts on deity and he i.e. could prolly do whatever he likes on generous maps.

Some buildings are just not very efficient unless certain conditions are met.
My point: that isn't connected to deity. I could whip grocers there just as i could on Emperor.

It just looks like you are judging deity gameplay without actually being there.

 

[antimony]

As someone who is just starting to play on deity I would bring a counterpoint from a different perspective than Fippy's.

Yes, on higher difficulties you are working with effectively more limited resources (less time to get land, ultimately less land, less happiness, less resources to trade with the AI or give the AI for diplo), which in turn restrains the choices that are "viable" (both for winning or even staying in the game). But what the argument in the initial post undervalues, in my view, is that those limits do not manifest the same way in every game and map, so having a one-size-fits-all solution is actually less a guarantee of success in deity than lower difficulties. In other words, you might enact the same game plan (e.g. a Cuirassier rush) to win every Pangea map on a lower difficulty level and think that it's just the universal recipe for success, but then lose on deity because you were next to a warmonger and there is no chance they would have left you alone past turn 100. And more specifically about spamming a single mounted unit (HAs, Cuirassiers, Cavs): it's something that is popular on any difficulty level, not just deity, probably because many players enjoy rolling over the map with fast-moving cavalry stacks instead of slow and steady mixed-unit with siege compositions.

Looking at a few of Lain's deity games on YouTube, especially in some of the tougher maps, he ends up using a lot of different buildings and units to address specific situations, and uses quite diverse stacks of units rather than just spamming HAs or Cuirs. On that note, don't let the descriptions in https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/post-a-tough-deity-map-for-me-to-play.620140/ fool you.

Spoiler :

For example, the infamous Game 19 with Lincoln says "Construction Rush" but what really won the game for him was some rather involved tactics using Artillery, Tanks and Navy SEALs along with planes to be an information era army.

Just in 2 of the last 3 Nobles' Club games, I learned from deity-level players to reconsider what had been "automatic moves" I was making (e.g. researching Bronze Working before Pottery, or cottaging every grass river tile) based on what was the limiting factor (food/production or commerce) in a given start. I'm sure many people don't need to up the difficulty level to reconsider their strategic assumptions and consider alternatives, but personally I find that the greater stakes (settling a spot a few turns later means the AI gets it instead) provide more motivation to consider different lines of play, vs. something that works "well enough". Also, playing on a higher level forces you to focus on understanding the AI personalities and diplomacy game a lot more, since you will be behind... it's relatively easy to make friends when you're ahead in tech, cities, etc. since you can just give them stuff, and even if you can't please everyone, most AIs are no threat anyway... it's different on higher difficulties, so it feels like the whole diplomacy system matters more, even if some of it is a bit cheesy (like begging 1 gold to guarantee 10 turns of peace).

I also think the initial post inaccurately portrays the advice deity-level players give as being unidimensional and focused on a single strategic line. Reading threads like the NC games or shadow games on the Strategy and Tips forums, what I've seen is mostly players like @sampsa, @Fippy and others providing primarily suggestions on what to prioritize in the early game to grow the # of cities / pop / commerce. This is something that will benefit any game plan or victory condition. So for example, Fippy's guide: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/beginner-help-the-basics.648469/ gives some useful heuristics that work on most maps (such as the priority: improve your good tiles -> grow to work those tiles -> expand to more cities), but then the individual game threads in Strategy and Tips show advice that is a lot more context-dependent, and sometimes people who play deity don't all come up with the same suggestion.

Finally, regarding buildings, I think the common advice is not that Granary is the only thing worth building, but rather the only thing worth buiding in (almost) every city, because (almost) every city benefits from faster growth, either to work more tiles, or to whip. But the fact that most buildings are not in most cities doesn't mean they don't have value, it just has to be evaluated on a case by case basis. It's also expected that earlier buildings tend to be more built because (1) they cost less and (2) there is more time for them to pay off.

 

[Takfloyd]

The real challenge, in my opinion, is to beat the highest difficulty WITHOUT optimizing all fun and immersion out of the game and copying strategies from the internet.

And Deity is certainly not so hard that you have to use the horribly soulless and boring methods described here. You don't have to be basically the most evil tyrant in human history running his country like a cattle slaughterhouse. And it honestly creeps me out slightly that someone would want to play that way over and over.

 

[antimony]

You could decide to ban slavery for the human player, that would ultimately change decisions throughout the game but it would still require some level of optimized play to win on deity, just with different parameters, and a lot of the advice given on these forums would still be pertinent. That is because what a lot of advice really boils down to is having a general plan and focusing on taking macro and micro decisions towards that plan, and especially at the beginning of the game thinking about every worker turn and every turn in the city production queues and what is the most effective ways to use them.

I understand it's not always fun to play like this so it's fine to dial the difficulty down to play more relaxed games. That's not really a thing to debate.

But the original post was focused on this idea that the effectiveness of bureaucracy, corporations or buildings was based only on some very specific game plan. Yet even a change as drastic as banning slavery wouldn't change the fact that bureau is really strong in a riverside capital, or the relative strength of state property vs corporations, or the fact that granaries would be the most popular building (since again growth is good almost everywhere).

 

[Plains-Cow]

You don't have to be basically the most evil tyrant in human history running his country like a cattle slaughterhouse.

Whew, that makes me feel a bit better.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

The real challenge, in my opinion, is to beat the highest difficulty WITHOUT optimizing all fun and immersion out of the game and copying strategies from the internet.

I agree with that sentiment. Strategy games are supposed to challenge my ability to strategize and not my ability to memorize and repeat a set of precise instructions. If the only way to win is to follow someone else's path step for step than you are not the one achieving that victory, he is. All you are doing is replicating his results.