[BTS] One City Challenge @ Immortal/Deity

[Gabethebabe]

Let’s talk about the One City Challenge. I’ve gotten back into CIV4 this year and played a bunch of OCC games. So I decided to write this guide for winning an OCC at high difficulty level (Immortal/Deity) with a proven strategy. I agree with you that you have to be very weird person to write guides of 20-year old games. Sue me.

One city against the world. As compensation for having a single city, you can build 5 National Wonders, as opposed to the usual two. That is all you receive in return. The OCC plays quite differently to a normal game. It resembles a tower defense game. You don’t need to think about expanding, settlers, workers, micromanaging shared tiles. Less to manage, less decisions, so the entire game goes quicker. That doesn’t mean there aren’t tough decisions, though. So why would you even do the OCC challenge?

• It provides new challenges and variety to the game
• Building Wonders is fun
• Building an overpowered city is fun
• You can win at higher difficulty levels than you would usually do. I am an average Immortal player, for example.
• The games are not quite as long and exhausting

The strategy I follow and recommend in this guide is based on building a specialist economy, abusing the Pyramids and National Park (Forest Preserves). Not a new idea, but hopefully I have some tips and tricks that you had not considered yet.
And if my guide fails to impress you, maybe you like the maps at the end of this guide. These will allow you play an OCC game yourself, without having to regenerate maps fifty times.

 

[Gabethebabe]

Map settings

Do whatever you normally do, but spam more opponents into your map. You don’t want your one city to face opponents with 10 or more cities. That won’t work very well at Immortal or Deity. On standard size map I play Immortal with 12 AI sides and Deity with 16 AI sides. You can increase the amount of opponents to decrease the difficulty of the game and the reverse.

Victory settings: I play with Diplomatic victory disabled. The AP is lame. Cultural victories are impossible for you and practically impossible for the AI. Disabling cultural victories keeps the AI from trying.

I don’t use settings like “Tech trading off” or “Always peace”. That takes too much out of the strategic depth of the game, in my opinion. Randomly losing the game due to an early or unexpected DoW is fair. Map type is Pangea, since you want to be able to reach everyone.



Starting location

This is crucial in the OCC. WYSIWYG. Be prepared to regenerate the map. Twenty times, if you have to. Or fifty! You are looking for:

• Stone. You are going to build the Pyramids. That is 500 early game production, 250 with Stone, 334 with Industrious and 200 with Stone+Industrious. Stone is much rarer than Marble (usually a standard size map has 2-3 Stone and 6-8 Marble). Finding a good Stone start might easily take 50 map rerolls, so sometimes you just get annoyed (or even furious) and settle for less. Without Stone, you will need compensation (especially if you are not industrious) in Marble/Gold/Silver/Gems and excellent other characteristics, see below.
• Enough food to support a big (20 or more) city. Agriculture resources (incl. Flood Plains) are the best. They are the quckest to tech and get better at Biology. Seafood is the worst, as it takes 30 early game production to bring online. As a matter of fact, coastal starts are almost never going to be suitable for an OCC game.
• Capital on a hill. So much easier to defend.
• 10 or more forests. The more the better. We plan to abuse National Park specialists. When counting forests, also count empty hills and flatlands that are adjacent to other forests and might/will grow forests themselves.
• Adjacent to a river and as many river tiles as possible in your BFC. The game will go late and the Levee is the best late game production building.

 

[Gabethebabe]

Leaders.

The value of your leader is defined by traits, starting techs and their uniques.

In my opinion, the three best OCC traits are Industrious, Philosophical and Spiritual, in that order.

Industrious saves you oodles of hammers and speeds up everything. Earlier Wonders, infrastructure, specialists and defensive military units. Speed is key to get ahead of the AI.

Philosophical means more and earlier great persons. The quicker you build your Academy and get your settled GPs, the better.

Spiritual saves anarchy turns and allows for a lot of flexibility. You can comply with AI civic change demands for an easy +1 in relations. You can adapt civics to whatever you need at a specific moment (switch freely between Caste/Slavery, Bureaucracy/Nationhood or Pacifism/Organized Religion).

The remaining 8 traits are strictly inferior to these three. I think Charismatic is 4th best for the early happiness and the quicker promotions. Aggressive, Protective, Expansive, Creative, all have some value and are more or less equal in my opinion. Imperialistic is a little worse, but probably still better than Financial. You don’t build cottages, so you need specific tiles in your BFC for Financial to have value. Organized is easily the worst trait.


Starting techs

Agriculture is the best, followed by Mining. The Wheel is also good. Mysticism is on the way to Masonry, so also fairly useful. Hunting and Fishing are not that good.


Uniques

There are a lot of Uniques that are irrelevant to the OCC. Good unique units are those that keep you safe in the early-mid game, when you are most vulnerable. Mansa’s Skirmishers, Hammurabi’s Bowmen, Roman Praetorians and Sitting Bull’s units, for example. The English Redcoats are a powerhouse (but arrive very late).

Few unique buildings are helpful to the OCC. The best ones are the Roman Market, the Japanese Coal plant (provides power +10% despite the National Park cutting you off coal) and Suryavarman’s Baray.

 

[Gabethebabe]

Great Wonders.

Pyramids. We are going all out on this one. Build or resign.

Great Library. You really want this one, too. It is incredibly good on its own and better even with Representation. Depending on conditions, strategies may vary to win this race. Usually, I skip Alphabet and aim straight for Aesthetics. I happily burn a Great Engineer on it, if it means the difference between winning and potentially losing the race.

Great Wall. This is a red herring. Skip this Wonder 100% of the time. I have played some starts twice. Once going directly for the Pyramids and once going first for the Great Wall. Trust me if I say that the Great Wall delays your game plan, delays your Academy, pollutes your GP points pool, forces you to invest hammers into spies and you might lose the Great Library due to building this. You have a bunch of trading partners and you don’t need a fancy Spy economy. Trust your specialist economy and trading skills.

The Oracle. I would usually not consider this, unless Industrious+Marble. For example, if you have no close religious leaders, you can try the slingshot for Code of Laws and set up a Confucianism brotherhood, with you in the middle. Getting Code of Laws also speeds up your Bureaucracy date.

University of Sankore. A good bonus and the best GP points. Nice for sure, but by no means critical. Sometimes you’re still busy with building other stuff like defensive units, Forge, National Epic or Globe Theatre and you just let this one go. Never build this without Stone or Industrious.

The Internet. If your game ends up going to space, you need to build this.

That’s it, really. Sometimes I find myself building the Pentagon or the 3 Gorges Dam, but that is because I have a permanent ally and am already winning. These are “Win More” Wonders. I don’t build other Great Wonders. No Parthenon, no Taj Mahal, no Hanging Gardens.



National Wonders.

Four of them are locked in. National Epic, Globe Theatre, Oxford University and National Park. The last two you will build as soon as the relevant tech becomes available. The timing of the other two is not that critical. But sooner, rather than later you will build them too.

What is the fifth?

• Ironworks. This is your first choice for the 5th national wonder, assuming you have Iron (National park will cut you off coal). If you are going to have a permanent ally, remember that s/he can often provide Iron.
• West Point. First choice, if I cannot get Iron (very unusual). 4 EXP is a lot and I will usually have Stone to speed this up.
• Heroic Epic. This one I try to avoid, as it does not help building wonders or infrastructure. If your production is otherwise poor or you need military units more/earlier than expected, you may feel like needing this.
• Hermitage. This one is sometimes forced upon you by a culture spamming neighbor. Be alert when you see your cultural borders not expanding beyond your BFC. It might be a standoff, but you might also start losing BFC tiles at some point, without effective countermeasures.

 

[Gabethebabe]

Great Persons

Great Scientists are the very best, followed closely by Great Engineers. All the others you want to see as few as possible. The first Great Scientist builds an Academy. You may use a Great Engineer to build the Great Library. It is often a good idea to bulb Philosophy, for trading, gaining terrain in the Liberalism race and getting to Pacifism earlier. Settle all other GPs. In the late game, when you are racing to space, you can throw a Golden Age or two.

Great Generals are settled as well. If your production is lacking (no Levee, for example) and you have managed to trade for Military Science, you can build a Military Academy (better this than Heroic Epic). Only if you intend to build West Point, will you build a superunit.


Civics

Representation, Bureaucracy, Caste, Pacifism and Environmentalism are the civics where you want to end up. Slavery, Organized Religion and Nationhood may all play their parts. More, if you are Spiritual. Free Market is not worth the switch, unless you are Spiritual.



Defense

Easily the most important aspect of all. Lose your one city = death. Put fortified, Woodsman units in strategically relevant forests. These are costly to remove. If you are at war, try to promote a unit to Woodsman III.

If you know where the enemy comes from, you can build Forts as defensive bastions in forests/hills outside of your BFC (a choke point, if you have them) and put a couple of units with the relevant woodsman/guerilla promotions.

The move from Archers to Longbows is critical and in a period where you are frantically building infrastructure. Put money aside (95/archer) to immediately upgrade when you trade for Feudalism.

Woodsman Grenadiers upgraded to Machine Guns and placed in Forests are neigh unbeatable defensive units.

 

[Gabethebabe]

Trading

Check for trades every turn. A trade is often only available for 1-2 turns. With so many sides, don’t be afraid to make very disadvantageous trades (“My Alphabet for your Meditation”). Every trade puts you in a better position.

Before making any kind of trade, check out if your trading partner isn’t the worst enemy of too many or the wrong AI civ.

Sell techs freely to backward nations. Besides gaining you money, it balances AI power levels, so they don’t capitulate so easily.



Calendar resources

If you don’t have them, you don’t need to trade for Sailing and the rest of the navigation tech tree. If you don’t have inland water tiles, also don’t trade for Fishing. You have no need for that tech branch for several thousands of years, when Astronomy becomes available. Avoiding this tree, while you don’t need it, postpones the AI fear of you becoming too advanced.

Getting useful resource trades is often tough, because few AI civs will have surplus resources.Silk, Dye and Incense can be farmed over, if needed for growth, after getting Biology. The lack of commerce is compensated by an extra Specialist.


Forests and roads

As a rule of thumb: do not chop in your BFC. If you do, because you really need a cottage for early commerce, another farm, another mine or hammers NOW, then pick a tile that is adjacent to most forests (N, E, S, W, diagonal forests do not matter) and keep it road-free (roads reduce forest growth probabilities by 50%, I've read somewhere). Build roads freely in forests that are never going to be chopped.

Your military units can pillage terrain improvements in your cultural borders, but not roads. You can pillage your improvements by the time you start building Forest Preserves. Forest Preserves accelerate forest growth, so empty tiles adjacent to several Forest Preserves will grow a forest back qucker than you think (assuming it has no late game resource).

If you keep the tiles outside your BFC mostly void of roads, you can easily grow and chop 10+ forests during an entire game (free production!).

 

[Gabethebabe]

Diplomacy

Be picky with Open Borders. Too many open borders will lead to too many “stop trading” demands and you will end up losing relations instead of winning them. Open borders with the religious leaders, for their missionaries, with a neighbor for the trade routes and with sides that don’t hate each other, for the diplomatic bonus. You can cancel an Open Borders agreement without diplomatic repercussions. A stop trading demand, on the other hand, will always result in a -1 hit from one or the other.


Espionage

You are going to be bad at this. Still, it is a good idea to build some spies if you find yourself in periods of low production and would otherwise have built Science. Some late game buildings produce a LOT of spy points. The AI will not have many resources and will greedily build Factory, Coal Plant etc. Some well timed poisoning of water can severely cripple a city. Also switching an AI out of Bureaucracy will hurt their productivity.


Vassals

No. Capitulating an enemy is not in your game plan, until after getting a Permanent Alliance. No peace vassals ever. If you have a permanent ally, s/he might give away all your techs and the vassal might renounce your protection and jump ship to your main AI competitor.


Permanent Alliance

Most of the time, you will try and get a PA, because victory will be much easier. Without a PA, you are bound to go to space. Without it, you can win Domination.

PA’s are enabled by Communism and Fascism. These are fairly dead techs for you. Try and trade for them. Your actual priority is fulfilling the requirements for a PA, which is 40 turns (at standard speed) of shared war or a Defensive Pact (enabled by Military Tradition). If a potential PA partner goes to war, consider sharing that war. Early game shared wars also count. I’m not sure of the inner mechanics and if these shared war turns can expire, but I think not. I have gained various permanent allies without ever having a Defensive Pact

Careful that your potential PA partner is not one that switches to Free Religion and drops from Friendly to Pleased (I’m looking at you, Willem). Also be careful when a side grows too strong, they might reject to team up with you (”We are doing fine on our own”).

After getting a PA, the game isn’t won yet. I have lost games with a PA.

• If your ally has a dangerous neighbour, send some reliable defensive units.
• Send workers to override suboptimal improvements.
• Review their trades. If they trade away a strategic resource you want, your workers can build a windmill or farm over that resource. If this is impossible (City or desert tiles), you may need to send a spy to pillage the resource your ally is receiving and thereby break the trade.
• Review spy points of your ally. Sometimes you find a pool of 3000+ spy points of an infiltrated Great Spy, ready for (ab)use.

 

[Gabethebabe]

Early game

Worker > improve critical food tiles > Barracks (Warrior, if you started with a Scout) and beeline Masonry. Immediately switch to building the Pyramids, when you unlock Masonry (pause the Barracks). Grow your capital to the happy cap ASAP, while building. If Stone isn’t online yet, concentrate on growth only. You get max value out of Industrious if your base production + overflow is continuously an even amount of hammers.

If you need roads to connect to stone, The Wheel next. Otherwise the quickest path to Writing. Then do whatever you need to do to build the Great Library before anyone else. Consider getting Polytheism before Aesthetics. It can net you some nice early trades.


Midgame

After Literature go Code of Laws > Mathematics > Bureaucracy > Drama > Paper > Education. Code of Laws almost always arrives on time to make some good trades, because the AI loves Monarchy and Construction. Trade for Monarchy > Feudalism, as it is important to get to Longbows. If all goes well, you will be (one of) the first to arrive at Civil Service, a very important boost for your economy.


Liberalism.

After Education, the correct order is usually Printing Press > Gunpowder > Chemistry > Scientific Method > Biology. If you can win Liberalism, great. But Liberalism doesn’t accelerate your Biology date by much. Don’t bust your balls (like using multiple Great Scientists to bulb rather than settle) to win Liberalism, especially if your potential PA partner is winning Liberalism.


Endgame

While you finish Scientific Method, have a team of 4-6 workers ready to build Forest Preserves (they take 8 turns to build). Build the National Park. Enjoy 10+ Scientists working for you (I’ve had a Capital with 20 Scientists). You are now the fastest techer in the game and will remain so. Every Great Scientist you settle is ca. 30 beakers added to your scientific output.

The next priorities are Rifling and Nationalism. Your One City is amazing at drafting. Moving out of Bureaucracy into Nationhood barely affects tech speed. Drafting rifles, while building siege can quickly create a nice unit stack for military purposes, if that is what you want to do. Get Military Tradition if you need it and your PA partner doesn’t get it. If you were planning a solo space victory, Nationalism and Military Tradition are not a priority.

Prioritize Steam power for Levee (if you are riverside), Steel for Ironworks, Assembly Line for Factory and Infantry, then Industrialization and Combustion for Tanks. The usual, really.

If the game goes to space, prioritize Superconductors. Don’t build a single space part without the Laboratory. Prioritize Computers for The Internet. Win the game by outteching and outproducing the AI, while hopefully dodging nuclear wars.

 

[Gabethebabe]

Maps

These are all randomly generated, unedited maps. Some are better than others. I think the Bismarck map is the easiest to win.
The maps marked as Deity have 16 AI civs. You can choose to play them at lower difficulty. The Tokugawa Immortal map has 12 AI civs.

I have had to generate 100s of maps to build this collection. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

 

[Gabethebabe]

Two more maps.
The Hyuana map is utterly ridiculous and Financial actually has good value here.

Also I've been trying to do some m,ore bulbing with the idea to get to Biology earñlier, at the cost of some settled GPs.

 

[Thrasybulos]

First, thanks for the effort and for trying to divert the spotlight to a different playing mode.

Now, I know this is going to sound confrontational, but that's not the intent: I'm genuinely puzzled.

guide for winning an OCC at high difficulty level (Immortal/Deity)

Do whatever you normally do, but spam more opponents into your map. You don’t want your one city to face opponents with 10 or more cities. That won’t work very well at Immortal or Deity. On standard size map I play Immortal with 12 AI sides and Deity with 16 AI sides. You can increase the amount of opponents to decrease the difficulty of the game and the reverse.

Be prepared to regenerate the map. Twenty times, if you have to. Or fifty!

What's the point?

Why choose to play on Deity only to lower the actual difficulty through other settings and start position cheesing?
A misguided sense that you're not really playing the game if the difficulty slider isn't set to the max?
Clickbait? ("Guide for OCC on Monarch" doesn't quite have the same appeal, does it)
I mean... there could be an actual game experience reason, but here fiddling with the settings to lower the actual difficulty is the stated intent.

So why not just play standard OCC on Emperor or Monarch (which would be the actual difficulty represented here, and I might be generous...)?

I remember that back in the day, OCC Conquest was a thing.
Have you given it a try?
It would lead to vastly different priorities, so might be worth a mention in an OCC guide?

 

[floydmcw]

Also curious why Diplo victories turned off? Without UN/Apo victory you're locked into Space (or Conquest as Thrasybulos noted but that's hard and a slog).

(But good luck getting an Apo win with 16 other civs, some of whom are sure to run Theocracy.)

 

[Fippy]

Looking for a strong start was pretty much standard in deity occ
Explaining why..it's exciting against deity AIs, more than playing Immortal with an average start.
And the most fun was Space.

 

[soundjata]

I might pick the cheesiest of those maps. Must be Gandhi by the power of fast workaaaaas

 

[Gabethebabe]

What's the point?

Why choose to play on Deity only to lower the actual difficulty through other settings and start position cheesing?
A misguided sense that you're not really playing the game if the difficulty slider isn't set to the max?
Clickbait? ("Guide for OCC on Monarch" doesn't quite have the same appeal, does it)
I mean... there could be an actual game experience reason, but here fiddling with the settings to lower the actual difficulty is the stated intent.

So why not just play standard OCC on Emperor or Monarch (which would be the actual difficulty represented here, and I might be generous...)?

I remember that back in the day, OCC Conquest was a thing.
Have you given it a try?
It would lead to vastly different priorities, so might be worth a mention in an OCC guide?

The games I played were at all Deity and some at Immortal. I cannot provide recommendations on other settings, since I haven't tried them
There are plenty of people that cannot beat a normal Deity game, me included. This strategy allow you to beat Deity and scratch that off your bucket list.

if you want to play OCC@Deity and have a strategy other than "Survive and PA with whoever is winning the game", you will have to be critical with starting position. That's just a hard mf-ing fact of life.
if you don't like the game settings, that's fine. Then this write-up was not for you.

Also curious why Diplo victories turned off? Without UN/Apo victory you're locked into Space (or Conquest as Thrasybulos noted but that's hard and a slog).

(But good luck getting an Apo win with 16 other civs, some of whom are sure to run Theocracy.)

You are probably right that it will be impossible to get an AP win with so many sides. I kind of hate the AP in any shape or form. You can turn diplo victories on w/o problems, obviously.

I might pick the cheesiest of those maps. Must be Gandhi by the power of fast workaaaaas

The Ghandi map is actually pretty hard to win, since you're up against the world with just two wet corn and Stone.

I'd say the Bismarck map is interesting and very winnable. The Hyuana map is just silly. I quit on the game, because I was so far ahead at some point, it was boring. An example of too powerful of an opener.

Attached is another Ghandi OCC map.

 

[Gabethebabe]

I tried the OCC at Emperor with standard-size Pangea map and 6 AI opponents, following the same strategy as always.

It wasn't pretty. I went Liberalism > Biology when no AI had Education yet. I had to tech many things myself that I would always trade for at Deity (Mathematics, Machinery, Engineering, for example), so my Liberalism date wasn't very good.
To avoid having to tech Military Tradition, I joined some early distant wars. After Biology I went straight to Communism and got a Permanent Alliance.

I uploaded a Deity game to my crappy gaming Youtube channel for your viewing pleasure.
I assume for the Deity players it will be a hard watch, since I'm sure I make many play mistakes.
The leader is Gandhi, the capital is not very impressive (2 wet Corn, Stone in my BFC, no river, no plains hill to settle on), but it is the strategic position and neighbours that makes it winnable.

This is part 1/6.