Deity Always War OCC

Very interesting game! I've played it a few times but keep getting overrun. Each time I last a little longer and learn a little more. In my best game my stategy was to have lots of medium-promoted units. By the 1300s I had maybe 40 grenadiers promoted from Samuris. I was starting to feel comfortable holding the pass. Had maybe 100 units there but, then the AI's tech lead kicked in and I couldn't hold it from tanks, gunships and planes. One more lesson learned.
 
I tried again and I think I have found the optimum playstyle now which gets me tanks buildable at 1300 AD and mech infantry at ~1550 AD.

Those three techs from huts really speed everything up drastically
CS slingshot finished in 1925 BC complete with golden age from a great spy, so that I could adopt confucianism/representation/bureaucracy/caste system without anarchy.
Second GA with another great spy and the music artist followed soon after so that I got pacifism without anarchy as well.

I almost got to biology in the BCs, but since my second gp was a great engineer my academy was delayed a little, so that I had to "wait" for biology until 145 AD. :)

I think finishing in the 1700s is possible but the conquering part gets boring pretty fast.
 
getting three techs from huts is a remarkable stroke of random luck so you can't count on that for a strategy in this game
 
1790 AD to 1846 AD, 32 turns: The Endgame

The rest of the game is somewhat tedious, running around razing cities as fast as possible.

Monty sends a few more stacks at my city, but all of them are modest and easily absorbed by subsequent draftees set in the pass. The rest of the AIs just sit back in their cities and wait for the end.

After the fall of Rome (the city) in 1794, I send the bulk of my army north to deal with Shaka. A few units stay behind to polish off what's left of Genghis.

In 1802, Shaka dies. On to Boudica.
In 1820, Genghis dies.
In 1824, Boudica dies. On to Tokugawa.

Now it gets harder. Toku's cities are defended by multi-promotion agg/prot infantry. C1 CG3 D1 infantry fortified in 80% culture cities lead to high casualties. I'm steadily losing units faster than I can replace them (and my city raiders are irreplaceable). But the end is near.

Even my warlords are at risk. I'm very careful with their moves to avoid stopping them alone on the plains where they can be gang attacked and possibly overwhelmed. I occasionally mess up and do that with the commando units, and typically they vanish immediately, but never with the precious warlords. I will throw my warlords at the toughest city defenders, but they are so strong the odds are usually 99%+. In 1830, Vercingetorix attacks one of Toku's infantry with 97.6% odds and loses (fair enough given the number of attacks made by my warlords) but the 80% withdrawal rate kicks in and he survives. I make sure to guard him with multiple units to let him heal up.

Speaking of healing, it happens quickly. With 4 units offering 40% bonus to healing and many units with combat 5, I typically get 55% healing in enemy territory, so I almost never decline to attack with a unit due to injury. That keeps the invasion going full speed.

One thing that makes the conquest annoying is the stupid BTS rule that city razing gives the victim a bunch of infantry, usually more than the amount that guarded the lost city. This is particularly infuriating in OCC, since you don't have the option to keep the city. I get accustomed to using my city raiders to take a city, then sending in the commandos to clean up all the spawned infantry before they can run behind city walls.

Finally, in 1841, Tokugawa dies.

I get my 21st great general in 1843. For no particular reason I use Rommel to make a warlord mech. Unfortunately, he never sees action as I blitz through Monty while he marches to the front line.

Finally, in 1846, the last AI, Monty dies.

A conquest victory and an Augustus Caesar rating with 20,802 points, not bad for OCC.

Just for kicks, in the last year I change civics and do a final draft, providing the following remarkable city screen:

final_turn_city_alt.JPG

78 unhappy faces, but no unhappy citizens. That has got to be a record. In all seriousness, while running sensible civics (Police State and Emancipation), I never had happiness problems and only got up to 90% culture by the end. I could have done a little more drafting without problems.

Following is a list of my builds and deaths:

built_units.jpg

I lost 81 mechs and had 39 at the end. Without the draft, I would have had very few units by the end. Of the 51 city raiders, only 11 remained after the final battle. My four mighty warlords survived with over 5,000 combined experience. People rightfully criticize warlords for being too fragile, but this game shows that with enough promotions they become practically immortal. The promotions largely synergize so 10 promotions are more than twice as effective as 5 (think of how guerrilla 3 and tactics combine, or drill with basically everything). The trick is getting them to high level. Once there, you can use them fearlessly.

I got 21 great generals and 22 other great people. Not bad given neither Philosophical nor Pacifism for almost the entire game.

Note that I torched 67 cities. I did this over a span of just 47 turns, after making preparations for 389 turns.

Following are my kill stats:

killed_units.jpg

Altogether, I destroyed 3,234 units (vs. 85 losses counting aircraft). Unsurprisingly, the most numerous victims were infantry and cavalry. I hardly saw anything else during the conquest.

The power graph:

power.jpg

Obviously, I lagged for most of the game by a lot. The spike when I got Rifling was quite dramatic.

Finally, GNP:

gnp.jpg

Very strong early, but Hammurabi was a monster as the game progressed.

Overall, I really enjoyed this game. It had a lot of remarkable superlatives (mega warlords, monster production, huge but controllable unhappiness, and massive kill total). Looking back, I think my strategy was generally good, but I made a few mistakes that I may be lucky didn't cost me (neglecting early defense, getting Music too early, not finishing the Statue of Zeus, raising too much cash). My impression from reading other people's comments on their experiences and my own experiments with restarting the game with different opening moves (following Turinturambar's 3 hut tech start) is that there is a lot of luck involved in what the AIs do. They might race to the Great Wall and Oracle making it impossible to get them, or they might hit you early with a large force. Or as in my game, one of them might skyrocket in techs and cause problems with aerial pillaging or an early UN. That makes this game variant exciting; you are on the edge and need some luck to survive.
 
good finish but it really sounds like an exercise in micromanagement hell, which is this game's ultimate downfall in the endgame I think. I hope if Civ 5 ever comes out they address this more than anything else somehow.

something I am trying to understand is why those Warlords with all the first strikes are immune to damage when attacked... for example there were early Samurai with 7-10 first strikes. From what I understand of this ability, it means you get a free round of combat to inflict damage on another unit, but how does that mean the other unit can't inflict damage on you?

this game was an interesting experience having so many promotions and abilities that I don't normally get to play with

PS did anyone else keep getting the random event that a mediator wants to make peace and then you can "make peace" with other leaders? but of course the setting is always war so this is an annoying bug
 
something I am trying to understand is why those Warlords with all the first strikes are immune to damage when attacked... for example there were early Samurai with 7-10 first strikes. From what I understand of this ability, it means you get a free round of combat to inflict damage on another unit, but how does that mean the other unit can't inflict damage on you?

It´s a combination of the fact that they have those first strikes and a ridicolously high strength (usually at least ~+250% from terrain and promotions). The high strength translates into a very good chance of hitting and inflicting lots of damage with those first strikes. After the first strikes are over and regular combat begins the opposing unit is probably already dead or has very vew hp left, so the odds of it hitting and damaging the samurai are very low.
 
something I am trying to understand is why those Warlords with all the first strikes are immune to damage when attacked... for example there were early Samurai with 7-10 first strikes. From what I understand of this ability, it means you get a free round of combat to inflict damage on another unit, but how does that mean the other unit can't inflict damage on you?
They are not immune to damage, but 7-10 first strikes means that for the first 7-10 rounds of combat any damage done to them is ignored - which in turn means that there is a high chance of them killing their opponent before running out of first strikes.
 
LlamaCat, I also got the 'make peace' random event and it was just irritating.

With 7-10 first strikes you get 7-10 chances to inflict damage before the other guy gets to respond. Hopefully, he dies before inflicting any damage on you. At least that is how I understand it but I may be wrong.

I've played this a few times now and the randomness of early events can be critical. The three hut pop of techs is not gauranteed, close but not always the same. Maybe you have to do everything exactly the same to get the exact same tech pops.

Another major factor is when the AI's decide to start to attack. I have noticed that they seem to attack eariler the weaker you are. But I think they factor in your research not just your units. So, if you have IW early they won't attack till later. It's funny to watch 10-20 AI units move away from the pass when I only have 3-4 axemen there. But in a different game when I didn't get IW early they will attack my stack of 10 axemen. I also think the AI factors wonders into the attack equation but I can't quantify either of these. Has any one else noticed these tendancies.
 
They factor the power graph probably. The great wall is worth a ton of power so it would certainly factor in the AI's decision of attacking. IW is also worth a bit of hammers.
 
They factor the power graph probably. The great wall is worth a ton of power so it would certainly factor in the AI's decision of attacking. IW is also worth a bit of hammers.

in BtS it's worth 10K soldiers, the equivalent of 3 1/3 axemen. Cocoloco, it turns out ironworking is also worth 10K.

details about how that soldiers stuff for the demographics screen is calculated are here. some of it is pretty :crazyeye: imo.

this thread is spiffy, and i really want to try this game, but i can't decide what difficulty to use. i don't want to go too low and have them not tech fast enough to make it hard; i don't want to go deity and get squished like a bug.

the only always war game i've ever played was OCC, but it was really bizarre. i had 3 OCC cities. it was ruff_hi's idea ... cultural OCC during always war, without teaming with the AI. trick is playing in hot seat mode, you set up 3 teams as human players, set all 3 to OCC, and you play all 3 :lol:. it was really fun!
 
Well I gave it a shot.. but for some reason I never managed to get Civil Service from Oracle or slightshot Biology, and by the time I upraged to Mech Infantry the AI's were close to launching so I gave up. I've never played O.C.C. before and didn't know you could only build '5' national wonders, otherwise I'd have built the globe theatre instead of heroic epic or Wall St. because once the UN was built... goodbye to beaurarcacy, etc w/out the +5:mad: penatly with the world thinking 'you are a villan', I ended up with +12 unhappiness (also cause some resources go obselete)
 
Great game and scenario.

I'd like to see a more general Deity Always War OCC conquest challenge -- let's say you can worldbuild your capital's BFC as much as you want. Or it could be a little more generous -- you can modify any tiles within the capital's 2nd culture pop zone, to allow for mountain- or water-produced chokepoints. Are dualdoc's choices for resources/terrain optimal? What sort of different strategies can you use with different types of terrain modification?
 
Well I gave it a shot.. but for some reason I never managed to get Civil Service from Oracle or slightshot Biology, and by the time I upraged to Mech Infantry the AI's were close to launching so I gave up. I've never played O.C.C. before and didn't know you could only build '5' national wonders, otherwise I'd have built the globe theatre instead of heroic epic or Wall St. because once the UN was built... goodbye to beaurarcacy, etc w/out the +5:mad: penatly with the world thinking 'you are a villan', I ended up with +12 unhappiness (also cause some resources go obselete)

as dualdoc was saying in his report and I agree, Globe Theatre is definitely not the way to go in this game, it's really unnecessary as there is plenty of other happiness. why would you abandon bureaucracy just because the UN was built?
 
I played a game with a similar setup, except my city was the chokepoint, it had sea access and the diff was immortal. My strongest unit ended up with ~1300 ep. My strategy was to turtle until seals, and then go aroung burning coastal cities viking-style. It was blast. Conquest vic in 1903.
 
as dualdoc was saying in his report and I agree, Globe Theatre is definitely not the way to go in this game, it's really unnecessary as there is plenty of other happiness. why would you abandon bureaucracy just because the UN was built?

Globe theatre is definitely the superior choice over heroic epic if you don´t go for the mass upgrade strategy. You can hit your pop cap a lot sooner, don´t have to run free religion/emancipation and don´t need to waste hammers on happy buildings/wonders. You also don´t need to research expensive dead end techs like democracy.
If the UN gets built global free speech/univ. suffrage/ emancipation/environmentalism proposals come up which are all civics you really don´t want, so you have to defy them. That quickly leads to tons of unhappiness, because each time you defy it adds +5 unhappy for a long time.
 
I'm playing my first ever OCC, although on more humble terms, standard pangaea map with 7 opponents, prince difficulty. The globe theatre has just been awesome since I started warring bc by the time I joined the fray I had bribed so many AI wars that everyone has been in constant warfare for hundreds of turns now and alliances has shifted a dozen times with backstabbing all around.
 
Regarding the question of whether the Globe is desirable in this game, I agree with Turinturambar that it is a solid choice with a lot of benefits, but I will make the following points:

1) It will not allow you to reach pop cap any earlier. I never had unhappiness and I didn't touch the culture slider until I starting drafting. Even then, my draft frequency was limited only by population growth, not happiness.

2) I did build a lot of happy structures, but only when I had nothing else to build. And they were useful for culture, and the cathedrals and temples allowed me to use Angkor Wat boosted priests. A lot of them.

3) I only used free religion for much of the game for the 10% science boost, not the happiness. I never used it during the latter part of the game, when happiness was more of an issue. Likewise, I only used Emancipation toward the end when none of the other labor civics had any value. I did use Police State for happiness at the end, but it was the best civic at the end even ignoring the war weariness effect.

4) The UN is not a concern because of happiness. The UN is a problem because it can cost you the game. Unless you are lucky, one of the AI blocks will have the votes to win diplomatically (and they won't abstain since they love each other). I went back to the save game after the UN was built in my game and pushed end turn several times until a diplomatic vote occurred. Sure enough, Genghis beat Shaka and won the game.

5) The only techs you can avoid with the Globe are Divine Right and Democracy. Divine Right is not that expensive, and Democracy gives you the useful security bureau (and the SoL if you are fast enough). As I note above, emancipation is not really necessary if you want to skip Democracy. Neither is Islam if you want to skip Divine Right.

6) If you do the upgrade strategy, the extra time for researching those techs just lets you build more city raiders. This is part of the reason I bother to research Fascism and Communism. Also, the Globe would significantly inhibit your cash generation ability to pay for upgrades by denying other options.

7) Ironically, the Globe makes drafting less viable since you need to maintain a larger population to be able to build 300 hammers per turn without the Heroic Epic. There is no point in heavy drafting if it means you build fewer high experience units.

I'll admit that the main reason I passed on the Globe was because I wanted to see how high I could get the happy/unhappy levels (79 and 78) in a city. A sort of perverse curiosity. But there are very sound reasons to favor the Heroic Epic.
 
In my game I went National Epic, Heroic Epic, Oxford, Globe and National Park, but then, I had no iron or coal. =)

Edit: And no oil, ouch..then I discovered the Mech Inf. don't need it. A new day, a new revelation.
 
:goodjob:

quality thread and a really interesting read, i'm gonna try this

on a lower difficulty or I'll get my butt handed to me :lol:
 
Top Bottom