Designing a "one city challenge" for Nobles' Club

[CivilizedTiger]

There was a game, "So you think you can OCC, Sitting Bull?", which was destined to be the first of a series, and it was inspired by your wish to make an OCC NC game.

Link:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=348507

 

[dalamb]

Great! One less thing for me to do.

 

[ilikepies]

I like the idea of the Noble's Clubs having "Lessons". Peter is a very good choice- Expansive will help with growing and Philosophical with Science and settling specialists. Definetely keep the warmongers out of the game or far away. I'd stick with leaders like Gandhi or Mansa, but they happen to be very strong without warmongers as well. I think a coastal start w/seafood and sea oil, and some empty river and hill tiles inland to allow some specialization, would be nice. Won't a space victory be sort of hard with one city, though? Great people settled in the city will probably be fairly diluted and end up with not too much production. Usually when I do a space victory, each city builds a part or two. It's a lot of work for 1 city. Continents would probably be a good choice, that way the player doesn't have to deal with 6 other civilizations nearby.

I've never done a One City Challenge before and am looking forward to seeing how it turns out. Good luck and don't give us Montezuma (i hatesss him, preciousss).

As for guides, if you haven't seen it already, Sisiutl's Strategy Guide is great and more or less sums up every concept, strategy, and irrational abbreviation cooked up by the community, including a nice section on diplomacy.. Its notes are brief but cover everything fairly objectively and allows room for personal strategies. For someone who is just coming into the community, it's like a Civilization Bible (and a whole lot more interesting). Seems like the Noble's club is getting a lot of new members who just registered too. It can be found: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=165632

Personally, I don't know much of anything about OCCs, but I don't like the idea of an OCC series (though I'm not going to stop you if you want to). I think that mixing up the Noble's Club more, however, would be great. It seems to me like the early games had very clear goals and purposes. While the new games are very fun, they aren't very diverse. A whole series of OCCs might get tedious, whereas just making more crazy maps in general wouldn't get old. My first NC game (and one of my first posts on the forum, I think) was the Genghis game (it was on an Arboria map, and consisted of chop-whip-rushing massive amounts of keshiks.. yay) and once I was done with it I actually started using the production boosts from chopping forests.

As I said, I know absolutely nothing about a one city challenge and wouldn't mind trying one.

 

[CivilizedTiger]

Great! One less thing for me to do.

... there was only one game so far, we can't yet talk about a series, and you've already shown interest in this idea, perhaps you could continue the OCCs .

 

[Agramon]

You might want to link some of obsolete's games. Especially the deity industrious series, that demonstrates the power of wonder heavy capital that you would use in an OCC quite well.

Btw I think ind is way better than philosophical. You spend most of the time building wonders and National wonders anyway, if going for space.

 

[Fleme]

^ I'll agree to disagree with you on the statement that Ind beats Phi in an OCC. First of all, there are only so many wonders you actually want and those wonders you can pretty much get when you set out to get them since OCC doesn't strain you in terms of expansion or military upkeep. Furthermore, Philosophical will remain useful throughout the OCC while Ind is good only when you're building a wonder.

Furthermore, a specialist - let alone a phi specialist will outdo a wonder in terms of GPP production.

Lastly, when you play on levels above Noble (I realize this is a discussion regarding a spin-off of the Noble's Club), the fact of the matter usually is that you won't get every single wonder while you'll still be able to run specialists. To add further boost to Phi is the fact that in an OCC you'll pretty much end up settling your specialists and assuming a proper start, you'll have 5~ hammers worth of specialists settled come 1 AD and the number will steadily rise throughout the game so the specialists will actually generate some pretty awesome hammers on top of every other boost they grant.

That said, I'm pretty sure I'm right when I say that Phi/Ind/Exp are the traits of choice for an OCC game for obvious reasons while other traits give next to no boost.

To put it short, Phi>Ind

Top OCC leaders: Peter, Bismarck. Second tier: Pericles, Gandhi. Third tier the remaining Phi leaders followed by the others in whatever order preferable.

 

[ilikepies]

Aw, I just did Bismarck.

I do agree though that Philosophical is probably the best trait for a OCC. Building wonders is costly and can really dilute GPP.

 

[michmbk]

That said, I'm pretty sure I'm right when I say that Phi/Ind/Exp are the traits of choice for an OCC game for obvious reasons while other traits give next to no boost.

I'm a pretty big fan of SPI too - I would put that with PHI and IND as my top 3. EXP isn't as critical with national park in BTS in my opinion, but SPI I find to be very useful in terms of giving into demands, switching religions if needed, without any anarchy. Not to mention the turns it saves when I do make each civic switch. Even though there are typically only a few civic switches required in an OCC, it's helpful to me to switch between organized religion and pacifism, and sometimes between rep and universal suffrage as needed.

 

[CivilizedTiger]

@JFlemme
I'm not too good a player, so what I say might not make the best sense, but... why is expansive so important in OCC? I like the trait in games in which I settle more cities, but in OCC games, it seems like you need fewer workers, and, with some care, you could get health from other sources. Is +2health a lot more important when you have fewer health resources available? In the only OCC game I've played so far, I only used 2 workers.

And... what's the vote on Lizzy? I'd have thought that she was the best OCC leader, as you get a very powerful boost in commerce which adds up to quite a nice bonus over the course of a game.

 

[madscientist]

Dalamb, I am chiming a little late here but perhaps there is a little to offer.

I ran three RPCs in the classic RPC series using BTS: Agustus, Stalin, and Lincoln using OCC. Agustus was a diplomatic Victory game, Stalin a Conquest Victory, Lincoln a close Space Race loss. There was no RPC rules except the Stalin game which only reuired a conquest victory.

You may to link these for educational purposes. They were Monarch difficulty, Marathon speed although the speed really makes little difference.

As far as a leader, if it's educational then use either Philosophical or Industrious paired with expansive or spiritual. Thus you have Peter, Rameses, Gandhi or Bismark.

For the record, expansive is very valuable for the health benefits if you elect NOT to build the National Park. Generally the Globe theater makes happiness a non-issue, but the national park removes coal access and can affect teh game.

Regarding the map, I suggest a land locked region with the potential to settle on the coast if desired. A river seams optimal for learning an OCC, and you want a generous amount of forrests to offer the choice of whether to chop them or not.

 

[dualmaster]

And... what's the vote on Lizzy? I'd have thought that she was the best OCC leader, as you get a very powerful boost in commerce which adds up to quite a nice bonus over the course of a game.

Financial is terrible for OCC. Under the best circumstances, even if you worked every tile in the BFC, it would only net 20 bonus . In reality, for an OCC you should be running specialists and only working high food tiles (and some production tiles when you need to build something). Most food and production tiles wouldn't get the bonus commerce anyways (many don't produce 2 to begin with), so the net benefit of financial is almost nothing.

 

[Fleme]

@JFlemme
I'm not too good a player, so what I say might not make the best sense, but... why is expansive so important in OCC? I like the trait in games in which I settle more cities, but in OCC games, it seems like you need fewer workers, and, with some care, you could get health from other sources. Is +2health a lot more important when you have fewer health resources available? In the only OCC game I've played so far, I only used 2 workers.

And... what's the vote on Lizzy? I'd have thought that she was the best OCC leader, as you get a very powerful boost in commerce which adds up to quite a nice bonus over the course of a game.

Exp is good because of the fact that the only thing limiting your growth and as such the optimal number of specialists is health. Your happiness issues will always be in check when playing an OCC because 95% of the time you'll choose GT as one of the national wonders whereas the National Park will sometimes have to be skipped in favor of other national wonders and raw production.

I'd imagine that your average occ capital will feature atleast the GT/NE/OU, leaving some room to play around between IW and NP depending on what you want. Expansive allows you to choose more liberarly but I'm straying off point because the main benefit you get from Exp is the early vertical growth - every little bit of health matters.

As for Lizzy, you have your answer from dualmaster. To top it all off, her UB and UU are bad for OCC whereas both Bismarck and Peter will see some mileage off theirs in form of either favorable specialist slots or free specialists. (Not saying the Cossack nor the Panzer are of any relevance)

 

[CivilizedTiger]

Thank you two for the answers!

I never thought about it that way. Sure... financial is very limited with only one city, but unlike health, it adds up over time. But I guess it doesn't add up to that much and you can get research and gold from specialists, so you're right, it's better to be able to grow more populated cities, and as early as possible.

As far as GT is concerned, unfortunately drama is one of those techs I buy from the other AIs in the early industrial era, since I've never found any stringent need to grab it earlier so far. (I've only teched it very early in my Pericles culture victory game) In my only OCC, I never built the globe theater, and... now it looks, indeed, like a huge mistake. And... it's quite obvious, actually GT in your OCC city = 100% of your happiness problems completely eliminated for the rest of the game, leaving you to only need to take care of health.

Thank you two for your replies!

 

[CivilizedTiger]

Thank you two for the answers!

I never thought about it that way. Sure... financial is very limited with only one city, but unlike health, it adds up over time. But I guess it doesn't add up to that much and you can get research and gold from specialists, so you're right, it's better to be able to grow more populated cities, and as early as possible.

As far as GT is concerned, unfortunately drama is one of those techs I buy from the other AIs in the early industrial era, since I've never found any stringent need to grab it earlier so far. (I've only teched it very early in my Pericles culture victory game) In my only OCC, I never built the globe theater, and... now it looks, indeed, like a huge mistake. And... it's quite obvious, actually GT in your OCC city = 100% of your happiness problems completely eliminated for the rest of the game, leaving you to only need to take care of health.

Thank you two for your replies!

 

[ilikepies]

So which National Wonders would you usually build in a OCC? Globe Theater of course, and for the other, Oxford or National Epic? Oxford because it essentially doubles your research output, or National Epic because it allows you to add superspecialists twice as fast?

 

[Fleme]

You can build more than two national wonders in an OCC, that's the beauty of it. As such, NE/GT/Oxford are no-brainers which can then be coupled with National Park if you have an abundance of forests or the Ironworks if you're looking to maximize your production capital.

I'm not sure whether or not the number of national wonders is dependant on map size but atleast on large you can have 5 so it still leaves you an option for the last one.

 

[naterator]

^^^Ya, 5 national wonders per city is the limit on all maps.

Depriving them of oil or aluminum would open the door for founding one of the corps. Good practice for GP production, having the correct GP at the right time.
Depriving aluminum would require them to plan ahead when deciding to build the national park, which i doubt many nobles would do; so unless tough love is the plan, maybe better to deprive them of oil. It is scary building space parts w/o tanks of planes and one city with 0.3x the power of everyone else, it makes for a tense game. It promotes either good diplo, or standard ethanol. ethanol also open up tactics like buying corn to sell oil, or spreading the corporation all around, flooding the market with oil and making huge profits w/o paying the upkeep then buying an army to raze the world (for those who don't want space.)

for leaders, i would probably agree with peter for his PHI, which rules the OCC, EXP is nice as well, health is good. The Research institute is better in an OCC than a regular game also in my opinion.
Personally, I like PHI, then IND, then SPI for an OCC, thus Gandhi of Rome and Ramesses of Japan are my 2 OCC favorites (neither being an option of course).
Gandhi of Rome because PHI is king in an OCC, the beakers from specialists is all that keeps you going really. The forum is great with the PHI-Pacifist-National epic-Parthenon-Globe theatre-National park combo if you want to really maximize your GP's.
Ram of Japam because the shale plant gives power with national park before plastics, regardless of a river, and without meltdowns. (although i'd just as soon take Ram of Rome since i just love the forum in an OCC)

 

[Fleme]

Do some math on the forum and you'll realize that it's not at all good

 

[King Pluto]

PHI-Pacifist-National epic-Parthenon-Globe theatre-National park combo if you want to really maximize your GP's.

This combination isn't all it's cracked up to be. Throwing a bunch of % increasing buildings into a city doesn't simply add the percentages; they get multiplied instead. The more you have, the less effective they become as you add the buildings to the city.

Also, in most OCCs the forests will all be cleared for production (Wonders) well before you get to the National Park. The NP is great for eliminating health problems with limited resource access and a large pop that you won't want to whip often, but not for GPPs.

 

[ilikepies]

I'd definitely put in AIs that will trade a lot. Since we will be missing some resources, we'll need to trade for them, therefore someone like Mansa would be much better than Toku for a OCC game.

By the way, JFleme, you have an awesome picture.