Island wonder tips needed

[DrZiro]

In the current game I'm playing, I've decided to go with only one city, at least in the early stages of the game. Just for fun. The city is on an island, which happens to be rather food-heavy, so the city can grow quickly, which makes up for the lack of other cities.

With such fast growth, it soon gets problems with the unhappies. So I make a run for Drama, and build the Globe Theatre. It normally requires 6 theatres, but since I can't build 6 theatres in one city, I've just plainly disabled that requirement (and all others like it). So that solves that problem.

But then after a while they also get problems with the unhealthies. So I start thinking about a National Park. Problem one is that that requires a good deal more techs. Problem two is that I would also very much like to have the Moai Statues, because the city is short on hammers and has vast amounts of water tiles.

Instead of the Globe Theatre, I could use Hereditary Rule and pile up dozens of units in the city. But that would slow the rest of the production, and I'd still have to wait for Biology to get rid of the unhealthies. Plus I'd be stuck with HR, and miss out on the other government civics.

So which one of the three should I drop?

 

[Paw]

If I were you i'd just play a OOC (One city challenge). You can choose this option by playing a custom game and checking the box for it.

In vanilla, this lets you build all the national wonders in your one city. In BTS, this allows you to build up to 5 national wonders in your city. All without the requirements for X banks, theatre, etc. Of course, you can never have more than one city either (Can't build settlers and if you capture a city it automatically razes).

However, since you need to start a new game to do that, in your current game, If I were you I'd go with the globe and maybe moai statues or ironworks, but it's hard to say without seeing at least a screenshot. Unhappiness is a bigger issue/more serious issue than unhealthiness.

 

[mariogreymist]

If the food is plentiful enough to run every tile and have 8+ specialists, I'd recommend Globe/National Park. While Moai Statues will give you in the short term, the ability to work every tile and have a bunch of specialists at the same time can make up for it assuming you can build the Kremlin. I'd work an engineer at all times, and when you pop a Great Engineer, save it to build the wonder. After that you can either use slavery or Universal suffrage to get the you need.

Of course, I don't ever play One city challenges, and someone who does may have better advice. That's my first impulse for this situation though. And of course it depends on exactly how much coast/ocean/lake you have in the BFC. I'd say the break even point which makes the moai the better option is about 10-11 water tiles. (but I'm not invested enough in this problem to do the math)

 

[WelshGandalf]

If you do go on to play a "proper" one city challenge game, I recommend this strategy guide - http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/bts_occ.php - it sure helped shape my thinking.

 

[vanatteveldt]

IMHO NP is not worth it for OCC games, certainly not for "non-OCC OCC games". It becomes available around the time you get options for health. Environmentalism + public transport + hospital is a lot of extra health...

 

[lasombra1984]

I build Globe Theatre, National Park, National Epic, Oxford University when playing OCC.
Ironworks -if I've got Iron; Moai if I have no Iron but lots of seafood tiles

p.s. Industrial & Philisophical are best traits for OCC, Charismatic & Expansive are worst

 

[Agramon]

@lasombra exp is definitely not the worst, since you get additional health which is not too bad.

I usually build GT, NE, IW, Oxford, NP. Since wonders (or only national wonders) are a huge part of the game production, I consider industrious the occ trait ;-)

Preferred victory condition: Space ;-) Hit enter win.

Caution: Don't found confu or any other religion. You only get a religious love fest if the main religion spreads to you ;-)

 

[lasombra1984]

@lasombra exp is definitely not the worst, since you get additional health which is not too bad.

I usually build GT, NE, IW, Oxford, NP. Since wonders (or only national wonders) are a huge part of the game production, I consider industrious the occ trait ;-)

Preferred victory condition: Space ;-) Hit enter win.

Caution: Don't found confu or any other religion. You only get a religious love fest if the main religion spreads to you ;-)

After National Park expansive is completely wasted.

 

[Clam Spammer]

You could consider Theatre + Colosseum + culture slider. With one city, you don't have much commerce (even if it is coastal) and most of your research should come from settled Great Scientists which ignore the slider.

@lasombra exp is definitely not the worst, since you get additional health which is not too bad.

I usually build GT, NE, IW, Oxford, NP. Since wonders (or only national wonders) are a huge part of the game production, I consider industrious the occ trait ;-)

Preferred victory condition: Space ;-) Hit enter win.

Caution: Don't found confu or any other religion. You only get a religious love fest if the main religion spreads to you ;-)

Worst trait for OCC is Organized. Also Agg/Pro/Imp unless you go to war. Cha and Exp give a decent boost early on, when it really matters - the fact that these bonuses go "obsolete" doesn't mean the traits are worthless.

Re. religions: Either don't found one, OR hoard as many as possible. With the latter approach, on an Island map, you can often find religionless civs and convert them after Optics.

 

[vanatteveldt]

Re the culture slider in (semi-)OCC games: I think that this does more damage than you assume. Even trade routes alone can easily give 30-40 commerce, which is multiplied by buro to give 50-60 beakers per turn before modifiers, which is equal to 6 settled scientists. Add to this 'accidental' commerce from rivers, coastal, specials (gold, marble, calendar etc) and the slides can easily add 100 base beakers, which is not insignificant.

 

[z0wb13]

IMHO NP is not worth it for OCC games, certainly not for "non-OCC OCC games". It becomes available around the time you get options for health. Environmentalism + public transport + hospital is a lot of extra health...

here is an extreme example of why the NP can be the best move. different land would have needed a different strategy.

environmentalism, with forest preserves and NP:
53 , 112 , 16 specialists, 724 max

 

[Clam Spammer]

Re the culture slider in (semi-)OCC games: I think that this does more damage than you assume. Even trade routes alone can easily give 30-40 commerce, which is multiplied by buro to give 50-60 beakers per turn before modifiers, which is equal to 6 settled scientists. Add to this 'accidental' commerce from rivers, coastal, specials (gold, marble, calendar etc) and the slides can easily add 100 base beakers, which is not insignificant.

You won't get anywhere near those numbers until lategame though. By that stage, there are plenty of ways to get happiness:
- trading for resources (which the AI will have connected by then)
- Broadway/Rock n Roll (also helps with the above)
- forest preserves (if you wisely saved your BFC trees)
- Representation (even if you didn't build Mids)

In the meantime, the culture slider can be a relatively inexpensive stopgap. One thing the OP didn't mention is whether he was isolated or not - if so then trade routes are nonexistent until Astronomy, by which time the above measures are available or at least near at hand. In the meantime you don't want to lock yourself into having the Globe before you know what's out there.

 

[drhirsch]

IMHO NP is not worth it for OCC games

IMHO this is so wrong. I have played games, where I completly skipped the Drama techtree and beelined for Biology instead because National Park also happens to give you happiness.

For this to work you need extra happiness early, like Pyramids, Religion, Calendar Resources/Gold, and you may be limited to a size 12-14 city for somewhat longer than usual, but you benefit vom skipping some otherwise useless techs and a Wonder, which you don't need to build.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

There are a lot of OCC space games where NP is actually a vital part of the strategy.

 

[vanatteveldt]

I agree that NP has lots of useful effects. An NP-powered forest preserve is one of the most powerful tiles in the game. I'm just saying that NP for the health is not really necessary, and you sacrifice a very late natwonder for a possible earlier one (ironworks or even maoi/HE depending on the situation (think island/AW scenarios).

Skipping globe theatre and using other ways to get hapiness is tenable, especially with the NP specialists approach as that has lower city sizes (since the "free" specialist doesn't add to the city size).

I was just trying to point out that "With one city, you don't have much commerce" is not true (for most definitions of "not much" )

I think that most people would agree that OU, NE are 'obligatory'. The other three natwonders are strategy dependent, with the most common pick (GT, NP, IW) having the obvious drawback that IW and NP bite each other; but other choices (HE, Maoi, Wall St, Hermitage) are a lot less powerful than those three...

 

[DrZiro]

I hadn't even tried OCC. Sounds interesting. But I prefer to wipe out the opposition rather than sit around on my island until I get a space victory, and I can hardly do that on a big map without eventually taking over a couple of cities. I guess I'm doing a "no-settler-challenge".

I've heard people saying that you should not found any religions, but I don't see why. I usually try to found lots of them, and get scary amounts of money from them. What would be the benefit of not founding any religions?

 

[Derakon]

In most games from Monarch on up, founding Buddhism / Hinduism is a crapshoot; the AI techs faster than you do and odds are good at least one AI will have Mysticism and go for one of those religions. Plus you're generally better off in the early game going after worker techs.

Even if you do found a religion, in order to make money off of it you have to spend hammers on spreading it. Each missionary costs 40, which means that at minimum the shrine will need 40 turns to pay back the cost of the missionary; odds are excellent that building something with immediate tactical use (e.g. an axeman) will have better long-term payoffs. You can of course let the first religion spread naturally, but that stops working after the first. Probably the cheapest way to spread a religion is to spread it to an AI and let them waste the hammers on missionaries, but then you need to get them to convert to the religion, which pretty much requires you to get to them before they pick up religion from one of the other AIs.

And of course, the Great Prophet could be spent on a golden age.

Bottom line is, let some other shmuck waste time getting the religion, spreading it, and a prophet on founding the site, then go and take it from them. Much cheaper.

 

[Clam Spammer]

I've heard people saying that you should not found any religions, but I don't see why. I usually try to found lots of them, and get scary amounts of money from them. What would be the benefit of not founding any religions?

Once you have a religion in a city, other religions can't spread there automatically via trade routes. The AI very rarely sends missionaries across the ocean. That means if you found a religion, you can never adopt an AI religion, so you can't use religious civics without the whole world hating you. In your scenario (since you don't have the National Epic) Pacifism is huge, since it doubles your GP points (unless Philosophical - even then it's a very nice +50%). On the other hand, there is a chance that when you eventually do get a religion, it could be a useless one that no one has adopted .

The alternative is to (as you mention) grab as many as possible. This denies them to the AI, leaving them open to conversion later on. On higher levels this isn't always possible though - without a Mysticism start (and sometimes even with) the first three are pretty much out of reach. Even if you can get them, you have to sacrifice a lot of early development by delaying useful techs.