Meth02: OCC Cultural Victory

[n0xie]

I don't think the creative trait is big in this game: With only one city, filled with NWs, it's easy to get over the 50k mark.

The creative trait was for our ally since it's not our culture I'm worried about

As for industrious: we won't build much wonders since we're hoping our Ally will build them. Typically I try to get the Oracle and GL, and if my start is really good, the Pyramids, Partheon or Stonehenge. Other than that I just build national wonders and hope my Ally builds anything else with a little help from us. The question is if you guys think that's worth having the industrious trait. Remember that the only 2 wonders we want asap are the GL and Oxford. We want to maximize our beaker output.

Which is why I like financial. That extra commerce early is a lot more valuable than anything else. We want that tech lead to regulate how the other AI's are progressing, giving our Ally a slight advantage. We don't want to give him a too big a lead because he will give the dreaded 'we're doing fine on our own' if we ask for a PA.

Philosophical seems an obvious choice since the only way we can actively boost the AI's culture is by spawning Great Artists. We could try spawning Great Engineers to finish their wonders as an alternative strategy?

So make up your mind people. I don't mind either way

 

[n0xie]

As for starting location, we should get at least 2 bonus food tiles. Since we only have 1 city it's much more important how many grasstiles etc we have. Best scenario imho is 2-4 bonus food tiles, 2-4 hills and the rest grassland (preferably with some forests), with a river. As you can see this isn't a very hard type of map to generate. In fact playing on High-Plains you'll get this at the East side of the map all the time. We only need 2-4 tiles producing hammers because with all the bonusses stacking we get a ridiculous amount of hammers and after Oxford we don't have anything useful to build. The rest we want cottages for as much beakers as possible (to rush to militairy tradition) and start our defensive pact.

Would be handy if we had a screenshot of our starting location

 

[mucco]

The creative trait was for our ally since it's not our culture I'm worried about

As for industrious: we won't build much wonders since we're hoping our Ally will build them. Typically I try to get the Oracle and GL, and if my start is really good, the Pyramids, Partheon or Stonehenge. Other than that I just build national wonders and hope my Ally builds anything else with a little help from us. The question is if you guys think that's worth having the industrious trait. Remember that the only 2 wonders we want asap are the GL and Oxford.

While it's true that our ally will need the wonders more than us, he/she may not be able or interested in building them. Plus, the bonuses of wonders can be useful for us: for example, hanging gardens will be great with an extra and engineer bonuses. Denial will be important, too, because we'll probably need to slow down our opponents in every way.
Probably saying Oxford at the end you meant Oracle? Oxford is a NW. If the industrious bonus applies to national wonders (I have to check it, anyone knows?), I'd take it above financial and philosophical. Expansive is a no-brainer for me, though.
Financial depends on what level we are playing. I think I've read noble? If it's so, it won't be a huge problem to get a tech lead anyway IMO, so financial is not that big to me.
Philosophical is a good trait, allowing mass GP production. But we'll be able to build the national epic and possibly the parthenon, which could make that trait less impressive. In addition, having only one city should concentrate the GPP, so having lots of great persons shouldn't be a big problem anyway. However, it's a tough decision, if we should go for Ind or Phi, in my opinion. Fin is weak for me as long as the difficulty is not high. Exp is my fav trait here.
How do you feel about the expansive trait, n0xie?
Two bonus food at the starting location would be a dream, let's hope we draw it!

 

[n0xie]

In all honestly all the OCC builder games I've played untill now have always been either with Lizzy or with Qin. Something about that financial trait... Then again I usually play at monarch or higher so my views on the value of commerce might be biased: I reckon we don't need Financial. I'm all for giving expensive a try.

So it's a choice between Peter and 'ze german' ?

 

[Conroe]

So make up your mind people. I don't mind either way

Well, I'd have to agree with your analysis in the earlier post. In fact, I orginally proposed Elizabeth (Fin/Phi) for the reasons that you stated above. And I can also agree with mucco that financial is not as important at the noble level. I also think n0xie's suggestion of Peter (Exp/Phi) would also be a good choice.

Some have suggested Bizmark (Ind/Exp) for our leader choice. While Bizmark is generally an excellent OCC choice, I feel that industrious is not going to be as big of an issue for us with this variant. And to answer mucco's question, yes, national wonders do receive a benefit from the industrious trait.

In my mind, I think the choice of leader may be more dependant upon the issue of whether we want to attempt to run all 7 religions. If we do, I think we are looking at a "Spain on a Lake"(TM) scenario. Or even Saladin with an Oasis tile. At noble, it may even be doable with Elizabeth or Peter with a Gold/Gems/Silver resource. Both Elizabeth and Peter start with Mining, but we would have to research Mysticism while turning out a Worker.

Typically I try to get the Oracle and GL, and if my start is really good, the Pyramids, Partheon or Stonehenge.

One of the advantages with the Pyramids and Hanging Gardens is the Great Engineer points that they generate. My guess is that any GE that we gift to the AI will be used to build a wonder. What is your experience with gifting Great Artists to the AI, n0xie? Do they typically culture bomb with them or save them for a golden age? The Great Library would be nice to produce a Great Scientist so that we can build our Academy.

With all of this talk about wonders, though, let's not forget that we may want to build an Archer or two.

Two bonus food at the starting location would be a dream, let's hope we draw it!

Would be handy if we had a screenshot of our starting location

I think we should roll several starts and choose our map and opening strategy around the best one. Although, that is a bit more work for Methos. I would lend a hand with this, Methos, if you need it. Of course, we would need to pick a leader first ...

 

[senwiz]

Not having played Peter, I'm not sure what advantages/disadvantages he has.

I guess, I'm at a loss now, since I have never played a OCC. So, I'll forego my vote and go with whatever you veteran types think.

 

[ruff_hi]

I vote Peter - prefer to build wonders than run a GP farm

 

[Methos]

I'm not for sure if we want to build a lot of wonders. I'm worried if we build too many our ally won't be able too. Then again, if we get as many religions as possible and spread them to our ally he/she might use them to build culture instead. I honestly have no idea and am expecting to learn a lot from this game.

I'm also curious about the great plains map. It does seem to be high on food resources which will be our only problem. I'm not worried about our culture at all, as typically in my OCC games I hit legendary culture rather early.

 

[n0xie]

I'm not for sure if we want to build a lot of wonders.

We're only going to build the Oracle and the GL if it's up to me. The Oracle for the CS-slingshot, and the GL for the science boost. All the other wonders are for the AI (except maybe the Parthenon)

One of the advantages with the Pyramids and Hanging Gardens is the Great Engineer points that they generate. My guess is that any GE that we gift to the AI will be used to build a wonder. What is your experience with gifting Great Artists to the AI, n0xie? Do they typically culture bomb with them or save them for a golden age? The Great Library would be nice to produce a Great Scientist so that we can build our Academy.

You can join a Great Artist to a city of your choice, instead of gifting it away. You cannot culture bomb (even in a PA) so gifting it away is a huge gamble, one I'm reluctant to take. That and I find that the Super Specialist Artist will generate quite a lot of culture in the long run (Free Speech, Eifel Tower and any other bonusses the AI might have)

Once in a PA you can see what your ally is building and you can use a Great Engineer to finish whatever he's building (or join him as Super Specialist). Which leads us to a delicate point. If we get a Great Engineer we should hold on to him. Once you are in a PA, only one city can build a World Wonder. That's pretty normal one would say but think of the consequences: we want to build the Eifeltower as soon as possible, but if the AI decides to start building it in some backward fishing village, there is no way we can do anything about it. Since the AI 'plays its turns first', there is no 'window' in which we can force it to build it in our city. This can be a major problem since the AI tends to focus on cottages and windmills, and is therefor rather production poor, especially compared to our super city. We want that GE to finish it off asap.

This is also the reason why we should start building a worker task force just before we're going into the PA so we can modify the AI's 2 cities we want to become legendary. The more production the city has, the more likely the AI will decide to start a wonder there. Broadway and Hollywood are two excellent wonders for our little friend to have.

I do want to emphisize on the fact that I'm only used to playing the 'run for science' way. I have not tried the 'chase the Hydra' variant. (which would as Conroe suggested, require a different style and a different leader)

 

[n0xie]

About Great plains:
Typically the Great Plains have Flood Plains/Desert Hills to the West and Grassland/Grass Hills to the East with a Dessert seperating the two. The West gets mineral luxeries (gold, silver, gems) and cattle (sheep, cows) and the East gets farm luxeries (rice, corn). Stone is in the West, Marble is in the East.

Because of the way the maps are rendered, multiple clusters of bonus tiles is common. You can get ridiculous maps. Today I played a OCC Diplomacy game (see the currect Beta HOF) and added the start position.

The abundancy of bonus food tiles and the high probability of Marble plus the 'health' resources make these maps ideal for OCC (that and the fact that most of your squares are grassland with forests on them for early wonderchopping)

(see picture in the previous post, decided to make 2 posts for readability (is that even a word?))

edit: Someone put some time into looking through the generator script. You can read all about Great Plains here

 

[Methos]

A little information on 'rumors' of the next patch. Check out two posts made by Rhye in his Catapult Thread. Post #127, Post #131.

Post #131 makes me wonder due to his statement of having it a month before us. Makes me very curious!!

 

[Conroe]

I do want to emphisize on the fact that I'm only used to playing the 'run for science' way. I have not tried the 'chase the Hydra' variant. (which would as Conroe suggested, require a different style and a different leader)

Huh? Did I miss something somewhere? I thought you were the one advocating the hydra?

Try to get a religion early and make your ally have the same religion:
...
The best way is to get as much religions as possible (hydra! ) and just fill your ally up with religions and gift all your Great People away.
...
(7 headed hydra would be pretty cool )

If I misunderstood you, then I apologize. I have ZERO experience with Permanent Alliances, so I cannot really comment on this variant other than to regurgitate what I have read. I can understand the paramount importance of having the same state religion as our potential ally. But, do we need to focus on founding an early religion or not?

It should be apparent that I'm just totally confused. I apologize for making you rehash all of this again. But, if the early religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism) are not critical, then I would much rather have Civil Service and the Bureaucracy civic.

we want to build the Eifeltower as soon as possible

Why do we want the Eiffel Tower? I would think that we would want our ally to have this wonder.

 

[n0xie]

Ok I can see how it is a bit confusing so let me explain what usually happens:
I usually end up with Confucianism because it's on the way to CS. I send my free missionairy to my future ally and try to convert him if he already has a state religion. Point being that we want to have a nice +7 modifier when the PA shows up. If it doesn't succeed initially, I just keep offering more stuff and gifting stuff to him untill he likes us enough to convert.

Now in one of my games 2 of the other AI's spread their religions to my city, which I then started spreading to my ally which helped a lot (switched back to organized religion to keep pumping missionairies, as monastaries are obsolete after SM). So what I was trying to say is that this might be a very plausible way of playing the game, although I never actually made this into my main 'gamestyle'.

In most of my games, my ally founded his own religion. Since I always end up with Con/Tao that makes for 3 religions for our little friend, which usually is enough. That particular game I had 4 religion plus the one the AI already had = 5. It sped up things by some 50 turns .

Since I wasn't added to the playlist when I posted that, I just thought I would mention that in my experience, the more religions you have, the easier it gets: I was just giving general guidelines/advice

I hope that clears things up.

Why do we want the Eiffel Tower? I would think that we would want our ally to have this wonder.

Wonders which have affect on 'all cities' also effect your PA. So it doesn't matter where it is build, as long as it's build, preferably as soon as possible. I was just trying to point out that if our ally decides to build the ET in a low hammer city, chances are that it will take 100+ turns before it will finish, on which we have no control (other than upgrading his tiles so it drops till like 50 turns... woohoo!). So I didn't mean that we wanted to build the ET in our city persé, I just meant that we wanted it anywhere as long as it's fast. If the AI would place it in one of our target legendary cities, that would be great: I just wanted the GE as a contingency plan in case it decided that that desert city in the corner without mountains desperatly needed a large metal tower.

 

[Conroe]

A little information on 'rumors' of the next patch. Check out two posts made by Rhye in his Catapult Thread. Post #127, Post #131.

Post #131 makes me wonder due to his statement of having it a month before us. Makes me very curious!!

I don't know that I would read too much into Rhye's comments. Here is what Thamer (Firaxis' Lead Developer) had to say about the patch on:

Jan 31st - a couple of weeks
Mar 11th - final testing, but delayed

I'm taking that to mean that the patch could be any day now or any month.

 

[Conroe]

I hope that clears things up.

It does.

As this is not a HoF game, does it matter that we shave 50 turns off or not? I would vote that we not worry about the early religions and focus on getting to Bureaucracy.

 

[fluffyflyingpig]

Consider grabbing the Sistine Chapel and the Statue of Liberty in addition to the Tower.

 

[senwiz]

The gamespot review I read says sometime this summer, for the expansion anyways. Not seeing very much of anything about a patch though.

 

[Methos]

I figure it isn't worth waiting for the patch, so we might as well just start this one up. The thing is we need to discuss a few things. I'm busy both Tuesday and Wednesday so won't be able to start this until Thursday, but we can discuss some things.

What civ do we wish to play?

What civs do we definitely want as opponents? Currently I believe Louis and Ghandi have already been mentioned. We'll pick the ones that are possible allies and make the rest random.

What kind of map do we want to play? Great plains has been mentioned due to high food count. We definitely want a single landmass.

I already forgot my other questions...

 

[mucco]

My vote:
civ: bismarck
opponents: saladin, gandhi, hatshepshut, cyrus, louis in that order for me.
map: I have absolutely no idea I only play continents!

 

[n0xie]

My vote:
civ: prefer Peter (but either Bismarck, Lizzy or Qin Shi Huang will be fine)
opponents: Frederick as our ally, don't really care about the rest (no aggressive opponents will make it easier)
map: Great Plains because it's ideal for OCC