Minimal amount of cities challenge

[Czacki]

Hey, since managing a 40-50 city empire bores me, I decided to spice things up and restrict myself to 7 cities max (or - min amount of cities required for national wonders like ironworks)
To make things more interesting - I decided each city has to be unique. No "commerce nr 103593" type of cities. So far my ideas are:

1. Capitol: jack of all trades, produces utility units like workers/spies and utility wonders like Notre Dame, has some cottages too.
2. Military: Heroic Epic+West Point. Settles GG until it can produce level4 units off the bat. Built on riverside plains if possible, to make use of mass workshops+levee+state property.
3. Production: Ironworks+Moai Statues if near water. Acts like coastal city in early game, snatching Colossus or GLH if possible. Later on it acts as backup military town. In peace time, it builds wealth.
4. Science: Typical cottagespam city with Oxford. Gets academy ASAP from GS, settles GS afterwards.
5. Finance: tricky one. Should be built around lots of forest, with at least 2-3 foodspots. Best if it spawns a religion - gets gold from shrine. After global park gets available, it benefits greatly from mass forest preserves. Each forest preserve = 1 merchant. That way (shrine+forest preserve spam+wall street) it can produce huge amounts of gold even with slider set to 100% research.
6. Great people farm. Traditional: placed on the spot with most food sources available, gets National epic, Great library, spams Great Scientists.
7. Spy town. Situated like the above one, but uses food to get at least few specialist spies working. Gets Scotland Yard if I get a Great Spy.

Leader: Probably Hannibal. Charismatic for earlier access to bigger cities (they have to grow big after all with so little of them) and easy level4 units from Military city. Financial since it's just good.

That's about it. Do you think higher levels can be beat with such a tiny amount of cities? Should I change something? Advices?

 

[Shaandore]

You don't need 7 cities for national wonders in a standard size map, only 6.
Having only six cities would mean university in your military city and forge in your science city (so you can get oxford and IW), so it's a bit lame.

I think that it's quite winnable up to immortal, but I imagine that some deity starts could screw your plans. I'm pretty sure that some very skilled players could pull it off even in the majority of deity maps.

 

[Czacki]

Oh, forgot to mention.. I prefer Large map and epic/marathon speeds

 

[Izuul]

If managing a large empire bores you, I'm not sure why you prefer large maps and epic/marathon speed. Those settings lend themselves to long, tedious games.

 

[Kingjester1]

Technically speaking, wouldn't a one city challenge be the minimal amount of cities required to win? That is, unless someone can do it with no cities.

 

[eluciv]

Technically speaking, wouldn't a one city challenge be the minimal amount of cities required to win? That is, unless someone can do it with no cities.

That's kind of a game unto itself, though. The # of cities reqs are waived and all that.
I think he's wanting a "standard" game - one where you could build as many cities as you want, but choose not to.



To the OP, I wonder... do you think you'd still have all victory conditions available to you (realistically?) Obv not domination, but any victory would no doubt require some serious military and/or espionage effort since you won't be the commerce behemoth you would be with twice that number of cities. And if you choose to specialize along the lines you mention (which I think covers all the bases), a large map.... would be tough at higher levels.

Interesting, in any case.

 

[Kingjester1]

That's kind of a game unto itself, though. The # of cities reqs are waived and all that.
I think he's wanting a "standard" game - one where you could build as many cities as you want, but choose not to.

Ah true, I forgot about the rules changes for OCC.

I've seen games that have few cities and go for very early conquest games, so that is definitely a viable win condition. Culture would be possible too since you only need 3 cities for that victory. Diplomatic would be possible also if you can get AIs to like you enough. It sounds like Space and Domination wins are out of the question, as they absolutely depend on larger empires to be effective, although would be interesting to try a Space race with 6 cities (when it comes time to build parts, convert everything to hammers and hope for the best).

 

[Ghpstage]

That's about it. Do you think higher levels can be beat with such a tiny amount of cities?

If you rethink your plan to make each city as unique as that, and redo your city planning overall then you may stand a chance of reaching the higher levels, but looking at this plan, its unlikely.
If you want to see how to win high levels while only building few cities check out some of Obsoletes games.

 

[Czacki]

If you rethink your plan to make each city as unique as that, and redo your city planning overall then you may stand a chance of reaching the higher levels, but looking at this plan, its unlikely.
If you want to see how to win high levels while only building few cities check out some of Obsoletes games.

Hey You misunderstood me... I reached high levels with standard play and got bored of it... big empires just don't do it for me. Hence I'm trying to get a challenge out of playing the way I like. it's killing two birds with one stone

I'm not the kind of player that wants to play like everybody else does... going bulbing&trading to every AI under the sun every game is sort of ... boring, yet I believe it's considered the most reliable tactic against Immortal.. Could be wrong tho.

I love the feeling when I have a few cities and I have to manage them well... when you have 50 cities, it no longer matters how you build your 51th one. it's such a unimpressive (% wise) part of your empire that no matter how messed up it is, you'll still never need to worry

I kinda wish there was a bigger limit to upkeep regarding number of cities for both players and AIs alike..

 

[Jet]

This thread is great and will be fun, so I don't mean to criticize it, but to answer

Do you think higher levels can be beat with such a tiny amount of cities? Should I change something? Advices?

Yes, they can be! There have been a number of limited-city games here on the forums.

Here's one from Strategy & Tips: Food Economy Test (SSE/WE Immortal). Although the OP emphasized SSE/WE, if you're patient you'll see that later in the thread there are shadow games with cottages.

In Succession Games, one example is 8 City Challenge. There were others, as well. I think some were at higher levels than this one, which was at Emperor.

 

[Cusanus]

Technically speaking, wouldn't a one city challenge be the minimal amount of cities required to win? That is, unless someone can do it with no cities.

That appears to be impossible.

I just ran a quick test game on Settler/Duell; conquered "the world" (i.e. Gandhi's capital), but I didn't win. Apparently, the game doesn't check for victory if you don't have at least one city. Bummer.

 

[coanda]

It depends on game settings, victory condition you are going for, and how many lucky breaks you get.

With good diplomacy and good luck, on pretty default map settings... you can win AP with one city on any difficulty where you can use one city to build the AP yourself - which is right up through Deity. Same with diplo., but you'd have to build the U.N. yourself... which is probably Immortal difficulty if you get a really stellar capital and an ideal breakdown of AIs fighting each other to slow tech rate generally. I hesitantly doubt you could make it to Mass Media in time with just one city and no OCC option on Deity, but I could be wrong. Cultural can be done with 3 cities pretty much on any difficulty with luck.

However many cities you'd need to win Conquest is also how many you'd need for SS and Time, but I have no real sense for how many that is.

 

[vranasm]

I got deity AP win on small map with 5 cities...just saying ;-).

Depends what the target is.
Domination is obviously not possible. Conquest with big question mark (you would have to raze tons/vassalize).

Culture looks like best plan for minimalistic approach since SS is a bit too deep tech path to be realistic with only 6 cities on highest levels.

Diplomatic (UN victory) is a lot on AI mercy.

AP win seems realistic if you abuse AP cheese like I did.

You could check "minimalistic" series done by Yatta couple of months ago...

 

[barbertje]

That appears to be impossible.

I just ran a quick test game on Settler/Duell; conquered "the world" (i.e. Gandhi's capital), but I didn't win. Apparently, the game doesn't check for victory if you don't have at least one city. Bummer.

But a time victory works. Press Enter another 490 times to get a Dan Quayle rating, with an adjusted score of 9.

 

[coanda]

But a time victory works. Press Enter another 490 times to get a Dan Quayle rating, with an adjusted score of 9.

Be entertaining to submit that for the "lowest score in the hall of fame" pride

 

[UnforcedError]

That appears to be impossible.

I just ran a quick test game on Settler/Duell; conquered "the world" (i.e. Gandhi's capital), but I didn't win. Apparently, the game doesn't check for victory if you don't have at least one city. Bummer.

The game doesn't check for ANY victory condition in the first 20 turns.
EDIT: This is to prevent what would have happened at turn 1 in your game: Gandhi winning conquest.

 

[reddishrecue]

I got deity AP win on small map with 5 cities...just saying ;-).

Depends what the target is.
Domination is obviously not possible. Conquest with big question mark (you would have to raze tons/vassalize).

Culture looks like best plan for minimalistic approach since SS is a bit too deep tech path to be realistic with only 6 cities on highest levels.

Diplomatic (UN victory) is a lot on AI mercy.

AP win seems realistic if you abuse AP cheese like I did.

You could check "minimalistic" series done by Yatta couple of months ago...

I came to the same conclusion, domination is not that possible. Cultural is more possible but you have to wait for awhile.

 

[bhavv]

Leader: Probably Hannibal. Charismatic for earlier access to bigger cities (they have to grow big after all with so little of them) and easy level4 units from Military city. Financial since it's just good.

If you want to prioritize large cities and faster building, then IMO Mehmed, Sury, or Zara in that order would make better leaders for this. While Hannibal's traits are great, they are far better suited to ICS style rapid expansion or conquest. If you are building a small empire you want larger cities. CHA is equaled by Hammams, plus EXP gives you extra health for larger cities. Financial wont help much if you are only building 6-7 cites.

Id recommend choosing Mehmed for this idea.