[BTS] OCC space strategies

[dfg26]

Hello everyone,

I've been playing a lot of occ space games lately, and I'm trying to optimize my game a bit. I almost managed to do it on immortal (nuked Mansa's city just as he was about to win culture, managed to launch but Mansa kept declaring on me for the rest of the game and I didn't have enough nukes to fend him off) but now I've been trying to perfect my strategy on noble. Yes, it's much less challenging and a lot more boring but I still somehow enjoy it, call me crazy In this thread I'll focus more on noble level strategies because that's what I know best, but feel free to discuss higher level stuff also.

This last game I did pretty well, 1772 landing as Gandhi. Settings: Noble, Inland sea, Duel world size, Arid climate, Low sealevel, Marathon speed. No barbarians (yes, cheesy, I know), Huts on, Events off. Opponents: Mansa and Darius (handpicked). I'm gonna recap the game here real quick and explain my tech paths and thought processes, which you can then critique

The start is nothing extraordinary, but still quite good. I picked arid climate because it seems to produce more rivers with floodplains and a decent amount of minerals. (Although not sure if it actually affects the amount of minerals?) Rocky might be better, not sure. I'd really like one or two more food resources.

Anyway, settling the marble makes the most sense I think?

Worker first, standard stuff, I suppose? I've considered warrior first and stealing a worker which would theoretically be quicker, but the problem is that on noble the ai doesn't start with workers and on the higher difficulties I'd really rather not piss off my neighbours straight away. Also, huts might make a second warrior useful.

This game I got really lucky with huts which boosted my early game significantly. By T17 I got a scout, the wheel (straight to pottery, yay!), bronze working and 213 gold. Almost the best you can hope for, I think. I probably should pick a second AI who doesn't start with a scout (instead of darius), to maybe get even more huts, or play with just one AI and disable domination victory for maximum cheese?

Many times my early game tech path goes like this: agriculture (or hunting if I have deer) -> polytheism -> priesthood (start building the oracle) -> writing (make a library, start running scientists). In this case, especially since I have the gold and I can hurry the oracle with the marble, I'll just go straight to pottery -> writing. After that masonry, so I can immediately get the bonus for oracle, and because I'll start the mids immediately after it anyway. Then polytheism -> monotheism (for org rel) -> priesthood. I finish the library, start running scientists for the academy, start building the oracle. From there: col -> math. Sometimes I do math first to boost chops, but this time I'll save my chops for the mids since I have marble for the oracle. Now it doesn't really matter which way I do it, I don't really have enough food to benefit from caste anyway.

Oracle CS at 2190 BC. On noble I always go for CS, because you can always get it from the oracle. I've even gotten it on immortal but that requires a lot of luck.

After the oracle I immediately start building the mids, and chop everything right outside of the BFC to do it as quickly as possible. The forests inside BFC i save for the forest preserves. My tech path after the oracle is a bit situational. If I have stone, I immediately beeline to education for the quick oxford. Now that I have marble, I decide to go aesthetics -> literature for the great library and national epic. Although I'm not sure if I should always get the national epic first anyway, opinions? The great library without marble is IMO not worth it because I'll rush to scientific method/biology anyway, although I'm not quite sure if its worth it even WITH marble, at least when I'm not industrious?

After that I go philosophy (halfway through paper because i forgot, d'oh) -> paper -> education. I get to education at 980 BC, pretty decent for one city? Then just build oxford and chop as much as possible.

The AI is slacking off and still hasn't gone to alpha, so I get it in 5 turns and trade some stuff. Then it's just a mad dash to Biology. My strategy currently is to start building workers when I start researching scientific method, to have 8 of them so they can make the forest preserves. 8 is a good number IMO, because they can improve the forests quickly enough, while not slowing down my research too much. I switch to teching lib one turn before finishing sci method -> finish sci method, finish lib, get biology. This is to keep my great library operational as long as possible.

Next stop is steel and ironworks. Then beeline to steam power for levee. Then economics for the great merchant (which I probably should have used for a corp) and then straight to assembly line. From there to astronomy -> physics (for the gs) -> electricity -> industrialism (for industrial park and to reveal aluminium, which I fortunately have). At this point I usually start running as many engineers as possible. I get a GE after railroad and found Mining Inc.

!!!THIS IS WHERE I MAKE A BIG MISTAKE!!! I totally ignore the huge maintenance cost that comes with a corporation, and forget to build a courthouse. I also definitely should have spread the corporation to the others to get income, now I ended up losing my cash in the late game and having to run the slider at 70% for the rest of it. Not a big effect, but still. At one point I also make a rookie mistake of switching to state property for 5 turns, forgetting that it turns of the corporation, whoops.

In this point I get my first unhappiness, so I make the globe theater. Usually I make it lot earlier but this time I ended up not growing past 22, which really shows how I didn't have enough food

Then I go straight to plastic for the hydro plant. Then refrigeration -> superconductors for labs. No computers, because I'm not going to robotics, because I'm at a wrong latitude for the space elevator Another drawback for this start. Not sure how much it would boost my launch time. Then it's rocketry -> satellites -> composites, then beeline genetics, then beeline fusion, then ecology, build everything, launch. I'm not sure if the endgame tech paths could be adjusted slightly? Also I probably should have saved my golden ages for the space part builds, now I used them both before apollo program. Should I make fewer thrusters and engines since I don't have the space elevator, didn't bother bother doing the math...

 

[dfg26]

Not too proficient with the higher level stuff yet, I guess i should try to pick bigger maps and incorporate stealing techs and building the internet into my games. On noble I always outtech the AI by a mile, even in occ.

In general, I should probably consider bulbing some early key techs instead of just settling the gs.

 

[Stanley9000]

Dude. Are you still playing Civ4? I just started. There is that much detail in this game? Thanks for the report.

 

[Nick723]

Nice work! I’ve been playing around with this a bit lately: it’s definitely possible to win space on immortal but I’ve yet to win on deity.

Interesting tactic on forest preserves, I’ve never thought to preserve them that long. I wonder if it’s worth it.

My play Is normally to chop out the pyramids, no matter what. Normally by getting 3 workers and chopping everything you can get them on immortal, although I have lost them on deity. If you want you could go Rameses instead for slightly less painful experience without stone. That said, if you can get them they’re so worth it.

Once you’ve got the pyramids and in rep trick is just to grow to happy / health cap (whichever is lower) and run rep scientists and or engineers. Key wonders, especially with marble are great library and Parthenon. First great scientist builds an academy and then everyone else gets settled: I slightly prefer engineers so will normally run these over scientists when I can.

Adopt a religion that doesn’t get you killed, run pacifism and just watch the great people roll in. Key national wonders are national epic, Oxford, and ironworks. Then you can do globe and national park if worth it to grow, but I often find it’s not as national park makes the ironworks less powerful. Getting globe just to trade away happy resources can be nice too.

After education, I would normally try and pick up Astro (for the observatory / trade routes) and then head towards assembly line. On the way you can lib something, whatever is possible. Communism is useful, biology I think less so, around this time you’ll be swapping out your farms for workshops as the specialists are getting too expensive to generate.

On immortal the key next step is the internet, without which you have no chance. As long as you can win this race, you’re ok with regards to techs, but think very carefully how much you trade away prior to this to ensure you get it. Otherwise use your techs for the other important thing - staying alive! Creating wars to slow everyone else down and keep them occupied is key.

Finally on the spaceship itself. Don’t feel you have to build all the parts, with one city it’s way quicker to launch earlier with a slower ship.

 

[codehappy]

I've won OCC space on Immortal several times. Here are some suggestions to help build a sufficiently quick ship; most of these notes apply to lower difficulties as well except going for the Internet. Honestly, below Monarch, the Internet will probably be a big waste of time, and even on Monarch OCC will only pay off sometimes. There are certainly better players around here that can add/improve on these notes:

Your tech priorities first are worker techs, obviously.

Second goals are Alphabet (to build research, and tech trade if that's on) and Monarchy (Hereditary Rule, ofc). You do also want Aesthetics and Literature for National Epic, so the best way to do this might be to tech that line, and trade Aesthetics around for Alphabet/Monarchy. It often works. I don't think you can save time by skipping NE (bulbing toward Education is too crucial, and getting NE gets your great people several turns sooner.)

Then Civil Service ASAP; the earlier your Bureaucracy date the earlier your spaceship.

Next priority is Education, so a university and Oxford speed up the rest of the tech tree.

Then Computers for Internet -- a beeline; the only juicy detour along the way you might make is if you can get a sufficiently good free tech from Liberalism. (Liberalism is not a space tech, so it can be skipped if somebody else has or is about to get the freebie.)

Your tech path after the Internet will depend on what you get, but generally the rule is, get to Apollo Project, and once that is built, you want to try to always have a space part to build. Unlike a normal space race, the order of space techs is less important than that they keep coming in time to build more parts. The bottleneck is production (you have a monster city, but still can only produce 1 part at a time.)

Missing the Pyramids is not an auto-loss. (In fact, if no stone or industrious, I don't prioritize it.) Representation is +3 happiness and beakers on your specialists (which is helpful but not great with one city until Oxford). Hereditary Rule, OTOH, is as much happiness as you need; you can grow bigger without the 'Mids and the extra pop may be worth substantially more than non-Oxford Rep beakers. Health will be a bigger barrier than happiness as soon as you have Monarchy; you will likely be able to trade your happy resources for health resources. Grow your city as high as it can get after HR -- and I mean as high as it can get, forsaking all your luxuries for wheat and corn and rice and such. Run scientists, of course; maybe an engineer.

As for wonders besides Pyramids: Oracle can pay off (you do want Priesthood for Monarchy) but I only go there if marble or industrious (regular Oracle is good, cheap Oracle is terrific!) The Hanging Gardens are maybe OK if you have no health resources and have to build an early aqueduct. Besides that? A lot of normally good wonders are useless in OCC.

National wonders are pretty clear: You have to build Oxford and Ironworks; they are too good. National Epic also does pay off (bulb bulb bulb!) Hereditary Rule can stand in for the Globe Theater for much of the game (Drama isn't a space tech) but you will usually squeeze it in so you can go Representation (Constitution is a space tech). If you don't have coal, National Park might be worth considering for more health, but honestly I'd want to get coal. If you do have coal, you want coal plants instead: hammers hammers hammers!

You're going to be building research for a lot of the game; money is abundant in OCC at any difficulty and there aren't all that many buildings to build. Grocers are fine for health, but there's no point to a market or a bank. And fail gold? What for? You can't gold-rush the Apollo Project or Internet or space parts, so US is not so attractive. One use of gold will be to upgrade your stack of warriors/archers into infantry later, but you'll have enough for that without trying. The other good uses for gold are to buy health resources or to give to your neighbors to keep them happy.

If there's early war, you're going to die. So who cares about a barracks? Just do what you can to prevent it. Pick your religion based on the diplo situation, give in to any demands that don't involve DOWs, shamelessly beg when somebody starts plotting, and keep your rivals at least Pleased.

Great People are for bulbing in OCC, generally, so you want primarily scientists for full value. Helpfully, most of the things a scientist will bulb are on the lines you want to research. An engineer can be used to rush Oxford or Ironworks (this is one nice perk of OCC Pyramids.) An artist is a possibility thanks to NE/GT, and they kind of stink: their bulb is usually near-useless, settling may give Rep bulbs but possibly more artists, and Golden Ages, well, Golden Ages aren't so hot when you have one city. Still, a Golden Age is your best play for those, and might be good to accelerate building the Internet, Apollo Project, or space parts (you might want to use it for the casings, you'll want five of those so you'll be busy with parts the entire GA).

You build one thruster and one engine for your spaceship; unless you have a HoF-type start you aren't going to hammer them out fast enough for them to actually save time on your arrival date (on normal speed, a second engine saves all of 2 turns!) Five casings are still required, at least if you want 100% chance of success.

And then there's preventing another player from winning late, of course. The AI might be about to win by culture, domination/diplomation, or space late in the game. Here's what I think about each of those:

The culture danger AI is most often the one with the Sistine Chapel; it greatly accelerates their culture play. If there's somebody else pounding out wonders, you can assume they're a culture freak too. Identifying the threats early is worth a lot, because your options for stopping an imminent culture win all suck. You can raze one of their three cities, or cause trouble with spies (continuous revolt, or swapping them out of Free Speech to slow their roll.) Both approaches will slow you down, as you spend on armies or espionage instead of getting the last tech. It's prudent to identify the culture civs early and watch them; do what you can cheaply (get them out of Free Speech in a trade, for example) while they're still many turns away. (It might be that building Sistine yourself discourages culture wins enough to be useful, but it seems like too big a detour to be worth it in a serious game.) Bribing warmongers on the culture civs is possible too, but the danger there is that the warmongers just vassal them and snowball. Hopefully you have a backwards warmonger that can throw his elepult stack on Gandhi's rifles or whatever.

For space races, you can sabotage parts, cause disorder, or (of course) raze their capital after they launch: but again, that's all late and expensive. Bribing a warmonger on the top techer in the medieval/renaissance and letting them fight and mire each other down for a while can save a lot of turns later in the game. Stopping AI wins late is hard, slowing them down earlier is easier and often better. The danger, again, is that the warmonger has too much success; hopefully your techer has state-of-the-art defenses. In the end you may have to bribe your dog off the victim!

Domination is the hardest one to do anything about. Building an army and warring with the top dog is possible, but it will hurt so badly that somebody else might get space/culture (or even time!) Bribing people in on the domination threat will often just help them win sooner. If you have an AI near domination late you're in trouble, frankly. Get that ship launched.

Also, the game should give you a significant score bonus for winning OCC, IMO.

 

[Snowbird]

IIRC, top priority is getting wonders. So on immortal and Deity I would not go for Alpha - preferably Oracle taking free Aesthetics. ToA is another consideration (if marble) as free priest helps a lot with great people points (I think ToA is like 5 points per turn). On Deity it is probably get Mids or die trying.

But it has been long time since I've tried OCC, so maybe I am off with evaluation.

 

[Nick723]

@codehappy What you say makes sense, although I’m interested in what you say about bulbing. I’ve always thought settling was superior in OCC (particularly with Rep). A settled Rep Great scientist gives 36 or more beakers (with Oxford, academy, library, university) which pays back pretty quickly vs a bulb. The advantage of bulbing would then seem to be to get stuff sooner, however I find there’s little value in being much ‘ahead’ of the pack in OCC on immortal / deity. The more you’re ahead, the more you have to self tech. There are key moments to be ‘ahead’ sure, to snag key wonders, lib or the internet, but in general I think you want to maximise the beakers available from trades.

Happy to convinced however if I’m wrong!

@Snowbird indeed the ToA shines in OCC! Well it does if you can get it...still a challenge to pick up both it and pyramids (and I’d say pyramids are much more important).

 

[Qactus]

Interesting to see so many different approaches. I play a lot of OCC as well and always tend to follow the same pattern. Never really compared different strategies, so don't know what is optimal. After the academy all of my specialists get settled, no bulbs. BFC forests are completely preserved, key wonders receive 3rd ring chops (Pyramids and Oxford mostly). Biology for National Park is the typical Liberalism target and I go for Rep-Buro-Caste-Environmentalism, working a full BFC of farms, windmills and forest preserves plus all the (free and not free) specialists.
As soon as the workers are done with the forest preserves they start building workshops over them until 1t before completion. When I switch from teching to spaceship building, I switch to State Property and finish all the 1t workshops, producing chops at the same time. Late GPs are used for golden ages.

 

[codehappy]

If tech trading is off, or there aren't any good trades to get from your bulbs, settling is strictly better the whole time, I think.

At least until Education, I do bulb and bulb some more (except the first scientist for an Academy, of course). The goal isn't to get there first so much as to get there early and get all your main research multipliers up while the game is young. And the potential leverage you can get by trading bulbed techs around is tremendous. Bulbed Philosophy or Paper is often 3-6 more techs, and maybe a war bribe. That's hard to beat.

The settled specialist wins out on raw yield in the long horizon, but getting uni+Oxford up even a few turns sooner is worth a ton of beakers. If you get useful trades on the bulbed tech, or you are able to win something good with Liberalism by early Education, early bulbs are going to win out overall, but I don't pretend that's an entirely rigorous argument.

I should amend to say that after Education, settling actually gets attractive (as long as you have at least ~50 turns to pay off; very late, Golden Ages are more helpful): there are a couple more multipliers you want to pick up if possible (observatory, lab) but you have to sprint all the way to Computers and the better your beaker rate, the faster that will be. Not long after Education, bulbing becomes less helpful anyway (GP are farther between, your normal research skyrockets). Also, you'll be able to go Representation. OCC space goes late, so settling is better than most games.

 

[Izuul]

Opinions on traits for OCC?

Industrious and Philo are the obvious S-tier traits. Quite a few others range from nearly useless to completely useless, but there are a handful of interesting ones to pair with IND or PHI.

Spiritual - Good for the diplo side of the game which is quite important.
Expansive - 2 health is quite valuable and the faster workers are still very good
Financial - Significantly less valuable with just 1 city, but the early commerce boost can still be quite large and help get those key techs and buildings faster
Charismatic - Mostly valuable in the early game, but 1-2 extra happiness early can be quite good
Imperialistic - Just kidding!

 

[krikav]

I haven't really played any OCC at all, so I don't know much.
But I would downvalue Phi abit compared to normal games. With only one city able to push GPP, we are almost certainly going to have a early national epic there, and then the relative bonus from Phi is not as large.

For space race.. imperalistic is probably horrid, but for games where you want to do warfare in OCC, I think getting alot of settled great generals early on might be nice? As you are limited to only 1 unit per turn, having them really strong is probably important!

 

[drewisfat]

Idk why you're just kidding with IMP. Obviously we're not building settlers but if you want to shoot for a win condition, farming a bunch of GGs and settling them in your one city probably powered by mids/bureau sounds strong. I'd say it's stronger than the military part of CHA, and the happiness part of CHA may not matter at all, since rushing monarchy or mids seems pretty standard. ORG/CRE/AGG/PRO all seem clearly worse.

As much as I'm an IND fan, is it obviously S tier? You're probably rerolling starts for stone/marble. You probably have all the time in the world to build the wonders you need (don't need to build settlers, workers, army, very strong early tech pace, etc.) I've always argued the strongest part of IND is the failgold - but the main point of failgold is locking in the slider at 100%. That's pretty automatic with only one city. What wonders do we want? Several good wonders like GLh, MoM, Taj, HG, are worthless in OCC. That leaves GLIB, mids, TGW, and Oracle that I'd consider. I get that ToA is much better in OCC than regular, but I still don't think it's worth it. The hammer cost is ridiculous, and you probably would rather not have priest/merchant GPP pollution. Parthenon may be more worth it on average, but if you should pop an artist because of it there just isn't a good use as already mentioned.

 

[Fippy]

Phi > all, any settled GS (or Engi if one pops from Mids) is just too valuable for occ space.
SPI close second imo, diplo problems or missing out on techs (by not reaching friendly) can easily be avoided.

No space to fiddle around with other leaders than Gandhi or Ramram if trying it on deity, imo.
Others are all significantly worse.

 

[Izuul]

I haven't really played any OCC at all, so I don't know much.
But I would downvalue Phi abit compared to normal games. With only one city able to push GPP, we are almost certainly going to have a early national epic there, and then the relative bonus from Phi is not as large.

For space race.. imperalistic is probably horrid, but for games where you want to do warfare in OCC, I think getting alot of settled great generals early on might be nice? As you are limited to only 1 unit per turn, having them really strong is probably important!

Sorry, I was thinking of OCC space specifically.

@drewisfat

I would think the main benefits of IND would be:

1) Helping get the Mids or the Oracle if you choose to pursue one of those.

2) It speeds up the 5 national wonders

3) Wonders are another way to generate GPP.

It's been awhile since I've done OCC so I can't really remember how much free time your city has to build wonders between key infrastructure builds.

 

[Qactus]

As long as I have one of PHI, IND or SPI I'm fine. The other trait then may well be useless for variety. Don't play deity, though. I usually play OCCs on Nobles Club maps whenever I find the combination of starting screenshot and leader intriguing. From the past games, for OCC space I can recommend NC 262 Mansa, NC 227 Stalin and NC 222 Alex, although the latter has a special challenge in form of a neighbour.

 

[Nick723]

I haven't really played any OCC at all, so I don't know much.
But I would downvalue Phi abit compared to normal games. With only one city able to push GPP, we are almost certainly going to have a early national epic there, and then the relative bonus from Phi is not as large.

For space race.. imperalistic is probably horrid, but for games where you want to do warfare in OCC, I think getting alot of settled great generals early on might be nice? As you are limited to only 1 unit per turn, having them really strong is probably important!

Yes Imp is great fun in warring OCC games. I’ve been playing a bit of OCC Always War on Noble, just for giggles really with the amount of promotions you can get (still quite difficult to wade through their stacks on offence, though). For example, you can get Commando units out of the gate, great fun.

Just on the one unit per turn thing. This is true, unless you draft... The dream is to get a city that’s capable of drafting a rifle and building a cannon every turn: I’ve never quite got to this but I have got close.

 

[Qactus]

@Nick723 for OCC Always War have a look at the games played by ScorpionK, they're awesome:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...ch-trade-enabled-against-tech-leaders.500880/

 

[sampsa]

for OCC Always War have a look at the games played by ScorpionK, they're awesome:

Yeah even with a fabricated start that game is impressive.

 

[Nick723]

Mind absolutely blown! As always, I can’t quite fathom just how good some people are at this game

 

[Pangaea]

Phi > all, any settled GS (or Engi if one pops from Mids) is just too valuable for occ space.
SPI close second imo, diplo problems or missing out on techs (by not reaching friendly) can easily be avoided.

No space to fiddle around with other leaders than Gandhi or Ramram if trying it on deity, imo.
Others are all significantly worse.

Very rarely played OCC, but had a go with it today. Figured Philosophical would be good too, so went with that in Peter. Shaping up quite nicely now with National Park. Losing Coal access is a bummer, but at least you can put hydro power later. Fortunate that stone popped up in third ring in this case, very nice to have access to both!

As people can see, I went for the settling approach. Each GS pays back in around 50 turns, so it makes sense to settle I think.

Spoiler :

Don't know how this compares with chopping and workshopping everything from the get-go, but many Rep-scientists is rarely wrong.