OCCC (One City Challenge Club) MarkII - Bismark

[cas]

Hello.
Welcome to the 3rd installment of OCCC MarkII. Last game didn't have many participants, but it was a difficult conquest and I still haven't finished it yet either.

We haven't tried an industrious leader yet, so this week we play as Bismark/Germany on prince difficulty on a Lakes map. Bismark starts with hunting and mining. His traits are industrious/expansive. I've heard some people argue that industrious is their favorite OCC trait...it is 2nd on my list behind Philo. Expansive is decent...faster workers and 2 additional health. Bismark's UB is the Assembly Plant...basically a factory that allows 2 extra GE slots and builds 50% faster with coal. His UU is the Panzer...a tank that gains 50% bonus versus armored units. Not sure the UB/UU will come in useful in this game.

Other map settings: no huts / no events / vassals ON / high seas / temperate. Standard map size with 7 AI opponents. This map has more land than a standard map, so I put high seas and added one opponent to compensate. Random map / random opponents. No tinkering this time.

Preferred VC is diplo
Starting screenshot:

Smaller version of image in case photobucket has issues:


I've attached a zip file with worldbuilder saves for prince and monarch. The prince version can be used for prince- and the monarch can be used for monarch+...I gave the AI archery on the monarch file. If you play on imm/deity, the AI will NOT start with all their bonus techs, but it's close enough since they tech so fast anyway.

To play, simply download and unzip it into your BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Start the game, and load your favorite MOD (or not). Select "Play Scenario", and look for "OCCC Bismark prince" (or "OCCC Bismark Monarch" if you want the AI to start with its usual Archery bonus tech). Choose your level/speed/etc... If you choose to play at monarch+ you will need to go into worldbuilder after the game is started and give the barbarians archery unless you want the AI to roll over barb cities easily. There is no way to add barb archery in the wb file.

Original OCCC bullpen:
Madscientist original OCCC bullpen

OCCC markII bullpen:
OCCC markII bullpen

Zip file with prince/monarch saves:
View attachment OCCC Bismark.zip

Enjoy!

cas

 

[cas]

reserved for my writeup.

cas

 

[lymond]

does this one include cheese diplo

 

[Noogai]

What the "official" difficulty level?

 

[cas]

does this one include cheese diplo

I guess I should clarify...NOT religious (cheese AP) victory.

Diplo (UN) victory.

What the "official" difficulty level?

Prince

cas

 

[Noogai]

For some reason I can't make those saves (Bismarkzip) to even show up in the "Load game" menu.. The icon of the file is also different than it was on previous saves (I'm running on mac). OCCC Gandhi showed up, but it complained something about version 302 and 301.

 

[cas]

For some reason I can't make those saves (Bismarkzip) to even show up in the "Load game" menu.. The icon of the file is also different than it was on previous saves (I'm running on mac). OCCC Gandhi showed up, but it complained something about version 302 and 301.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but are you trying to load these like a savegame from the 'load game' in the menu ?

If so, I switched to worldbuilder files, not save game files...so that people could play at different levels/speeds and use mods. This is in the opening post about how to play a worldbuilder file...

"To play, simply download and unzip it into your BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Start the game, and load your favorite MOD (or not). Select "Play Scenario", and look for "OCCC Bismark prince" (or "OCCC Bismark Monarch" if you want the AI to start with its usual Archery bonus tech). Choose your level/speed/etc..."

cas

 

[Noogai]

"To play, simply download and unzip it into your BTS/Saves/WorldBuilder folder. Start the game, and load your favorite MOD (or not). Select "Play Scenario", and look for "OCCC Bismark prince" (or "OCCC Bismark Monarch" if you want the AI to start with its usual Archery bonus tech). Choose your level/speed/etc..."

cas

Thank you, it works now! I just put the files in my saves/single folder and tried to load game.. It works now! I started with prince.

 

[Noogai]

I have never played OCC before, so I have a question: How about national wonders? How many of them you can build? Impossible to build Oxford, wall street etc?

 

[-Asterix-]

You can build 5 national wonders to your city in OCC. Just need to build the prequisite building first (i.e. university for Oxford) to be able to build them.

 

[babar]

edit: Asterix beat me to it

 

[lymond]

You can build 5 national wonders to your city in OCC. Just need to build the prequisite building first (i.e. university for Oxford) to be able to build them.

And choose them wisely

 

[-Asterix-]

And choose them wisely

Exactly.

 

[ahcos]

Oxford, Global Theater and Ironworking usually are no-brainers in an OCC imo. Might give this a shot, although i'm not too excited about OCCs in general, with industrious it's maybe a little bit more fun.

 

[Noogai]

This is my first OCC so I didn't know what is the best way to start. I decided to go straight to alphabet after bronze working and I started chopping myself some research and wonders. It turned out to be quite good strategy and I won liberalism, physics, economics and communism races (I didn't bother to get music since I already had a few artists waiting for golden age spam)

 

[Fluroscent]

Oxford, Global Theater and Ironworking usually are no-brainers in an OCC imo.

If you mindlessly build them, then I agree they are no-brainers

Oxford is usually a top priority, but some games, if your tech goal is, say, cuirassiers or less, then it may be a non-profitable detour.

Ironworks needs iron and/or coal. If you don't have either (or can trade for them) why bother?

Globe is great sometimes, but often you are going to be fine on the happy cap by cheaper means. Especially if going for National Park and forest preserves.

 

[Sleepless]

Diplo Victory 1820AD Prince - Normal

Spoiler :

Actually managed to build the UN in 1600AD and although I could win the General Secretary Hannibal voluntarily vassaled to Boud very early and wasn't till he broke free that I could work on getting his votes. Hidden modifiers are annoying as I was +11 with him and he was only +9 with Boud and he still voted for her. Oh well got there in the end though was quite tough to ensure I had all the votes I needed.

Thanks for the game Cas

 

[ABCDPuppies]

OCC Diplo is always tough for me, and in this case having so much land made it more difficult than usual. So far I've played through to about 1600AD on Immortal, and things are not looking so great...

Spoiler :

With so much production, and no other wonder-builders around, the early game went swimmingly: I built Stonehenge, Great Wall, Pyramids, Oracle (Metal Casting), Great Library, MoM, Sistine, and Sankore, despite having neither marble nor stone.

I don't remember my early tech path exactly, but after stone wonders and Oracle it was Writing -> Aesthetics -> Literature -> trade for CoL -> Civil Service, little detour for Drama -> Music (rushed Sistine with a great engineer sort of out of habit.. probably not a great call), then beelined Lib, which I won around 1000 AD for Astronomy.

The problem was that with so much land, Victoria started to run away, vassalizing Mansa and then Wang Kon, and getting up to about a dozen cities. This wasn't an immediate issue, as we were Hindu best buddies, but I knew that wouldn't help for much when she came up as my UN competition. I was ahead in military techs by that point, getting Cuirassiers and then Cavalry to everyone else's maces/longbows, but I knew I wouldn't be able to take her out with only one city vs. 12 and two vassals to boot.

Just to try something, I spammed Cuirassiers -> Cavalry, DOW'd my neighbor Qin Shi (the top Buddhist), and razed maybe 5 cities, including his capital, using spies to revolt — but of course he was nowhere near willing to Capitulate even then, and eventually his production advantage started to catch up to me, so I just agreed to peace.

So, what would you guys do in a situation like this? A peaceful Diplo victory looks hopeless, but I can't think of a really good military strategy.

 

[Jaybone]

@ ABCD

Spoiler :

Why would you build stonehenge in a one city challenge? And I would nuke/raze the whole map, if you have the production to do so. Diplomation attempt

 

[ABCDPuppies]

@ ABCD

Why would you build stonehenge in a one city challenge?

Because it's a cheap source of early GPP, and there's typically not a much higher priority build right then. Some people don't like Prophets too much, but for OCC I think they're actually pretty nice: the production is an obvious boon, and the gold helps you buy techs, and later support an army.

If I'm philosophical, I'll usually try to manage my GP pool a little more, getting writing for an Academy first while building pyramids, maybe HG if I have stone, and then GLib/NE to keep it mainly scientists and engineers. Without the boost from Philosophcial however, it becomes more important to have a higher base GP rate, and if you're Industrious a little indiscriminate wonder whoring is a natural way to do this.

The main danger in my experience is building too many artist wonders -- I've played games where I built Parthenon, NE, MoM, Globe, and Sistine because they all have such great benefits (and Sistine often needs to be denied to the AI) but then ended up popping 3 artists in a row during the Lib race, when I needed scientists most. It's a tricky balance, and involves some luck.

Another one I go back and forth about is Great Wall. It's cheap, and very useful, since it allows you to focus on building over Barb defense, but getting 2-3 spies can be a real drag. For that reason I often will delay and only build it if it doesn't go early. In this game for instance, I believe I built it after Mids, and ended up popping 1 spy, which was fine: still a substantial science boost with Rep, and the EPs helped out during the Cavalry wars.

Spoiler :

And I would nuke/raze the whole map, if you have the production to do so. Diplomation attempt

Spoiler :

Hmm well, I don't have too much experience with modern warfare, and basically none with nukes. I guess my question is, what is "enough production" for this strategy? Obviously it shouldn't be an issue to pump out 1 nuke/unit per turn, but would that be enough to Capitulate a map with so many cities? Particularly given than one or more AIs will have vassals at that point, and will be very reluctant to cap.. I'm not sure if I see how it can be done. The real limiting factor seems not to be production per se, but the hard limit of 1 unit per turn.