Old World Abbridged Guide to One-City Challenge (OCC)

[nolegskitten]

I. First things first, Disclaimers:

1) I typed this guide Jan 14th, 2021, originaly on Old World Discord (come join us, we love you already) so the game is still in Early Access and mutating fast. Some or all of this will become obsolete as the game evolves. I hope some of it will still be interesting in a few months, but if you're reading this later, some of the game mechanics explanations might not be accurate anymore.

2) Outside of GOTW I only play at "The Great" these days. Some or most of what I will describe will probably only be relevant for high dificulty settings.

3) At "The Great" and at the time of typing this guide, I can only describe one path and strategy that should work more or less reliably. I have other ideas but I have yet to prove that they work. Many players have done OCC before me ofc, and I expect they will have other ideas, advices, other strats, etc. I'm just documenting the one I found . This is the Path of the Sage Builder.



II. Second things errr, second, Warnings:

The "Challenge" part in "One-City Challenge" is not an exageration. I'm not sure if the challenge introduces as much of a gap in the dfficulty on easier settings, but at The Great at least, the AI won't pull its punches. Cyrus won't care that you want to try a fun challenge, misled by a forum post. Romulus will see your promised great city of wonders as a mere bump in his own conquests at best, as a prize to grab otherwise. Diplomacy won't be optional. Late game, you will be able to hold your own against anyone... the challenge is getting there. Early game, you will probably have to bow to some extortion from the AI. When Ashurbanipal comes pay you a vist in the shower, you will politely pick up the soap as he asks you. Political marriage will be a thing.

For me the difficulty felt like it was at least two notches harder than a standard game. Like my first "The Great" game, I needed a few map restarts, no quite legit undos, RNG hacking, "reload and rethink", and a generaly unhealthy amounts of scumming. I don't claim to be some kind of OW expert but I'm normally quite confident playing huge maps at this difficulty level. Here I ressorted to trickery that would shame my gamer son if he knew what I was up to. This said, I think I now understand this strategy better and can replicate it less dishonorably.

If your first attempt at OCC is at the highest level of difficulty you usually play at, be prepared for some scumming or, well, defeat: chose your shameful display. You might want to go 2 or 3 levels below usual to have a more relaxed and honest experience. I'd rather cheat my first game, cheat "just a bit" for my second victory, play honestly for the third and get better that way but that's down to taste and how much grinding you can tolerate.

There are a lot of tricks in there that are relevant to any games, but if you're just starting it will probably make more sense once you've had a few games.
I wouldn't recommend trying OCC before completing a few more standard games.



III. What you need:

- A strong starting location. Feel free to try it with a no-growth start or without marble, I'm not stopping you. I used the Coastal Rain Basin for my attempts. This tend to produce fertile maps, but any script will do so long as you get a strong start. Strong start means marble and growth resources in reach.

- Egypt. I'll explain why later on but the only strategy I'm confident with at the moment simply requires Builder leaders, at least for the early/mid game.

- More precisely, you will found with the sage family, the Thutmosids.

- Willingness to restart/redo things. Either Hatshepsut will have to live very long, or you need your heirs to be Builders too. Nothing else will do for quite some time. If you don't have a candidate heir builder and you die, reload, undo scum, or start a new game.

Let's call it the Path of the Sage Builder Strategy. Why should that more or less work ?

So, obviously in OCC you only have one city. Everything is slower. If your city produces something you need in 2 turns instead of 4, you've doubled the output of your empire. If you go from 2 turns to 1, doubled again. Very simple, but it means you want to 1-turn everything you can as soon as possible.

Consequence no 1 : if you can't speed up improvements building, then if you want a Citadel, you will probably need 15 turns. 5 for the Garison, then Stronghold, then Citadel. Sure you can be a bit faster with Guilds, but Guilds is at the other end of history.



IV. Builders !

The only way to truelly speed improvements up is to have a Builder leader. Who starts with a Builder Leader ? Egypt. Their characters also have a bias toward builders, so you should be able to generate Builder heirs through commerce or philosophy studies. You will want 5, prefferably 6 workers as soon as possible. Rural improvements are 3 turns on flatland, Urban improvement 5. So 6 workers is 2 rural improvements each year, or a full urban one plus something, or a full urban one on a hill.

You will also want plenty of wonders and you will not want to wait 10 or 16 turns for them to complete and start paying off the investment.

You know what ? Builder leaders train workers twice as fast, and that's the second reason why Builder is always nice but so much stronger than anyone else in OCC.

That's not all. When your leader is a builder, you can, in 1 turn just like a road, for 10 stones (20 on a hill) just like a road, build a Urban tile.

No improvement on it, same restrictions as for any urban improvement: needs to be adjacent to 2 other urban tiles, or only one coastal urban tile if coastal itself.

But just as urban improvements, they grab the surrounding tiles. Territory will be extremely valuable for a variety of reasons, but if you only think of the resources you'll need every year to build and train everything you'll need, that's reason enough. A lake or a coast nearby is very valuable just because of that, it will allow you to grab a lot of space very quickly. The extra stone cost is so worth it it's negligible.
In your land expansion plan, all urban improvements that don't require the normal adjacency are extra valuable, as they allow you to start a urban region in the middle of nowhere. Hamlets, wonders, monasteries, all are extra precious and their placement can be extremely impacting.

So you want Builder leaders. If your first born turns out tactician, well, tacticians are just great but in OCC you'll desherit the poor child in favor of his younger builder sibbling. Yes, even if he's an idiot.

So, to 1-turn improvements, build wonders in a few or a single turn, etc, you want Builders leaders.


Now, you will want to 1-turn other stuff.

You will want to 1-turn tech if possible, you will want to 1-turn projects, 1-turn units, 1-turn everything.

Most importantly, the best way to generate anything of value in OW are specialists. You want training for military, growth for your fat city, science... The most effective way to generate all that is specialists. You will need lots of Elder specialists. So, to unlock "1-turning stuff", the first thing you need to 1-turn is specialist training, and that takes civics.

Comfortable, vast, huge, unreasonable quantities of civics.

High Charisma is nice, but to make the most of it you need governors.
The only other boost to civics generations at the start of the game are marble quaries and stonecutters.

Also, Sage families have a 25% lower civics cost on urban specialists, which is the main reason we want to play a Sage Family.
Luckily, Egypt got us covered, we will play the Thutmosids.

The ability to conduct inquiries for science (same same, you want to 1-turn inquiries as soon as possible) is also quite important, but the killer is the faster urban specialists. Faster rural specialists (Landowners, -50%, also available to Egypt) could also work as it'll speed up the very begining, but overall since we'll upgrade urban specialists we'll train wayyyy more of these guys. The science per citizen is almost irrelevant, as for the most critical part of the game you'll have very few or no citizens. Crazy amounts of specialists, though.

So, to 1-turn stuff you'll need first to 1-turn specialists, and for that you will want some marble close by (criteria for a strong start) and to found either Sages or maybe Landowners (Didn't try and you can't make inquiries. Something to explore but I wouldn't recommend it if it's your first OCC). Some sort of coast (lakes are excelent) nearby for rapid urban expansion are great.

 

[nolegskitten]

V. Science !

One of the strongest way to boost a single city is definitly having a governor, but as Egypt you don't start with the tech nor its prerequisites (Administration, Divination, then Sovereignty). It is one of your targets and possibly top priority from the start. You already have stonecutting to improve those marble tile. If you have plenty of camps potential, you might start with trapping. Founding Sages grants you a one-time 100 science, so you'll 1-turn your first tech and get some overflow to the second one.

Some random remarks on tech priorities :

• Sovereignty is your first target. Calm down, you start with Labor Force.
• Second priority is Citizenship. Courthouses are simply the best Urban improvement ever. You want 5 workers (6 on a hill) ready to build one the turn you unlock em, because scribes are specialists that generate flat civics in building that multiply it is how you unlock everything else.
• Navigation is high priority because of colonization. Buying tiles will soon be extremely expensive, but it can be crucial.
• Polis is important because it unlocks hamlets wich provides a lot more flexibility in urban expansion, but of the course the free settler card is not a thing in OCC. All in all the tech isn't quite as valuable as usual.
• Odeons are nice but you will have better investments for your stone in the early game, and there are other ways to generate culture. Drama didn't feel high priority to me.
• Rethoric is extra valuable, forums = civics, Rethoric unlock mercenary events and Epics can be nice culture depending on the situation.
• Resource generation with a single city will be slower for a long time, so "Bonus resource" techs will be extra desirable, with the possible exception of food.
• Later on, Architecture for Bath, Scolarship for Libraries and Vaulting for the Philosophy law.
• You will want bonus unit cards (1-turning them when possible) as your training generation will be crap for some time, and spending 6 turns on a slinger or warrior won't be acceptable. You need the Stone Boost tech card in particular, don't think you can skip it because you start with extra stone. Nice of you to think of it, but don't do it.

VI. OK OK but how to get science ? how to actually, you know, generate the stuff ?

Well, libraries and philosophers of course.

What about before they're available ?

Inquiries will be your main tool. They'll be much faster when you get more civics.
Improve that marble, train that stonecutter and come back. 1-turn inquiries are where the good stuff is.
Spending time and slow teching to get 1-turn inquiries faster is perfectly sound and reasonable. Remember, 1-turn X is worth twice as much as a 2-turn X.
Wisdom will be good, but if you have to choose Charisma is better. Each rural specialist is worth 2 science. Urban specialists all generate science as they get upgraded. Shrines might help. Free tech > all in events (ok almost all). If you get events with the possibility to swap a tech with the AI, do it. Still, library improvements will multiply all that and that's when science gets serious.



VII. Civics !

Civics are what you use to pass laws.
They are what you use to train specialists.
You need civics to build wonders now, starting last Monday.
They are what you use to 1-turn rush anything, and you will want to 1-turn rush lots of stuff.

So, how do you get your dirty builder hands on some good ol' civics ?

Marble quaries are by far the best option in the early game.
Forums will be their lesser siblings, at least they get you a bit of immediate payback on your investment. Civics from events will be what you stockpile to pass laws, as when you're not training workers your city will always be reinvesting its own civics generation in specialists, forums or inquiries (You will not train units and it will be terrifying).
The Pyramid is probably the best early Wonder, because it saves civics. You want your leader to have high Charisma, and you want him to be the Governor. Remember, the +50% as governor, +20% in all cities as leader stacks. That's +70% if your leader is a governor. As a completly random example, a Delver Leader/Governor is +70% to quaries output. You care about the stone, but really you care because of the civics.
XP as a governor is slow, so when you'll generate sufficient civics you'll want to rally troops as often as possible (+20XP every 2 turns, 10 per turn, more than you get by governing even a legendary city).
Civilian traits are huge. You don't want to waste your first, easily accessible level-up on a military trait, even Steadfast/Swift/Marksman/Whatever. You dont care about any military promotion if you could have Delver, Herder, Planter, Frugal, Famous, Warlike, Inspiring, Affable... more or less any civilian trait instead.

Be Gracious.
Be Romantic.
Be Eloquent.

These are desirable traits, Charisma > all, that is the path of the Sage Builder in OCC.

When your city will be generating enough civics to 1-turn any specialist natively, you'll have more flexibility.
The real stuff of course, the strong stuff, the civics for wich you'll need to go through a background check, that's courthouses and scribes.

If you're lucky enough to have "Strong" culture before you reach Citizenship (Yes it can be done), you will 1-turn build a Courthouse, and a Ministry on the next turn. Once you get both (+50% civics for just the two buildings), you rush an Elder scribe as fast as you can, then the second. It's faster on a Ministry than on a Courthouse so train that one first. After Courthouses you'll want libraries, for tech and still for civics. Philosophers generate civivs per citizens, that's the good stuff. For quite some time you won't have many citizens though, because you'll make specialists out of them ASAP.



VIII. Growth !

You want as high a Growth as you can get. Early on, Civics and Growth are the highest priorities.

The best stuff you can find as Egypt for Growth is grains on a river. Egypt's 50% riverside farm bonus applies to growth. Farmers and granaries (you will be able to afford the wood upkeep) are worth it, but see if you can't get some free farmers/trappers/etc from events (meeting a new Nation, culture events, Ancient ruins...). Free specialists include the free citizen and that's just great. Being a Builder, with just native growth, your first worker should be a 3 turn thing. Nets, farms, camps, it's all good.
You'll still want the riverside farms in priority ofc.

Why do you need high growth ? Well, once you're OK with your number of Workers (n > 6), you will find that you consume citizens at an alarming rate by 1-turning specialists. So you need high growth to sustain your... growth.

When we get to the late game, Markets are top priority. An Elder shopkeeper is 2 growth per culture level, on your legendary city that's 24 flat growth from specialists, muliplied by everything. Hanging Garden is nice, but if you have to choose your wonder don't build it instead of Pyramids. Doctors and priests are nice but Shopkeepers are where it's at. I'll explain what Priests are for later. OK, they're for War. Details lower down.


IX. Resources !

With a resonably forested start, wood won't be a problem. Chopping will be enough to carry you to the middle game. Food most likely won't be much of an issue either. You don't really spend food as you won't train settlers, so unless you're masochistic enough to accept a start in the middle of arid hills you will be good.

Excess wood and food can be sold to buy other stuff, so they're still valuable of course. From the midgame on you'll have plenty of everything. Maybe. I hope.

Despite Egypt bonus and the bonus stone card, you will quickly need more. You want a garison ASAP, you will quickly build wonders, and you'll find yourself rapidly depleting your stockpile before you even seriously start with Urban improvements. If you can't access mountains and truly good stone generation, your marble will carry you early on and the 50% bonus on riverside quaries will do the rest. Don't neglect some early iron, or quaries and lumbermills will feel super expansive later on.

 

[nolegskitten]

X. Training !

What ?

Training ?

You won't have training.

OK, you'll have a couple of quick barracks close to your garison, an iron mine if you can get it, but that won't allow you to train unit in a time that's reasonable for an OCC. Ranges will come later, and Priests (the strong stuff) will come later still.

So... Diplomacy. Be nice to your neighboors. Be nice to Tribes. Be nice to distant bastards as well, the AI will target you if you're weak unless they really like you, and if you're already at war with a distant menace that counts as a weakness. If you have to accept a war, it has to be war with someone already fighting with preferably several of your neighboors, as their territory will protect yours and you'll get a relation bonus for being at war with their enemies.

You have cash, paying 150 for a relationship boost is alright. Marying Foreign douchebags is OK. Be extra wary of any nations or tribe lead by a Hero : that's a -80 relation penalty because they hate Builders.

You don't want to train units. So you will sell everything down, including your wood stockpile and possibly your firstborn, to pay mercenaries when you get an offer. That's actually an excelent reason to prioritise Rethoric, as it unlock at least some of the mercenary events. You will make a detour through bonus unit cards. You will harvest Elephants and stuff hoping unreasonably for a free unit even if its far from home.
Later on (>=2 elder scribes), when you can 1-turn officers, and if there are no higher priority specialists to train and upgrade (1. scribes 2. philosophers 3.shopkeepers), go on, get your officers. You'll get science and culture on the side. When you can 1-turn a few strong units, by all means do so. However, delaying stronger science or civics for a slinger isn't worth it.

In the early game, chances are you will 1-turn a few militias (maybe 2-turn if the situation is THAT dire, but anyway your growth generates faster than your training) before you can grab anything serious. Conserve your units, heal-stall attackers if you have to. Can't have everything at the same time, the Path of the Sage Builders is developement speed, unfortunately you'll be parading butt naked among hordes of Barbarians.

Always be polite to everyone, and good luck.



XI. What about barbarians ? They're not as polite with me as I am with them ?

Well, that will happen.

Tribe settlements will abound, and you won't be able to clear much.

Your Builder +3 discipline will prove not to be a great enabler of military prowess.

A few camps cleared at the very start if you're lucky, but you won't have enough units to occupy them all. More distant tribes will spawn barbarians that will come at you and certainly change your plans. Militias, scouts and even workers when it comes to that are fine ways to prevent a barbarian camp from respawning. You want the ones closer to you dead, and you want to make minor cities out of them. But mainly, you want to hold em out as long as you can.

Hold the fort !

Payback will come.

It will come late, but it will be absolutely delicious.

Then you'll get priests. An elder priest generate 1 flat training per citizen. Get religions when you can. 3 elder priests : 3 training per citizens. While 6 flat training per elder officer is nice, officers will look at priests in envy before long. Wonders like the Oracle, The Acropolis and The Pantheon get stronger the more religions you have. Remember, it's a videogame: religions are nice.



XI. Discontent !

As often, Discontent will rise quickly, but you will stabilize it at somewhat high level then kill it with 1-turn festivals. Disloyalty won't be much of an issue as you only have one city. And you will pile up luxuries, each being -2 discontent and +2 culture, with Legal code (Courthouses !) and baths later on, you'll be OK, even with Slavery, even with Tyrany. You will probably still have to endure some not fun -20% penalties for some time in the middle, specially if say, barbarians pay a visit to your wonderland and "enjoy your tiles" for a few turns.



XII. Culture !

Some cultural advice:
Listen to Philip Glass Akhnaten Opera. No need to thank me. Extremely fitting for OW who already uses Philip Glass music and in particular for an Egypt play.

In game tho, I relied on wonders and specialists for most of my culture generation. You want to beeline Architecture as a Tech and philosophy as a law to make them cheaper.
Top wonder priority on the Musaeum if it's in the game. You will have a lot of elder specialists, each is worth +4 culture with the Musaeum. Then onward to vaulting for Calligraphy, +4 culture per library and another +2 per Elder specialists. If you're lucky enough to get to found a religion, the special building is now cheaper in civics and it is a culture multiplier at + 20%.

Epics can mean a lot of culture if you have some lucky early unit to use it with, harvesting luxuries with scouts is also a very significant boost early game.

An underworld shrine (Osiris Shrine for Egypt) adjacent to 3 mountain tile is worth 8 culture by itself. Each Luxury assigned to your city is +2 culture and -2 discontent.

An improved luxury with a specialist is usually +4.

Without poets, Odeons are not that good. Once you can get cheap poets (so, on a Coloseum preferably, for wich you need to already have Strong cultural developement), and Elder poet will speed up the race to legendary significantly. In the game that resulted in the screenshots from the Hall of Immortal, Wasset reached Legendary Status on T72. I had not yet completed my coloseum, but I had 2 Elder scribes, 2 Elder Philosophers, 2 Apprentice Accolytes (founded Zoroastrism), 2 gardeners, Hanging gardens, Musaeum and Oracle.



XIII. Scouting !

You want to use your starting scout as efficiently as possible. You will lack orders early on (until slavery kicks in at least) but you want to find as many ancient ruins as possible.
You will also get legitimacy for exploring, and meeting other nations can give you nice events (become Affable, get a free farmer, etc).

Harvesting can be good, you'll probably want to kickstart your gold stash but the main goal is harvesting luxuries for instant culture and get your city to developped as quick as you can.

Developped is when you get the ability to rush stuff (you're a Builder so only with civics for a long time), and you need the level to build the first tier of most urban buildings as well.

You also want to reach strong quickly (Ministries and The Musaeum) but with 400 Culture needed harvesting won't be as significant. If you have the extra orders harvesting is always worth it as it can net you some nice events from time to time. Free war elephant, Free Farmer and Magic sword out of nowhere come to mind. But until you know where the surounding city sites are, who are your neighboors and ancient ruins become less probable, you don't want to just harvest for the hell of it. You'll have better stuff to do with your orders.

Any unit is precious if even to keep a barbarian camp from respawning and that include scouts. Any scout multiplier Ancient ruin will be great, even over some free science in most situations. Be wary of harvesting silver. That's how you can get the only negative harvesting event in the game, where your scout will steal your money and might die for it (the other choice isn't nice either). If you try it, get the event and undo, I won't tell Soren. Promise.



XIV. Urban expansion ! City planning ! Iron age urbanism !

I wrote a bit about building urban tiles while arguing the case for Builder Leaders in OCC. This is important. You'll probably end up with more urban tiles than you need even will all urban improvement, but that's ok, and it will look nice. Did I state that OCC cities look gorgeous ? Well the game is gorgeous but OCC cities are special extra gorgeous, with some beautiful on top. Those Mohawks have mad skillz I tell you.

First, once a tile is assigned to a city, it belongs to that city for all eternity. No tile stealing mechanic in the game as of today.

Also city territory expansion in Old World is almost entirely deterministic. The cities don't expan their borders willy-nilly. No culture gained new tiles and stuff. The only exceptions to this (what ? Of course there are exception, what did you expect ?) are the Bonus card that give you 4 tiles per city and some events that grant 4 tiles. Even those probably are deterministic in which tiles they grab, but I haven't figured it out so I treat them as random. Borders from separate cities can collapse together when they get very close too, but you probably want to treat that as random as I haven't bothered reverse engineering the exact rules.

Otherwise:
- When you get a rural specialist, they grab all surrounding tiles. Important, specially with stone, riverside grain and luxuries.
- Any Urban improvement will grab the surrounding tiles on completion. Urban tiles have to be adjacent to other urban tiles (mostly), so it's bit by bit most of the time
- If any tile grabbed is directly adjacent to a resource tile, the resource tile will be grabbed automatically. If you have time to then improve that and then get a specialist on it, it can be an efficient way to get rural tiles.
- Some urban improvements have *no adjacency requirement* and you can place them anywhere. These are **precious**. You can use them to expand quickly at the border of your empire/City State and to start a new urban region by providing adjacency requirements for normal urban improvements. These are hamlets (/villages/towns), Monasteries and Wonders. Strategic placement and due consideration of your plans are advised.
- You can straight up build urban tiles in one turn at low cost, because you're a Builder. This allows you to gentrify the primeval mediteranean wilds at unparalleled speed, and that's a key selling point of the Sage Builder Path. Snake your urban sprawl along coasts. Lakes coasts work, including small one tile lakes.

Minor cities are a bit of a specific case. When you encircle (or almost encircle, I'm not 100% on the rules) a unsettled city site, it gets converted into a Minor city. It's worth 2VP and you automatically get all the urban city tiles in your territory. That's your goal to permanently pacify the neighboughring city sites, but it will take some serious expansion.

One last trick : you might want to delay researching Aristocracy, because it unlocks the "bonus tiles" card and you might want to delay that until you already had some other types of city borders expansion.

 

[nolegskitten]

XV. Bootstrap my Satrap Start ! *

What's this I hear you ask ?

Dear catling deprived of paws, how do I get a strong start to try all this ?

I don't wan't to click on single player and
click on new game and
select Hatshepsut of Egypt as my Leader and
click on next and
select my difficulty level and
select my map script and
click on advanced setup and
turn on One City Challenge at the bottom of the list and
click on Start Game
and do it all over again because I had a arid hill start with nice incense and a lone camel ?

You told me that it was hard and that I would suffer and I like that, friendly young feline with poor locomotion abilities, but that bit about walking butt naked among the barbarians has me worried.
Dont you have a Nice Strong Start (c)(tm) for me ?

Well I'm glad you asked, o friendly civ fanatic of the world of old. Indeed I do. Here goes :

A Great start fitting the description. On the Great, though, sorry (Will play it on stream and be happy to chat and attempt to demonstrate the silly stuff I came up with).

* Yeah I know Satraps were Medes, so technically "Persians" and not Egyptians for a bit. Yes, I'm willing to sacrifice geographical accuracy for an alliteration. What you gonna do ? You can't stop me !


You'll find just here the map file coresponding to the start above. I didn't try using straight up map files, but there's probably a way to generate the same game with lower difficulties for those who want it.
The seed is 678 427 42, Medium sized Coastal Rain Basin.
Grab it while you can though, saves are usually patch resilient, seeds are not.




OCC Path of the Sage Builder Start Screenshot.



What you see in the screenshot is that you have plenty of rivers (crucial for Egypt), a lake for extreme urbanization, two marbles and salt (early culture through luxury). One of the marble is riverside and that counts. You want to settle on the highlighted spot, northwest. You will make wonders and all spots directly adjacent to your city center are precious, you want all 6 if you can, and here you can.

What you don't see in the screenshot but is nice is that there are two riverside grains rapidly accessible for something like 20 stone worth of urban tiles. A Wheat and even barley. Barley is always on lush terrain, riverside it's quite simply the best food/growth tile in the game. There are arid tiles in the northwest for Pyramids and stuff, plenty of forest with nice rivers for a 60% boost to lumbermills. A second lake in the west for even sillier rapid urbanization, some camp resources for a bit more growth and a few orders (camels on arid tiles, game in the forest).

What you don't see in the screenshot either is that there are close barbarian to the east (how fast can you make a minor city out of them ?), Ashurbanipal is your neighboor to the east (he's not quite a hippie when it comes to peace and love) and that the west is inhabited by the Scythians, great tribe people of the plains, lovers of open skies and burnt villages. They are led by a Hero.

I'd recommend marrying yourself and your entire family to Assyrians and Scythes, but you're grown ups and you're free to do what you want.

 

[nolegskitten]

Shameless plug and reserved post in one go : I'll play the game from the start on stream ( at https://www.twitch.tv/nolegskitten) this saturday jan 16th probably from 9PM CET, spoiled in the early game as I had a go at the first turns before typing this "guide".

Feel free to join for a chat, ask questions, play along at the same time, etc. I'm sure playing along should be enjoyable, surely Ashurbanipal is not that scary, yeah ?

 

[Dale]

Nice guide. Just to point out, these are everything that can give civics and/or orders.

CIVICS:
Nations:
- Carthage +200 each new city
Families:
- Statesmen +1
- Patrons +2
- Sages +2
- Clerics +2
Council:
- Ambassador charisma
Improvements:
- Courthouse line +20%/+30%/+50%
- Quarry (marble) +2
- Acropolis +2 per religion
- Apadana +4
- Colossus +4 per connected city
- Pantheon +2 per culture level in state religion cities
- University +20%
Laws:
- Constitution +10
- Guilds +2 per town
- Pilgrimage +1 per grove
Projects:
- Council +60%/+70%/+80%/+90%
- Forum +1/+2/+3/+4 PLUS +20/+30/+40/+50 on completion
Specialists:
- Scribes +2/+4/+6 (courthouse line)
- Masters +1 per culture (Monk)
- Masters +.5 per citizen (Philosopher)
- Elders +2 per culture (Monk)
- Elders +1 per citizen (Philosopher)
- Stonecutter +1
Religion:
- Legalism +2 per monastery



ORDERS:
Nations:
- Assyria +2 per unit killed
- Persia +.5 per pasture
Families:
- Statesmen +1
Council:
- Spymaster discipline
Improvements:
- Camp +.5 (camels/elephants)
- Garrison line +.5 each
- Pasture +.5 (horses)
- Apadana +.5 in state religion cities
- Pantheon +1 per religion
- Pyramids +1
Laws:
- Elites +1 per legendary city
- Iconography +1 per cathedral
- Monotheism +1 per state religion city
- Slavery +5
Projects:
- Decree +4/+6/+8/+10
Specialists:
- Masters +.5 (Acolyte/Bishop)
- Elders +1 (Acolyte/Bishop)
Religion:
- Revelation +.5 per temple