One City Challenge Club (OCCC) Asoka

[madscientist]

Welcome to the next One City Challenge Club where we play a OCC game. We have started out at Nobel and now working at Prince! Let's see how far we all can go

The next leader is Asoka of India. Organized is normally a powerful trait, but in OCC it very weak. Spiritual on the other hand allows excellent diplomacy and no anarchy means no lost turns! Neither the UU or the UB are particularly useful here.

The save is a Prince difficulty/Epic speed and the WorldBuilder save is also attached if you want to change those settings. The Map is Hemispheres. Remember I plan to be moving the difficulty up as we go along in the series, Prince for now.

General statements about a One City Challenge, according to Mad Scientist

1) You get ONE city! Go and win yourself a game champ!

2) You cannot build a settler, nor can you capture a city. Captured cities will autoraze, a great way for ticking off a rival.

3) You are allowed 5 National Wonders per city, and they still require the prerequisite buildings. Example, for the Globe theater you need a theater, Oxford requires a University. etc....

There are plenty of players that can offer great advice, I will keep to just hosting this game for the time being.

Examples of OCC games can be found in the Classic RPCs in my signature: Agustus, Stalin, Lincoln were all OCC games focusing on diplomacy, military, space victory pathes although the Lincoln game was a last minute failure. Also under the RPC Next Generation the dali Lama was an OCC but certainly not a typical game.

So onto the leader

And the start

An interesting coastal start. Do you move in land or stay on the coast??

Anyone wanting some tips

Spoiler :

This start is very hard even if you go moving the settler. The only metal is iron after the fourth border pop and you have no late game resources other than oil but only on the 5th (legondary) border pop.

 

[Stochastic]

Ugh crappy place for the warrior for an initial scouting position! I'll probably use the settler to scout for a turn, but SIP seems most likely despite a relatively poor production of three plains hills.
Marble is nice for GLib, NE and Parth (though ideally it would be third ring), I don't think we've had that yet.

 

[Sleepless]

I will try another Immortal Space victory game in this one. Failed in the GK game although I did get very near. This could be in the same vein but it is a lot better than the GK start.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

This looks like it's going to be a post Gunpowder warmonger game.

 

[bestsss]

The next leader is Asoka of India.... Neither the UU or the UB are particularly useful here.

Well, that's one of the best UU overall and my #1 OCC anyways.
Also not every game means the globe theater.

 

[TCMIV]

Emperor/epic attempted space race loss

Spoiler :

Had a decent start and got in on the buddhist love triangle with AC and Izzy. AC eventually vassalled Hannibal and got Izzy pissed at him. Izzy being the idiotic zealot that she is DoW'd AC and got owned badly, ended up vassalling as well.

From here AC simply had too much great land for me to keep up, lost internet by 4 turns because he controlled all of the copper on our island and Gilgamesh who wasn't too friendly with me had all of the copper on the other island Also lack of aluminum so a win would have been hard even if I had won internet.

 

[Stochastic]

Space win Jan 1970 on the default

Spoiler :

After exploring a bit I saw the rice and ended up settling 1SE. I'm not sure if this was a mistake or not, while I think it gave me more useful tiles it also removed any source of power which slowed down my parts rate. This was the first OCC where I was teching faster than I could finish parts. I was able to get biol from liberalism, also a first for me and that swung me into a quick NP with 4 and later 6 preserves. Because of that I went for environmentalism and windmilled my mines. I think that is why I was teching so well, next time I'll try to convert them back to mines a bit earlier.

We got into one giant Buhd fest with Izzy vasalisign to AC early and then no wars at all except for one phony war vs WK.
The end felt tight, AC had the space elevator and was building parts like mad, I ended up launching with only 1 engine and 2 thrusters as it took me longer to build the parts than it would speed me up. Then for some reason it took AC 20 turns to finish two engines in two different cities so the nukes that I was building for his capital didn't have to come into play.

Generally the lack of wars was a bit refreshing after the last few.

@bestsss

I have tried playing without the GT in OCCs before but I always end up building it anyways when emancipation and defied UN resolutions start happening. How do you get enough happiness to avoid it?

 

[semirami]

Diplomatic 1160AD

Spoiler :

Not a bad start. Marble is just too powerful. Oracle-Aesthetics and ultra early National Epic and Great Library.

Buddhist lovefest

Managed to spread Taoism to Issy, before she gets Theo. Other continent is all Organized Religion. And:

 

[bestsss]

>>I have tried playing without the GT in OCCs before but I always end up building it anyways when emancipation and defied UN resolutions start happening. How do you get enough happiness to avoid it?
--
decided to give it a try:

Spoiler :

The difficulty is too low but surprisingly missed the oracle, also terribly bad luck w/ great people (5 great artists, no single engineer)

 

[Kesshi]

I decided to give this a shot, too.

Spoiler :

Lost to space in 1969 by about 20something turns. Hannibal Isabella Aggy and myself were all Buddhists living in harmony until the dirty Hindus across the world showed up. By the time Gilgamesh decided to declare war on me, my 8 warriors and 8 muskets and about 6 cannons were more than enough to defeat the 6 units Gilgamesh sent over. Especially since I had just discovered Physics.

Gilgamesh had vassaled all of the other land, and I knew that Gilgamesh was going to be a problem. I bribed as many people as possible to declare war on him, even feeding techs to other people so they'd stand a better chance. Only, Hannibal did TOO well. Izzy volunteerly vassled Hannibal about a dozen times in my game, and Aggy was worthless. When I did bribe Aggy into war, Aggy would lose cities vs Gilgamesh.

Long story short, Hannibal vassled Gilgamesh and Wang while William was kinda alone being backwards once he broke free of Gilgamesh during the Hannibal take-over. Even though I had the Apollo Program up about 50 years before Hannibal, he was able to pump out a spaceship in no-time. He simply got too powerful, mostly due to my influences. Oops!

I imagine it should have been an easy win, what with no buddhist wars, and peaceful wonderspamming favors the humans greatly. However, I am rusty from not playing Civ much recently, and kept forgetting to do silly things, like change civics whenever I don't need slavery, or do need state propery, etc. Being Spiritual means free swaps, and I found myself having to sacrifice too many of my own people due to slavery riots.

Oh well, you live and learn.

Mad, if you read this, you should have no problem winning.

 

[DampRain]

@stochastic

Taking GT is normally the easy way of dealing with happiness issues.

Otherwise it is best to use a mix of these.
Assuming HR is out due to representation.

culture slider gives tons of happiness with theatre & colosseum
If you have gone for a forest national park mix, there will be lots of happiness from that.
Trade away surplus resources (if you get NP you won't need health, also you tend to have quite a bit of GPT, so trade for happiness).
Religions, free religion + temples. This relies on people spreading or you founding though...

Normally though I'm just too lazy to deal with it all and just build Globe, particularly if you are going for a size 30+ city.

@semirami very nice and early.

 

[Jastrow]

Giving this one a shot...

Spoiler :

QAnd so far so good... I settled in place, and went fishing first, and used the clams to grow, and the whip to build. I completed a modest Monarchy slingshot with the Oracle, and then went astetics to net all the marble based wonders.

Issi founded Buddism, and spread it agressively, leading to a lovefest which has kept the peace until now. I am in around 1500, one the liberation race (and took biology with it.)

I did not chop any forrests, so I now have national park running with 11 or 12 preserves, and am researching quite well. Edding for the space ship, which I will have no problem techning too. I just hope I have enough hammers to get the thing built in time. (Especially since I currently have no oil, and border pressure is holding them, so it is unclear if I can survive if wars break out.)

 

[bestsss]

@Jastrow

Spoiler :

I decided to kill the continent, possibly could have launched 20-30 turns earlier but built reasonably big SoD instead

Notice the original inhabitants of the continent are properly vassalled for resources. I didn't have iron, so I got it the harder way.

 

[Sleepless]

Immortal/normal

Spoiler :

Very close to launching my space ship but couldn't keep up with Hannibal. I still needed 4 casings and 18 turns (although I did have all my BFC forests left which would have speeded up the last couple of builds).

At least the AI were generous. Note the date.

That should come in handy.

Must admit though Hannibal gave me Demo when no-one else had it so I went and built the SoL. Perhaps I should have used the time building research instead.

Perhaps I would have been better off building the UN as I could have got most of the AI to vote for me and Gilgamesh would have been my opponent and possibly managed a diplo win that way.

 

[Jastrow]

@bestsss

Spoiler :

Hmmm... That never occured to me. I always though that if you did not have the resources you needed in your OCC zone, you were simply out of luck (unless you could con someone into trading for it.) The idea never came to me that you could take them with the sword through the vessal system!

 

[bestsss]

@Jastrow

Spoiler :

>>The idea never came to me that you could take them with the sword through the vessal system <<
Well on this map the 1st non-warrior/non-siege unit I could built was musketman... So no swords but rifles served fine.

Truth be told I also traded for (I've got mining, but small +7 or so) although it has happened to trade for +16 sushi, starting w/ a single rice farm.
There is an exploit (not-occ) only that if you have corp. the resources past the 1st are way cheaper, so start a trade (pref w/ something that can be pillaged) and trade for iron. Trade for more iron, and more. Pillage the resource or cancel the trade after 10 turns. The AI is even so dumb that won't consider to the trade unfair, since there is more than a single resource traded and will not cancel the trades.


I didn't do it for the iron solely, but below immortal occ space is almost sure unless very shafted starting and a bad leader.

This leader is bad, indeed. I avoid playing bad leaders, occ wise. There is no fun having a full trait doing nothing (like organized, cheap factory wow).

If I have not been so bored, I might have attempted conquest w/o coastal city. Some of the vassals (helped by nukes) need to take a city and then one can airlift units.

Unfortunately prince AIs are pathetic at building units and even worse at mounting any naval invasion.... or taking naked cities for that matter.

@Sleepless
Building SoL on immortal is a serious mistake. While it denies it to the AIs (and adds some GPP/research) it's quite time/hammer consuming and building research is a better idea.
Also taking big technology would disallow demanding 1 gold for 10turns peace.

 

[Sleepless]

@bestss

I normally wouldn't bother building the SoL. Very unusual for me to get Demo from anything other than the Internet as it is a dead end tech and doesn't speed up anything.

This time it was more for denial purposes, plus I had copper through trade and to be honest even building research in my capital didn't bring that many more beakers.

 

[michmbk]

Played at monarch - loss around 1970 - no screens - we're all playing basically the same single city site.

Spoiler :

No aluminum was a dagger in this one - I couldn't produce parts fast enough to keep up with Hanny. Buddhist lovefest on my continent, hindu on the other. Built all the usual wonders to take an early tech lead, and then used internet to stay up in tech late. Built 1 warrior along with my starting warrior, and upgraded them along the way. Defensive pacts with Hanny and Augustus meant no worries about war.

Used all my gold from settled priests & artists to bribe hannibal into pacifism about 10 times (for the anarchy & maintenance costs), but it still wasn't enough - he was massive. Once he finished the tech tree, I knew it was trouble. I launched 2 turns before him, but was short 3 thrusters, so I knew he was going to beat me.

Aluminum would have meant a win for sure - would have shaved a lot of turns off the stupid parts. I'm not fond of space races, so I probably should have tried to beat down my continent earlier on when I had a tech lead.

 

[Kesshi]

Played at monarch - loss around 1970 - no screens - we're all playing basically the same single city site.

Spoiler :

No aluminum was a dagger in this one

...

Aluminum would have meant a win for sure - would have shaved a lot of turns off the stupid parts. I'm not fond of space races, so I probably should have tried to beat down my continent earlier on when I had a tech lead.

michmbk,

Spoiler :

That's exactly what happened to me. I even giften Izzy Industrialization because I saw that she had two Aluminum in her boarders, hoping that I could get one off of her being Friendly with her the whole game. It didn't happen. Even though I had +27 Friendly (exaggerating) the trade was always "Aluminum 2 - Surely you must be joking."

It looks like this game was lost via the RNG. But like I said above, I should have been able to win it, I just played poorly.

 

[michmbk]

kesshi:

Spoiler :

Same thing - Izzy was as friendly as could be, but couldn't get aluminum from her or anyone else.

I was more shocked by how fast Hanny was teching - on a monarch game, I didn't expect anyone to blow through the tech tree like he did. I guess he probably did get some techs from trading with Izzy, but man, he was on future techs like I was in the 1950s - that seemed fast for monarch.

Also somewhat surprised that he got so much more land than Augustus, who usually is a pretty good landgrabber. Must have had something to do with the way they settled. Augustus settled fast toward me, which probably let Hanny grab a bunch of land out east. My culture kept revolting like 3 of Augustus's cities, which probably didn't help him much - even destroyed one of his cities.