One city challenge strats needed

[Killroyan]

I saw an example of the one city challenge and thought lets try it. Since I am playing monarch now I decided I could do it also on monarch. Bad mistake. Even with 10 units in my city to defend I got declared war on by no less then 4, read them, 4 AI advisaries in the same turn. I was laughing out loud since that never happened. Needless to say it took about 5 turns that my whole city was obliterated with some very bad RNG stuff like an CI Axeman attacking my CG2 archer with walls and 40% cultural defense and loosing twice in a row

So I restarted as Ghandi on Prince level. Thought fast workers, spiritual for some shrines and industrious for the wonders to build lots of them. Started on an island which was nice and had stone next to me. Concentrated on some stuff like stonehenge, pyramids, oracle, Colussus, GL and got them all. Wanted to achieve a cultural victory and got to legendary status somewhere around 1750. Not bad at all I thought. But apparantly a cultural victory is not possible with just 1 city. So I went into the space race and lost with 1 turn left. I was all like ROFLMAOWTFBBQ. Great game.

Now to the question what are the best tactics for the different kind of victories? Cultural is a no go if you only want to have 1 city (I do take the 1 city challenge very litteral so only 1 city allowed). Diplomacy will be hard with your small empire. What are your experiences with this setting. I think it is a lot of fun and I could have gotten a space victory with the proper beelining and not researching everything and trading away key techs to the leader (everything to keep him happy). Enlighten me guys.

 

[Jet]

I think diplo is possible if you hog religions and/or spam missionaries. Haven't done it myself. At high levels, probably no religion to keep from getting squashed, unless you're skillfully being the religious leader, at least among your neighbors. A month or two ago in this forum there was a guide for OCC conquest deity with a permanent alliance. Also recently in this forum there was a guide for OCC space race playtested I think on Emperor. ("This forum" = either this one or the articles subforum.)

 

[tuckerthecat]

I hate space race & all other victory conditions besides diplomacy arent really possible in OOC. So I usually turn on permanent alliances & aim for either diplomatic victory or a permanent alliance fueled domination victory. Permanent alliances can bite you in the ass though, my last game I was grooming Mansu for a PA & even though I was +20 or so with him PA was redded out, then he made a PA with Asoka

I play emporer level & find I can always have the tech lead till just after I discover liberalism. Once the AI's reach liberalism they will inevitably zoom past you in tech, so unless you can make a PA your only option to win is diplomacy. I would be very suprised if anyone could win any other way on a large map.

My favorite civ for OOC is Ramsese ( spi, ind ), build a worker, stonehendge, ( assign 2 priests as specialists, stonehenge counts as Egypts UB ), build oracle, the oracle should be done just as your 1st prophet is due, burn the prophet on code of laws, use oracle for civil service. Just before the prophet is due start researching masonry so you can start the pyramids as soon possible. On emp level I can reliably do a CS slingshot & still get the pyramids 95% of the time & with that start you will have the tech lead for a looooooong time. All the rest of your great people should be merged into the city as superspecialist ( except for 1 scientists for an academy ) dont waste engineers to rush building or prophets for the religious holy buildings etc.

 

[ori]

This is a really good guide - if you do accept the notion of a permanent alliance. I just used some of it to pull a diplo win for the current HOF Gauntlet (small Highlands map with all 7 agressive civs as your competitors) - but you sure are on the brink of extinction all of the time - though in the end it was more cultural pressure...

You should keep in mind though, that your science output in OCC does not change with map size, but beaker requirements for each tech are scaled:

WORLDSIZE_DUEL 100%
WORLDSIZE_TINY 110%
WORLDSIZE_SMALL 120%
WORLDSIZE_STANDARD 130%
WORLDSIZE_LARGE 140%
WORLDSIZE_HUGE 150%

so combined with increased trading between AIs on larger maps it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up on science...

 

[Welnic]

... Cultural is a no go if you only want to have 1 city (I do take the 1 city challenge very litteral so only 1 city allowed). Diplomacy will be hard with your small empire. What are your experiences with this setting. I think it is a lot of fun and I could have gotten a space victory with the proper beelining and not researching everything and trading away key techs to the leader (everything to keep him happy). Enlighten me guys.

Where you say that you take the challenge literally, do mean that you just play a normal game and just have the one city? If you play a custom game there is a checkbox for OCC, and it enforces it. You can't make settlers and any cities you capture are automatically razed. The bonus is that you get to make as many national wonders in your city as you want. The bad part is that the requirements for cathedrals is not changed, so you can't make any of those.

I played one game on Noble, which is where I normally play, as Ghandi on a Pangea map. I managed to found all 7 religions, which was pretty fun. But I didn't realize that there were variations of the Pangea map that allowed islands, so there are cities on the islands that I can't get to since I am not on the coast. I couldn't quite get a diplomatic victory, I can't get all of the cities for conquest since I can't get to the islands. If I remember correctly I didn't think I had enough time for a space victory. So I am just going to wipe out everyone I can get to and go for a time victory. Which is probably why I never finished that game.

 

[Dnomal]

I've only tried a One-City Challenge before, playing as Bismark i was doing pretty well. Berlin was racking in a huge profit, i was ahead in tech, (mixture of luck and good relations), and my borders were far out from the city.

I even managed to fight two successfull wars against my neighbours, then they teamed up, and in 1789 the German empire, which had about half of the worlds wonders caesed to exist. I'm still very annoyed about it. If there was a Charismatic/Industrious leader I'd play with him/her.

Still wanna give one city challenge another go though. Also why couldnt they change the conditions of a one city challenge to having one city with 150,000 culture, instead of 3 with 50,000 , sure it'f be impossible but nice to have the option.

 

[xifeng]

There are all kinds of possibilities in an OCC game except for the culture victory. I have seen OCC space victory and OCC domination victory on deity level.

 

[Cort Haus]

Uberfish has posted a very effective OCC spaceship strat on the articles forum.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=185305

 

[Killroyan]

Thx for the info guys. Tried some more OCC for which I think Ghandi is just perfect. The bad thing is however that you are so dependent on certain resources. I didn't get copper/iron/horses/aluminium/uranium/oil in my last game. Needless to say it was game over soon enough although I obliterated two civs without problems (beating up longbows with infantry is silly). I forgot however to change the map size so it would take way too long to dominate all.

And btw yes you can't build settlers, you autoraze all cities (even the flipping ones of culture) that is part of the fun. A normal OCC can be finished in less then 4 hours which makes it fun.