One City Challenge

I'd appreciate any tips or advice out there for a one-city challenge. I've tried a couple games now on Noble, as Elizabeth (Phil + Financial). I've yet to win a game, however, so I was hoping you bright folks could provide me with some pointers.

My strategy has been something like this: I found a starting city site that was next to a river, with many forests and flood plains. As soon as I could, I built up cottages on all the flood plains and some of the grasslands, with only one or two farms. I left most forests near my city up, chopping forests further away for the +shield bonus. I added watermills or lumbermills to the forest areas later on.

Techs: research masonry, then polytheism (monotheism if I miss Hindu), then bronzeworking. After that, research necessary worker techs (pottery and so forth) then try to grab other religion-starting techs.

I sent my starting warrior out to scout out the immediate surroundings, then send him back to fortify London. The AI didn't seem to get aggressive with my small civ until late in the game (1700s to 1800s), so I figured I could afford to be soft on defense for a while.

Build order: worker, then immediately Pyramids, then granary. After that, various tech, defense, and health boosters as needed.

With the Pyramids I calculated that I'd be able to keep myself flush with Great Engineers. As well, switching to Universal Suffrage seemed like a fairly smart choice early on, when I had lots of towns to pull hammers from. I deliberately avoided wonders or specialists that would dilute my chances of a Great Engineer. I used some of the GEs to build the Hanging Gardens and Pentagon, later on, to keep my GE chances up. I managed to get about eight to ten GEs and a smattering of other Great People throughout the game.

I saved at least two GEs for the United Nations, figuring that was my only realistic shot at victory. When the end came, however, I wasn't able to pull off a diplomatic victory in either game. Is any other victory even feasible? Perhaps I just need tips on a diplomatic win.

Thoughts? Comments? Strategies?

 

The bigger your population the easier it is to win with a diplomatic victory. Now seeing that you only have one city I highly doubt that it is possible to achieve a diplomatic victory.

 

Trying to predict which way a civ will vote in UN elections is very tough. In one of my games, I had a civ. vote for me to by Secretary General, but not for the win. In the save game, a separate civ. did not vote form me to be Sec. Gen., but they did vote for me to win. It is very hard to be friends to one large civ. without pissing off the next largest civ.

I don't know, but maybe the best possible chance of winning is becoming a research power house and then shoot from Space Race win.
Build scouts and try to get lots of goody huts.
Contact all civs ASAP...start tech trading early.
Do everything you can to increase your science output. (great leaders,wonders,buidings, etc.)
Do not research deadend techs.
Of course maintain good relations with all the large, advanced civs.
Be very active in tech. trading. Sell everything, for any new tech, which you can resell to the world for more techs.

With a good tech lead in the modern era, you can get a head start on the spaceship. Use spies to sabatoge space rivals. Starting a war between your rivals would be optimum.

Well, good luck...I hope this helps.

 

It may sound strange, but a conquest victory is probably easiest on one city challenge. The really nice thing is that you are no longer limited to two national wonders. As you should realise by now, Civil Service is king in OCC. So is education. The reasons, civil service increase the commerce and production of your entire empire by 50% thanks to beaureaucracy. So I try to go straight for Code of Laws and Oracle Civil Service. Education is massive. You can build Oxford University as soon as you build your single university and the cdombo gives you +125% science in your whole empire. Representation is better than universal suffrage generally until you actually want to build stuff. Once I get the kremlin I go on a buying spree and dominate the late wonder scene. With all the national wonders and such you can create 1 turn military units of your choice starting at l4 even without help of civics. My gameplan which worked very well on noble OCC and looks to be doing ok on monarch OCC is to get your tech lead and just start churning out the units. City Raider 3 Tanks/Modern Armors every single turn can really roll over empires. (Obviously you need some Artillery as well)

 

One thing I noticed when I tried OCC is that the amount of national wonders you can build in your one city is NOT limited to two. And you can even build some national wonders that require a certain amount of buildings in normal games (e.g. three temples for the globe theatre(?)).

Edit: Oops... only glanced through the posts here, sorry about the repetition.

 

Play duel map with 18 civs so no one else can get more than one city either and you get all the national wonders

Cultural flips in that kind of game tend to happen to me anyway only towards the end of 1800's so it's not a big deal missing those either...

Do you get cathedrals also btw? What happens if a rival city flips to your culture?

 

Since you can only have one city, all cities that flips are razed.

I guess OCC will became much easier to win when the new patch solves the cultural win

 

with OCC the easisest by far is cultural victory.
on harder levels it is best to start with lots of opponents on smaller maps to compensate for the dificulty handycap

 

I was finally able to muster a victory last night, with the space race: tiny map, panagea, 3 opponents.

 

I just now finished an OCC game, Standard map, Monarch difficulty with a Space Race victory. It was darn close though, Mansu Masa almost beat me and since he was on a different continent and my city wasn't coastal, there was nothing I could do to stop him.

Here's my strategy:

First, pick a Philosophical civ. This is not optional for this strategy, it's a must. The second trait I'd like is Industrial, but that's not possible, so I went for Saladin and Spiritual. Most traits gets better in larger empires (Expansive, Financial, Organized, Creative) and I chose not to go with Aggressive because I didn't want a Conquest victory. Spiritual helps your civ just as much regardless of the size of your empire.

Second, you need a river and lots of food. A few hills are necessary, but I beat the game with only two, one of which I had a Winery on.

As for starting techs, you will need Masonry for Pyramids. It's absolutely essential for the strategy. If you're Saladin, going for Polytheism-> Masonry -> Monotheism is an option to grab two early religions and get Organized Religion fast. Getting worker techs is the second option. Bronze Working is necessary to get early for Slavery and chopchop (but only chop forests on grassland next to river, you'll want to save the rest for health purposes). Pottery for Granary and Priesthood for Temple are two other good techs. You'll want to up a granary and a temple or two while producing the Pyramids. Archery to defend your city is usually necessary as well. Once you have the essential techs, head straight for Civil Service. Once you get Code of Laws, switch to Caste System and put up some scientists. This should really speed up your research (if you've whipped up a library before this you should of course get some scientists before this). Next step is Drama for Globe Theatre and then Literature for Great Library and National Epic. Try and avoid any wonders producing Artists, they're useless in this strategy.

The improvements you want is farms, farms and a few more farms. Trade away all your resources for health resources. Mine the hills and work them whenever you need production, when you don't you want them as scientists instead, or engineers. You should soon start raking in Great People.

So, what do you do with all those Great People? Simple, Super Specialists. A Scientist gives you 1 H/6B, an engineer 3H/3B, a merchant 1F/5G, a priest 2H/5G and an artist gives a little gold and a lot of culture (who cares?). Add the +3 beakers you get from Representation (the reason you need Pyramids) and it won't take long until your city is a production and science behemoth.

Good luck.

 

Congradulations...I hope some of the tips helped.

You inspired me to try my own OCC.

 

Hey guys,
I've just written a beginner's guide to the One City challenge. Let me know if you find it useful, and I hope it encourages you all to try it.

Forum Link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3389467#post3389467

 

I just played a one city challenge. You get globe theater, oxford university and all national wonders but not cathedrals

How are you supposed to win cultural victory anyway?

 

You can't. Cultural and Domination is impossible in OCC.

 

I've won my one city challenges via space race. Small map w/ the normal # of civs (6 or 7?). I'm sure it gets harder as you go up map size to standard, large, huge, etc. I've managed to beat up to Prince level on the small size map, but didn't win in my Monarch game (lost by like 2 parts).

But, yeah, basically you just crank out great people and add them to your city as super specialists - specifically, you want as many engineers and scientists as possible. Great artists are useless.

Also, building cottages is a waste on the one city challenge. You want as many farms as possible, my cities get up to around 30 people (w/ tons of scientists). A few hills are useful but you don't want a whole hell of a lot, after a while most of your production will come from the super specialists. You won't need the happiness resources after you build the Globe Theater either, so then you can just trade those all away for the +health resources.

ed:

http://members.cox.net/darkhosis/civ.JPG

There's a typical city & a pretty good starting spot with flood plains and such. Shoulda changed my mines to windmills tho, that was one of my early one city challenge games (noble level).. only SS I have though. Yay for the rifleman.

 

A Rifleman? How the heck did the other civs keep themselves from crushing you?

That's one purdy city though. Much nicer than mine. I disagree on the windmills though, mines are much better. That way you can use them as specialists when you don't need production, if you use windmills they would starve if they do that and your production would be much less when you really need it. Besides, mines can discover resources, which shouldn't be sneezed at.

 

I see your point concerning farms. I was just playing a OCC last night, and I had a few cottages early on, and they eventually became towns. I only had 1 scientist, and damn, I guess I'm not generating 192 GPP like you are... I see how farms are the way to go.

I'm going for diplo win, and I'm not sure it's gonna work. The big powers aren't voting for me, and I'm trying to knock down #2 with spies so that are no longer running (more civ's don't like #3). I'm very unsure whether I can win at all in this game, since I was so committed to diplo, that anything else is a big stretch.

Getting like 3 great artists didn't help either...

 

stacks of siege equipment works wonders when ur under attack.
i basically made cannons in one turn and repelled a stack of 12 units which got pretty hilarious since Genghis khan stuck to plundering with half dead units in the wilderness of my territory ^^

 

Mistake not to repeat when playing OCC: It's generally not a good idea to start clearing out bigger rivals because this only releases land area for your other rivals to grow stronger on. Found this out on duel map 18 civs after cleaning out all citites under my cultural influence and then wondering what to do with all my military

 

Haha, I think I might have had it on 'Always Peace', that was either my first or second OCC try and I was wussin' out a bit.

I did another one just now in about 2 hrs on the Prince level and ended with the Space Race victory in 1977 (small map)... it was actually some bit easier since I was able to bribe the AIs with all that gold to go to war against each other over and over. Only one other civ even had Apollo built and had only finished like three pieces of it.

And the city:

http://members.cox.net/darkhosis/civ2.JPG

Basically the same as the other city, the production/great people isn't as good because an AI built United Nations and I got Free Religion (instead of pacifism) and Free Speech (instead of bureaucracy) foisted on me - plus tons of great artists, argh..

The trick is just to restart the game several times until you get at least 4-5 flood plains squares or some combination of flood plains & wheat/rice/fish, etc. With the 4+ food squares, you can really crank out the great ppl w/ all those specialists.

Time to try Monarch again maybe I guess.