One City Challenge

[NotReady4Purple]

Does anyone have any tips on how to win a One City Game? I tried several recently and even at low difficulty levels I don't seem able to win.

I assume that the only victory possible is a Diplomatic Victory - but with just one city, I didn't have enough votes to win - even giving tech's away to everyone - they still voted for the #1 in points (or abstained.)

 

[T_Khan]

In terms of other possible victories: conquest is possible (albeit very difficult) if you raze every other city; space race is also possible, especially on low difficulty levels if you can get way ahead in tech.

Otherwise, obviously beauracracy (sp?) is key. I don't know what else though.

 

[sooooo]

I assume that the only victory possible is a Diplomatic Victory - but with just one city, I didn't have enough votes to win - even giving tech's away to everyone - they still voted for the #1 in points (or abstained.)

Diplomatic OCC victory is very hard. Space race is the easiest way to win. There are many guides in the strategy articles section. Some are good, some are bad. I reccommend this one,

 

[MrCynical]

Space Race is the easiest victory. Diplomatic isn't bad either. Conquest can be done, particularly on the lower levels. Time is unlikely to be a win due to your small population and land area, and in any case I don't consider it a victory. Owing to the defining restriction of an OCC, it is impossible to win a cultural or domination victory unless permanent alliances are enabled (which kind of destroys the point of an OCC).

 

[Welnic]

I've won a couple of OCC games playing on noble, the same level I normally play at. I've won diplomatic and time victories, and missed a space race by 3 turns, I finished in 2053. The link above by soooo is an excellent article. I normally play using random leaders but for OCC I actually pick a leader since some traits are worthless for it. The traits that are useful are Industrious, Philosophical, Expansive, and Spiritual.

Picking a map is also more crucial than a normal game. I play on Pangea with the shoreline set to solid. That way you can get to everybody without having to use ships. One of the things I really like about OCC is that you end up with this huge area around your city where your culture has crushed everybody else, and if you set up your city on the coast then a lot of that area is over the ocean, which ruins the affect for me. So I can't make ships to destroy cities that I can't walk to. The time victory I won I was going for conquest but there were cities I couldn't reach so I had to be content to wipe the whole continent clean and just wait it out. Not that fun. That is why I set the shoreline to solid.

The size of the map matters more than a normal game also. Since you are not going to be expanding having more room to expand isn't going to help you any. Research speeds are increased as map sizes get larger, so that also is not in your favor. So I would go with a standard or small map and add a couple of extra AIs into the mix. Giving them less room evens things up.

Winning diplomatically in OCC is pretty much the same as in a normal game, except that you have practically no votes of your own.

 

[Zaimejs]

How many troops do you have to have so you won't appear vulnerable?

 

[NotReady4Purple]

Thanks everyone. I will study that guide and try again. Good to know others have won on Diplomatic.

As for troops - I had plenty - and I kept them up-to-date. (I was never attacked so it must've worked.) All of the AI were "Pleased" (even Montezuma!) - but they still wouldn't all vote for me. I was too small and enough of them voted with the leader to deny me a win. I'd gone with Saladin once - which was a good choice and Peter -which was not. I'll look into the map type impact.

 

[petey]

I find that Space is the easiest on OCC and have done it up to Monarch level, though keep getting trounced on Emperor.

If you want to go Diplomatic, it's not enough to have everyone pleased at you. I think the AI has to be Friendly in order to give you the vote, unless they're really mad at your opponent. Pick your friends early and trade and war with them throughout the game. Never accept a trade or anything from anyone without checking your friends' relations with them first. One or two negative modifiers for trading with their enemy could be the difference between a vote and an abstention.

For leaders, I like using Bismark. He's Expansive, so you get the health bonus, which is key (happiness is irrelevant once you build globe Theatre). Also, he's Industrious, so you can grab the early Wonders. Pyramids is almost essential, since it lets you run Representation from early on and gets you the GE points. Settle all the leaders that you get into the city. You're going to need the production bonuses once the Space Race begins.

 

[lateralis]

i've played a TON of OCC's lately and I can now win about 50% of monarch games I play. my most recent strategy has been to play with isabella and go for a hydra diplomacy win.

basically, I found all 3 of the early religions and forgo military while spamming out missionaries of the "one true faith" hoping to bring the whole world in line with my way of thinking

this worked great on prince but monarch has been a little tougher. for this to be a really good strat, I find you need stonehenge to get a GP to build the shrine for your chosen religion first, before going for the pyramids (ie, build stonehenge first, you don't neccessarily need to have the SHRINE built first). you also have to be careful to have enough warriors to use as fodder for barbs since this research path means no metals or archers for a bit. the upside of having the shrine means you will NEVER touch your research slider EVER.

as difficult as keeping decent relations can be in an OCC game, even if diplo is not the victory you want, you need to be able to sow the seeds of war between the ai given your relative smallness. if you get attacked by ANYONE, you should have at least one other ai in your pocket to throw at them.

remember that military cuts both ways for you. you need enough to defend your territory but your territory is small so you'll need less than you would to protect a larger empire. I always try to have at least 4 or 5 of the most current defender on hand and I slowly upgrade the older guys as I can. you;ll also find that if you spam all the buildings you can, you'll eventually get to the point where all you can build is units (you'll have every useful building done).

also remember to avoid building ANYTHING that is not a direct help. you do NOT need a courthouse or (with the exception of stonehenge as mentioned above) any wonder that gives a "per city" bonus.

I find the OCC to be one the most fun variations of civ. enjoy it!

 

[oyzar]

This kind of mode teached me how good specialist economy is. I played as peter and it was great. I refused to take religions whole game(which was prolly a mistake as then you cant use pacifism) The starting spot was pretty amazing(i think) with 2 silk spice cow 3 floodplains and iron all within the big fat cross and gold right out of it. I also got deer uran coal copper and towards the end corn within my area. I just build pyramids early and kept on setteling specialist making me techleader pretty wuick after i found alphabet. It seems to me as this is basically about getting as many GPPs as you can. I did eventually get an awfull lot of merchants and artists which is a bit useless as yyou dont have expences. My city got up to 31. I almost never built troops(kept like 1-4 in the city until i got gunpoweder..) until i had to as in a pinch you can allways just slavery spam them out + you have inf gold to upgrade everything. I won space race quite easy. To bad you cant buy space parts as I had 8K cash when it ended. I did get decleared upon a couple of times but mostly they had inferious units so it was just free exp for me... Not choping forest in fat cross was pretty crucial. You just cant get enough health bonus. The techtree looks real strange as alot of the time you just ladder for whatever the next sci pump/health thing is. Medecine with +9 health did help alot as it ment i could afford to have ironworks and factory in my city. It was fun