Chinese American
Hamtastic Knight
Winning
One City Challenge is a self-imposed challenge with one major rule: you cannot control another city. 90% of the time, this is not a problem, but 10% of the time your humongous culture will flip a city. This is ok as long as you don't do anything with the city, like make buildings and units. (I use it to settler pump the main city, and even this is questionable.) (Achievements don't work the same way. You can pass the OCC achievement as long as you don't use a settler to found another city except your first.)
Thus, in spirit of OCC, the victory conditions allowed are technological, cultural, and economic. However, the way CivRev handles domination victory is allowable under one condition which I explain later.
Economic is easiest with a civ that has an economic trait, like Aztec's +50% gold production. Get to modern era and turn on gold production to 100%.
Technological is the slowest. You should win by economic victory hundreds of years before you get space flight. With only one city, you won't build your parts as fast as other civs. And the longer you wait, the closer another civ is to a cultural or economic victory.
Cultural is NOT viable even if you build all the wonders and find or steal a bunch of Great People (GP) because the last few cultural events always come short and you don't have cities to settle the extra GP in.
Domination is won by taking over all the capitals. So to win an OCC domination, you can capture only the capitals and defend them with units built from your own capital. Like I said before, these cities cannot produce anything. (Fair? Too harsh?)
City Tiles: Working It
Ideally, you want no more than 3 food squares, 2-4 hammer squares, and the rest sea tiles (at least 10).
You want to grow pretty fast, but spend no more than 3 workers to work on food-only squares. Get granary if there are plains, and aqueduct is a must because it takes longer and longer to move up in population. Hanging Gardens is really nice if you can race to it before someone else does. A pop 6 will jump to 9, and 7 to 11. Keep working plains and grassland until you get harbor. Once you have a harbor, given you should have a lot of sea tiles, the main sources of food for the rest of the game will come from the sea, and you can stop working on plains and grassland unless they have resources, and move the workers to hammer squares instead. One annoying thing is that when your city grows, the new worker by default works on a food tile like grassland or plains. To change this behavior, set the city focus to something like gold or science. Then every new worker will go the sea tile instead.
You should have a mix of forests and hills or mountains. Forests are good for early game, and hills and mountains get better after a workshop or iron mine is built. You really want to complete the wonders before other civs, especially the ones that boost trade, science, and/or gold: Colossus, Trade Fair, Shakespeare's Theatre, East India, etc. Leo's Workshop if you have the time just so other's can't get it.
After winning one game with only two forest tiles, no hills or mountains, but a lot of sea tiles, I found another strategy to build wonders and buildings very quickly that doesn't rely on hills or mountains. The key is to switch the focus on gold production once you have a market. Several things are happening here.
1. You can reach the economic milestones while waiting for enough gold to buy the wonder or building.
2. You build up a gold reserve if you need to buy emergency units.
3. Eventually you actually get the building or wonder faster than using hammers because you are generating so much gold per turn.
4. Hills and mountains require mid to late game improvements that take your focus away from the main research path. That is, you have to spend time for research and resources for the building which may not be worth the effort. Such as missing out on being the first to research other key techs.
5. Sea tiles can generate gold or research, which are more flexible than hammers. You can use gold to buy research, and sell research to make gold. In other words, lacking hammers is a fair trade-off.
6. A lot of wonders directly improve gold and research generation that you need for economic victory anyway.
Nevertheless, if you can't avoid hill and mountains tiles, you might as well get the best out of it by building the workshop or iron mine. However, try to buy those required techs from other civs instead of researching them yourself.
Culture: Useful Art
Culture is a lot more important in OCC since you aren't supposed to directly take over another city by force. Hence, you must have a stable way of generating GP.
One, culture stops other civs' borders from taking over your tiles. If that happens then you can't work the tiles and makes your city less efficient. You're already at a disadvantage with one city, so really don't want half a city.
Two, you want as many GP as you can get. They not only boost your city's output in trade and production, but they can also give you instantaneous techs and wonders. Get Ceremonial Burial and Temple ASAP. Cathedral from Religion goes without saying, but Shakespeare's Theatre gives a tremendous boost since your city should be generating a load of culture already.
When have time to spare, work on the cheaper wonders to boost your culture. Stonehenge generates a lot of culture over time and helps your temples as well, which goes double for Aztecs. Of course the wonders' effects still apply even if you don't care for them. For instance, Great Wall is not necessary, but nice to have to keep other civs from moving around the tiles you work on.
I want to emphasize here that the first building you should build is the Temple, which means beelining to Pottery and CB as your first two techs. Trust me, you will have an easier time winning OCC in the long run.
Diplomacy: Hold or Fold
AI is predictable and easy to exploit. They tend to bully you with demands, but back off when you give them what they want. Let them declare war and send units outside your city. If you don't think your defenders can survive their onslaught, just give in to their demands and they will immediately disappear from inside your cultural borders. By going back and forth like this, you can survive with very few defenders. It also takes time for attackers to arrive, so you aren't at risk until they actually get close to your city. Also, if they're far away, you can pretty much ignore them.
Remember everything is about production towards buildings and wonders. Less units built means more turns working on wonders. Of course when you are about to win with World Bank or Spaceship, you will need more stronger defenders because they will not accept peace by then.
Summary
Key techs and related buildings, wonders, and first to research bonuses
Temple (Ceremonial Burial)
Library (Alphabet)
Courthouse (Literacy)
Market (Currency)
Harbor (Navigation)
Bank (Banking)
Factory (Industrialization)
Colossus (optional) (Bronze Working)
East India Company (Navigation)
Trade Fair of Troyes (Currency)
Shakespeare's Theatre (optional) (Literacy)
Internet (optional) (Networking)
Free Market (Currency, gotten with research, not by 250 gold milestone, which you should save to get Banking instead)
+5 Gold every city (Industrialization and Corporation)
Free Great Person (Monarchy and Invention, which obsoletes Colossus if you have it)
Recommended Research and Build Path
If Fish tile next to city tile, first get Bronze Working, then Pottery and Ceremonial Burial. Otherwise, Pottery, Ceremonial Burial, then Bronze Working. Start building Temple immediately. Archers if necessary. Colossus if you are Roman or have Great Builder.
Focus on food and trade to get Alphabet, Code of Laws, Currency to try to get the free Market. Build Library after Currency is done. Trade Fair if you have Great Builder.
Focus on research and get Literacy, Democracy, Navigation. Switch to Democracy government and focus on gold primary and hammers secondary. Build up gold to 250 to get Banking. Then buy Market if don't have it, Bank, Courthouse, Harbor, and East India.
Next you focus on research and aim for Industrialization and Corporation. Until then, get Monarchy, Invention, Steam Power, University, and Gunpowder until Indust or Corp shows up.
After you have both Indust and Corp, you can go for the 20,000 gold. Focus on gold and buy Trade Fair if you don't have it by now. Buy a Rifleman army. Buy a Wall, then leave your build queue empty until World Bank is available.
Note that if you want or need Modern era civ bonus (eg Aztec or American), you need to get 24 techs. Many techs should backfill by now if you max out the beakers and some techs take only two turns to complete. You shouldn't need to many left since the first 5 columns in the tech tree comprise 23. Plus you have three more in Gunpowder, Industrialization and Corporation.
Best Civ for OCC
I nominate Aztecs as best civ for OCC. Aztecs get four out of five traits that greatly benefit an OCC. Other civs have two or three good traits at best and even then not very strong. Nevertheless, I also recommend Romans and Japanese.
Ranking
Civs in OCC rating out of 5:
Aztec 5 (see above)
Rome 5 (see second post)
Japan 5 (see third post)
Greece 4 (see third post)
Spain 4 (see third post)
Zulu 3 (see third post)
America 3
Egypt 2
China 2
India 2
Arabia 2
France 2
Russian 1
English 1
Germany 1
Mongolia N/A
One City Challenge is a self-imposed challenge with one major rule: you cannot control another city. 90% of the time, this is not a problem, but 10% of the time your humongous culture will flip a city. This is ok as long as you don't do anything with the city, like make buildings and units. (I use it to settler pump the main city, and even this is questionable.) (Achievements don't work the same way. You can pass the OCC achievement as long as you don't use a settler to found another city except your first.)
Thus, in spirit of OCC, the victory conditions allowed are technological, cultural, and economic. However, the way CivRev handles domination victory is allowable under one condition which I explain later.
Economic is easiest with a civ that has an economic trait, like Aztec's +50% gold production. Get to modern era and turn on gold production to 100%.
Technological is the slowest. You should win by economic victory hundreds of years before you get space flight. With only one city, you won't build your parts as fast as other civs. And the longer you wait, the closer another civ is to a cultural or economic victory.
Cultural is NOT viable even if you build all the wonders and find or steal a bunch of Great People (GP) because the last few cultural events always come short and you don't have cities to settle the extra GP in.
Domination is won by taking over all the capitals. So to win an OCC domination, you can capture only the capitals and defend them with units built from your own capital. Like I said before, these cities cannot produce anything. (Fair? Too harsh?)
City Tiles: Working It
Ideally, you want no more than 3 food squares, 2-4 hammer squares, and the rest sea tiles (at least 10).
You want to grow pretty fast, but spend no more than 3 workers to work on food-only squares. Get granary if there are plains, and aqueduct is a must because it takes longer and longer to move up in population. Hanging Gardens is really nice if you can race to it before someone else does. A pop 6 will jump to 9, and 7 to 11. Keep working plains and grassland until you get harbor. Once you have a harbor, given you should have a lot of sea tiles, the main sources of food for the rest of the game will come from the sea, and you can stop working on plains and grassland unless they have resources, and move the workers to hammer squares instead. One annoying thing is that when your city grows, the new worker by default works on a food tile like grassland or plains. To change this behavior, set the city focus to something like gold or science. Then every new worker will go the sea tile instead.
You should have a mix of forests and hills or mountains. Forests are good for early game, and hills and mountains get better after a workshop or iron mine is built. You really want to complete the wonders before other civs, especially the ones that boost trade, science, and/or gold: Colossus, Trade Fair, Shakespeare's Theatre, East India, etc. Leo's Workshop if you have the time just so other's can't get it.
After winning one game with only two forest tiles, no hills or mountains, but a lot of sea tiles, I found another strategy to build wonders and buildings very quickly that doesn't rely on hills or mountains. The key is to switch the focus on gold production once you have a market. Several things are happening here.
1. You can reach the economic milestones while waiting for enough gold to buy the wonder or building.
2. You build up a gold reserve if you need to buy emergency units.
3. Eventually you actually get the building or wonder faster than using hammers because you are generating so much gold per turn.
4. Hills and mountains require mid to late game improvements that take your focus away from the main research path. That is, you have to spend time for research and resources for the building which may not be worth the effort. Such as missing out on being the first to research other key techs.
5. Sea tiles can generate gold or research, which are more flexible than hammers. You can use gold to buy research, and sell research to make gold. In other words, lacking hammers is a fair trade-off.
6. A lot of wonders directly improve gold and research generation that you need for economic victory anyway.
Nevertheless, if you can't avoid hill and mountains tiles, you might as well get the best out of it by building the workshop or iron mine. However, try to buy those required techs from other civs instead of researching them yourself.
Culture: Useful Art
Culture is a lot more important in OCC since you aren't supposed to directly take over another city by force. Hence, you must have a stable way of generating GP.
One, culture stops other civs' borders from taking over your tiles. If that happens then you can't work the tiles and makes your city less efficient. You're already at a disadvantage with one city, so really don't want half a city.
Two, you want as many GP as you can get. They not only boost your city's output in trade and production, but they can also give you instantaneous techs and wonders. Get Ceremonial Burial and Temple ASAP. Cathedral from Religion goes without saying, but Shakespeare's Theatre gives a tremendous boost since your city should be generating a load of culture already.
When have time to spare, work on the cheaper wonders to boost your culture. Stonehenge generates a lot of culture over time and helps your temples as well, which goes double for Aztecs. Of course the wonders' effects still apply even if you don't care for them. For instance, Great Wall is not necessary, but nice to have to keep other civs from moving around the tiles you work on.
I want to emphasize here that the first building you should build is the Temple, which means beelining to Pottery and CB as your first two techs. Trust me, you will have an easier time winning OCC in the long run.
Diplomacy: Hold or Fold
AI is predictable and easy to exploit. They tend to bully you with demands, but back off when you give them what they want. Let them declare war and send units outside your city. If you don't think your defenders can survive their onslaught, just give in to their demands and they will immediately disappear from inside your cultural borders. By going back and forth like this, you can survive with very few defenders. It also takes time for attackers to arrive, so you aren't at risk until they actually get close to your city. Also, if they're far away, you can pretty much ignore them.
Remember everything is about production towards buildings and wonders. Less units built means more turns working on wonders. Of course when you are about to win with World Bank or Spaceship, you will need more stronger defenders because they will not accept peace by then.
Summary
Key techs and related buildings, wonders, and first to research bonuses
Temple (Ceremonial Burial)
Library (Alphabet)
Courthouse (Literacy)
Market (Currency)
Harbor (Navigation)
Bank (Banking)
Factory (Industrialization)
Colossus (optional) (Bronze Working)
East India Company (Navigation)
Trade Fair of Troyes (Currency)
Shakespeare's Theatre (optional) (Literacy)
Internet (optional) (Networking)
Free Market (Currency, gotten with research, not by 250 gold milestone, which you should save to get Banking instead)
+5 Gold every city (Industrialization and Corporation)
Free Great Person (Monarchy and Invention, which obsoletes Colossus if you have it)
Recommended Research and Build Path
If Fish tile next to city tile, first get Bronze Working, then Pottery and Ceremonial Burial. Otherwise, Pottery, Ceremonial Burial, then Bronze Working. Start building Temple immediately. Archers if necessary. Colossus if you are Roman or have Great Builder.
Focus on food and trade to get Alphabet, Code of Laws, Currency to try to get the free Market. Build Library after Currency is done. Trade Fair if you have Great Builder.
Focus on research and get Literacy, Democracy, Navigation. Switch to Democracy government and focus on gold primary and hammers secondary. Build up gold to 250 to get Banking. Then buy Market if don't have it, Bank, Courthouse, Harbor, and East India.
Next you focus on research and aim for Industrialization and Corporation. Until then, get Monarchy, Invention, Steam Power, University, and Gunpowder until Indust or Corp shows up.
After you have both Indust and Corp, you can go for the 20,000 gold. Focus on gold and buy Trade Fair if you don't have it by now. Buy a Rifleman army. Buy a Wall, then leave your build queue empty until World Bank is available.
Note that if you want or need Modern era civ bonus (eg Aztec or American), you need to get 24 techs. Many techs should backfill by now if you max out the beakers and some techs take only two turns to complete. You shouldn't need to many left since the first 5 columns in the tech tree comprise 23. Plus you have three more in Gunpowder, Industrialization and Corporation.
Best Civ for OCC
I nominate Aztecs as best civ for OCC. Aztecs get four out of five traits that greatly benefit an OCC. Other civs have two or three good traits at best and even then not very strong. Nevertheless, I also recommend Romans and Japanese.
Use the 25 gold to rush one or two Warriors or a galley. Get to the barbarian villages and artifacts before the competition.
Arguably the best defensive ability for your units and it cannot be copied by other civs. For instance, Russian's "defensive units receive the Loyalty upgrade", but your units get loyalty eventually since they keep winning. So that Russian trait is a waste. Your units never die, so they don't need to be replaced. (The AI is really bad at offense.) At the minimum, you need one army of Archer to begin with, then Pikemen and Rifleman when you have the right techs. Modern Infantry if you haven't won by then. Galleons and Cruisers to defend your sea tiles if they send a lot of ships. That's about it: one army of each defensive type for the whole game (ok, maybe two ships to form a blockade). Think about how few hammers are spent on units. Which means more time can be spent on producing buildings and wonders.
Might not seem like much, but this trait enables a cultural and scientific boost early in the game. You want culture early so you can get GP to settle in your city. Extra science means you can work more tiles for hammers and still be able to keep up in techs. Most importantly, more hammers mean more wonders.
The only useless trait for OCC. If you flip a city, use that city to produce settlers for pumping your capital. Building a road between the cities lets the settlers get there faster and more safely. (This is controversial because you're not supposed to build anything in other cities. However, this doesn't come up often and makes little difference.)
The perfect end game trait. One, more gold to rush pretty much anything you need so you can win sooner. Two, makes the economic victory achievable within a short period. You should have built the necessary wonders like Trade Fair and East India. Turn your city completely into gold production mode and you can easily get 1400 to 2400 gold per turn. You should have some gold already in your treasury; if not, you can get from 0 to 20k in 14 turns. Meanwhile, you can start storing hammers in another wonder, then switch to World Bank when you get the final economic milestone.
Ranking
Civs in OCC rating out of 5:
Aztec 5 (see above)
Rome 5 (see second post)
Japan 5 (see third post)
Greece 4 (see third post)
Spain 4 (see third post)
Zulu 3 (see third post)
America 3
Egypt 2
China 2
India 2
Arabia 2
France 2
Russian 1
English 1
Germany 1
Mongolia N/A
