The Beginner’s Guide to the One City Challenge (OCC)

[Rolypoly]

I just tried this strategy, pretty much treating the guide as scripture . Used the supplied saved game. It is the first time i've even dared look at deity, usually having a hard time actually winning on anything over noble (i know, the shame!).

I got wiped out at one point where i was at war with 4 ppl and then 3 more entered the fray in a single turn (Yikes!) but reloaded that and pretty much just sucked up to the AI till they all went away.

When i'd FINALLY managed to research communism it turns out japan was the friendliest civ with me. They were all plus (probably about 15+ im not sure exactly) with no negatives against me. They formed a defensive pact with me right away but the world map option was red... this concerned me but i kept going. After 20ish turns i looked at Japan and PA was still redded out but it was 'we just dont like you enough', same deal for the World Map!

The only snag (ie. where i didnt follow the guide) is that Japan has a neighbouring border with me... i figured this wouldnt be a real problem since they liked me so much. Does a neighbouring border mean the civ wont form a PA with you?

Apart from that, I quite enjoyed this game first time i've had a unit with over 60xp!

 

[Mr. Do]

OCC is great fun, it's revitalised the game for me!

Has anyone managed to get a ranking better than Ethelred the Unready so far?

 

[TNTTony]

Just wanted to bump this thread because OCC is so much fun. It is challenging and with just one city...it is less complex. I'm just about to finish my first OCC game...aiming for conquest.

Got some comments:

1. The problem with conquest victories in OCC is that whenever I raze a city (since its automatic) the other AI comes in a take over that space. What this effectively means is that by eliminating an enemies city you are making another AI stronger. So in my opinion...it is better to start war on an AI that is (relatively) stronger than you. This way...the smaller AI will get that space.

2. Health is so important as the OP said. Unhappiness can be easily managed with hereditary rule and then globe theatre. Health is the key!

3. Build up your military when you can. Germany declared war on me and sent over quite a few troops. Luckily I had some good number of defensive troops.

4. I use Great Artist to get my culture to 75000. After that all my GPs are used as super specialist...except for Engineer. I usually keep one or two of these in my cities for when a wonder needs to be built.

5. Pillage pillage pillage. If you are going to war...you should try and pillage as much as you can. If you don't, another AI will take over the space and get some good bonuses. Plus pillaging increases your gold reserve by quite a bit.

OCC is fantastic. Its not as hard as you think and its not as easy as you think.

OCC definitely helps you in building your city specialisation skill.

 

[Veritass]

I was having a good time on my first OCC game. I ended up the Russians on an 18-player small map, so we are nice and crowded. I have been keeping enough people happy and have been researching deep, so I have many friends and a few enemies, and I have been able to get the various civs to eliminate two of the 18 so far.

I am about 12th of the 16 remaining civs in score, and I have about half the score of the highest civ. I was biding my time until I could bee-line and get cossacks, and then unleash the proud fury that is Russia. It was only then that I found out the bad news:

There are NO horses on this planet!

I wasn't worried about not seeing any horses in my space. I figured I would trade for them eventually when it was time for the cossack rush. But nobody has horses!

Now I'm stuck. I'm on the coast and I have Egypt pushing my cultural boundaries, so I will probably have to go after them first, but without cossacks, I don't have any clear advantage and will probably not be successful eliminating either of their two cities. They are pretty high up in the score and seem to have a lot of friends of their own.

Should I continue? I have defensive pacts with five civs of varying strength. I don't want to attack Egypt, as these will all go away. Egypt is annoyed with me, I believe. Should I just badger Hatsheput (sp?) every turn until she declares war on me, so my defensive pacts will kick in? Should I just hang out and wait for the world wars? Should I hang out and bee-line for the United Nations and go for an end-around to a diplomatic victory?

 

[Quan Yu]

i tried this one city thing too...i tried it on monarch which is rather a challenge because the comp gets 2 settlers to start(meaning it gets 2 cities and you get 1). but the real deal is whether your near bronze or iron(i wasnt) so the comp came at my archers and longbowman with a variety of interesting units and cut me to bits. on the other hand that could work in your favor..just keep loading until you get metal and attack the civs that dont early on..seems kinda like a luck thing to me.

 

[Quan Yu]

i noticed another thing about OCC..i was playing on monarch as i said..and getting wiped out very nicely i might add..even though i had by far the best city in the game..then i noticed something...the AI was fanning out all over. and i got crushed militarily so i resigned and saw the replay..the AI had LOTS OF CITIES!!! HAHA..its only YOU that can have one it appears. OCC is good if your doing pvp or feeling very masochistic it would appear.

 

[sigmakan]

Wow, just played by first game of OCC, was really fun. I'm kinda a noob at this game ; ; played pangea/epic/cheiftan and loss ; ;

Problem was that I became best buds with Ghandi and he grew too big and finished the Space Ship 4 turns before I did.

Any tips to cranking out more beakers? I was only able to hit 300(then Ghandi-the UN leader- decided to change the civics which raped by science down to 230).

 

[naram]

ppl have done occ on diety and won, theres a strategy out there somewhere. The secret is the permanent alliance. Pick an AI tha you think will succeed (adjust partner if necessary), and be friendly to him, then get a defensive pact or mutual struggle and rush for a permanent alliance. then pray that the ai you picked wins (then you win as well). I did this on emperor and won!!! (A downside is that the AI's do this amongst themselves, so make sure your partner doesn't permanent alliance with someone else!)

 

[muziqaz]

Hello,

I decided to submit my saved game after the Diplomatic Victory in 1992.
I know it's chieftain difficulty, but maybe it will help someone, or inspire another one.
In my opinion OCC games are briliant.

Here are some facts:

Diff: Chieftain
Map: Pangaea
Size: Duel
Climate: Temperate
S.Era: Ancient
G.Speed: Epic

Victory: Diplomatic
Civ: India

At first I found all religions, adopted buddhism, spread to other civ, thus they adopted buddhism. Built most of the wonder, skipping those witch were unprofitable in one way or another. In the middle of the game I was still trailing by points, but then two of the strongest civs started a war between each other and their score suddenly stopped increasing.Interstingly all of the 3 civ were pleased or friendly to me.Scientifically I was far ahead(by 5 or 6 techs). As it was told in this thread that civ health is vital for growth, so I took it into consideration this time(somehow health didn't get my attention in previous games ;/ ).Culture ofthe city fenomenal (in my playing history ) city finished with 288774 culture points(1336/turn).Raized 5-6 cities with my city boundaries. Research-581 green bottles(I forgot english word for it ) per turn.
Time spent playing: 2h 2mins.
It's a lot of fun. U can concentrate on one city, and perfect it.
For those who haven't tried it-believe me-ought to try.You won't be disapointed(maybe).
Have fun [;

P.S. Just finished Tiny pangaea map with two civs.Lost diplomaticly ;/
Though I built UN, one of the civs had enormous territory, because I destroyed other civ.

View attachment 127057

 

[Greencardman]

Hey All
Thanks for the great feedback. I've updated the original post so that people reading it for the first time will have the corrections people have mentioned in the later replies. Again, I hope you all are enjoying the OCC. I haven't been around for a long time: school and Civ4 don't exactly mix well, but I'm glad to see people are having fun.

Greencardman

 

[bkwrm79]

I've finally begun an OCC - been planning to do it since before Civ III came out - and it's a blast!

I'm playing at Noble difficulty, albeit I used Worldbuilder to build up my starting area considerably - my first OCC and I'm also fairly new to Noble (although my current Marathon game looks to be a huuuge runaway). This is a quick game.

Cossacks are cool. Tanks, Mechanized Infantry and Helicopter Gunships with Bomber and Fighter support are cooler. Both my main neighbours (Napoleon and Genghis) are coming after me hard, to stop me from building a spaceship. Montezuma was quite reasonable about coming in on my side. It's going to be a tight race to alternate military builds and spaceship parts and beat the deadline.

 

[trickydicky]

Hello, this is my first time here after some lurking.

 

[trickydicky]

I have been playing alot of civ4 OCC. So much so that I cant play a normal game anymore

Well, I just had my most exciting OCC game. After winning a few on noble against about 4/5 civs, I thought Id crank up the difficulty. Even though I lost by 12 turns!!!! it was rather exciting.
Map: Pangea, standard
Difficulty: Prince
Leader: Saladin
9 other civs, chosen randomly (china (moa), mongols, spanish, incas, german (fred), english (vicky), malinese, romans, aztecs)

I managed to make an early game rush to the pyramids, stonehenge and the parthanon. The oracle wasnt available when I got preisthood (damn fast civs). I had borders with the mongols and germans. Early on in the game monte of the aztecs decided he didnt like me and tried it on. I managed to hold him off and eventually made peace with him.

All was going along smothly. The mongols had destroyed the chinese and I noticed the neighbouring germans were the only race that were technologically a threat. A quick bit of trading with the mongols and got them to go to war with the germans, to try to slow them down a bit.

The mongol empire was constantly the biggest (just how big I didnt know at this point, but had the biggest score by about 500) but he always seemed behind in tech, so I used him as a war mongerer for me. Things were generally quite good, with me being ahead in tech most the time. I think some other petty wars were going on. I only had 1 religion, but it was the same as the germans, so it kept them from going to war with me (as they had to get through me to get to the mongols, who they were at war with alot).

Fast forward a bit (quite a bit), and I notice mali has done its usual thing of just sitting around being clever, and were the first to build an appolo program. I couldnt have this, so negotiations were made with spain and the romans for open borders (as the malinese were all the way over the other side of the map, and I couldnt build boats). I discovered he had 1 city just the other side of the mongols, which I razed asap, then trecked over the continenet and started stiring up some **** by piligaing as much as I could. He only had 4 cities, but still managed to be be very tech (the mongols had about 20 citys by this point). The mongols were just wondering around generally annoyed with everyone except me, at war with the germans and spanish at the same time.

I then lost borders with the spanish (I think izzy had one of her hissy fits) so declared war with them. I didnt have many units spare to did as much as I could before I lost the units I had around there. This is where the mongolian power came into view. They defeated the germans, followed by the spanish, then the romans, then the malinese as a favor to me (they even did it for free), aswell as going to war with the english for a bit. As mali had got itself back on track I declared war on them again (after some peace to regroup). Unfortunatly this brought the english against me (werent that pleased with me anyway). The incas were now starting to catch up and overtake in the space race (as were the mongols, but slowly as they lacked a few key techs), while being at war with the english.

The war with the english really hurt, as they had a city with 6 bombers on my borders and were really doing some damage to my improvements. My forces were a little thin and attempts to destroy the city were in vain. I managed to get the internet built in the middle of the war which really helped. As vickys space was pretty lagging I decided to declare peace for some advanced tech so I could get on with the spaceship. Then it just became a drag race, and I eventually finished only 12 turns behind the incas who took a space race victory!

My city never made it past size 17 (was 13 by the end) due to having limits on food (had 5 lake tiles around the city) rather than health.
Wonders I had (order they were built): Pyramids, Stonehenge, Parthanon, Hanging Gardens, Great Library, internet. Incas managed to grab the space ladder which I think was the biggest problem.

Being spritual saved me alot of trouble changing civics. Had I had more religions it would have helped alot in diplomacy too. But then theres next time.

Sorry if its too long. I thought it was rather excitign and wanted to share it.

 

[Khelvaster]

I can't seem to find an industrious/philisophical civ. Are there any?

 

[janissary782]

no there arnt, firaxis judged tthe greatpeople points would make the civ too powerful

 

[skovran]

The Next Level Mod has two Industrial/Philosophical leaders:

P.M. Menzies of Australia (Mining and Agriculture)
King Solomon of Israel (The Wheel and Mysticism)

I like King Solomon for Wonder heavy OCC games. The starting traits help get early wonders and early religions.

 

[Zombie69]

I noticed the neighbouring germans were the only race that were technologically a threat.

Am i the only one who's a little uneasy about seeing german and race in the same sentence?

A quick bit of trading with the mongols and got them to go to war with the germans, to try to slow them down a bit.

Yes, when the Germans start refering to themselves as a race, it's time to act before it's too late!

 

[Zombie69]

The Next Level Mod has two Industrial/Philosophical leaders:

P.M. Menzies of Australia (Mining and Agriculture)
King Solomon of Israel (The Wheel and Mysticism)

I like King Solomon for Wonder heavy OCC games. The starting traits help get early wonders and early religions.

I think Firaxis was right to leave out this combo because it's too powerful. One more example of the general tendency of mods to be grossely unbalanced, and a good reason not to download them.

 

[skovran]

I think Firaxis was right to leave out this combo because it's too powerful. One more example of the general tendency of mods to be grossely unbalanced, and a good reason not to download them.

Oh, go ahead and download them. We won't tell. Besides, the first one is free...

 

[petey]

I'm playing an OCC game right now. I have a lot of floodplains, which is giving me a good finance kick, but there's the health penalties. Fortunately, I have 4 Golds within my 500 culture radius, so I can trade those away for health.

The big problem was that there was no Copper or Horses anywhere near me and the only Iron was in my 5000 culture range and someone put a city next to it. Fortunately, Izzy spread Judaism to everyone on the continent, so I only had Barbs to worry about, but my Archers are starting to have a hard time dealing with them, since there's a Barb city between me and the coast, so none of the AI's are going over to deal with it and I only have Archers, so I'm not going to be taking any cities.

The cool thing that happened is that I researched Drama for the Globe Theatre and then realized that no one had gotten Music yet, so I grabbed that and Culture Bombed the free Artist, which expanded my borders and the Iron tile is now in range. I've never thought that Artists could be useful in an OCC, but there appears to be a place for them.