Variant OCC Prime Directive

[Welnic]

I tried it. I didn't see any reason why you couldn't run a state religion, so I did that. But since I was the only Christian and everyone else was Hindu, at some point they all ganged up on me and that was that. I guess that you could not ever go with a state religion, but Pacifism works so well in OCC. This was a standard sized pangea, epic speed prince game. If you happened to get a religion that your neighbors had so that there would be some boost from that things would go okay, but which religion you get is such a crap shoot that I don't think I'll try it again. I didn't get a religion until 800 AD. I was well ahead in tech when it went bad, but I should have had more military.

The fancy screen comes from the BUG mod. The fists are for civs at war with me.

 

[Cer]

I tried it on noble/civ4vanilla/normal size map/continents (random number, we got 4)/random leader. I got philosophical/creative Peter, which worked out quite well. I also got stone next to my capital, a big help. I kind of disagreed with the idea that I shouldn't be allowed to have a state religion, but I didn't bother with one because closed borders kept me from getting any religion until just before I discovered liberalism.

I was the tech leader the whole game but my research was still too slow-- I didn't play the end but I would have lost due to time running out, a few turns before finishing all the research required for my last spaceship part. I made what I consider to be a number of significant mistakes, (partly owing to the fact that it was my first ever one-city-challenge game) so I think I would have won if I had played a little more wisely.

A major mistake I made was building oracle to one turn from completion, and then thinking I could delay finishing it in order to take a better tech. An AI finished it just a couple turns after I would have completed it. I also built too many great-artist wonders, a couple of which did me very little good the whole game.

I was surprised by the number of good resources I got, though. No Aluminum (bummer) but I had coal in my borders as soon as I discovered steam power, had horses next to the capital, and got iron within the edge of my legendary cultural borders about 40 turns after i achieved legendary culture.

 

[TeraHammer]

It tried it too, but got unsuccesfull because of airplane attacks from mansa musa when time began to matter. He plundered my towns and mines, workshop, pigs...
I still needed genetics to complete the whole thing when time ran out... damnit.

I got pyramids early, thanks to stone. And I settled about 3 GE and ~15 GS, making an 800 research when i swapped to max cottages after emancipation.

Its so frustrating, that time had to be my biggest opponent.

 

[KMadCandy]

The fists are for civs at war with me.

that's everybody in the entire world! i would be crying! but hey, only one person is furious with you. sure, the rest are trying to kill you too, but they don't truly hate you. that's gotta mean something .

 

[Quechua]

I honestly was thinking I had this thing won on prince...now I'm not so sure.

I was fighting my second war with Izzy (I'd love to give you tribute sweetie, but it's against the rules), which was very one-sided...my cossacks vs her cavs and cannons. This wasn't affecting my progress - I was churning out casings, and I'm a couple turns away from Fiber Optics and a major Internet slingshot.

Then Fred declares on me out of nowhere, and drops 3 transports of Mech Infantry and gunships on my shores. I somehow manage to clean that up with artillery, and I'm thinking, 'haha, I'm still gonna win.' Izzy sues for peace soon after.

Now Mansa, who surrounds my borders, jumps in too. I swear he was at Pleased. When I heard the declare music I thought it was Genghis, who has been at 'enough on our hands' for ages. This is incredibly frustrating.

If I can hold off Mansa and Fred's mech infantry with my wounded army of cossacks and sams until I get the Internet built, I still may be able to win this thing. But if not, I was pretty close, and this is possible on prince.

EDIT: Nope. I hate Mansa.

 

[TeraHammer]

I wouldnt recommend to use an IND leader, as on lower difficulties, you should get the needed wonders you want.

 

[Cookie Crumbs]

Yeah, especially in BtS, where the AI doesn't seem to prioritise the Pyramids much.

 

[KMadCandy]

okay, so it is possible on settler:

took barely under 2 hours in two sittings, but it shows 3 sessions now since i had to go back to take that winning screenshot. yes that's the UN Sec General vote selection box in the corner...i built it while waiting for the ship to land, abstained during voting, and to my surprise i won .

here were the best parts:

Spoiler :

when satellites came in, i found out that you really can see the great wall from space!

building the UN introduced me to the 3 folks on the other continent, and here are the results ...

*giggle*
Pacal and JC i met only just that turn from building the UN (izzy too). i don't know why they voted for me. i wasn't in Pacal's favorite civic; i was in JC's but i don't think he was . it wasn't religions, the religions hadn't cross spread. i don't think anybody had circumnavigated except me (landlocked, but satellites got me the credit).

and a look at what i built:

i did follow all the rules. i played as Liz and handpicked Isabella as one opponent so that there would be at least one person chasing religions, the rest random. i ended up getting so frustrated that nobody would learn philosophy that i went ahead and built that all-religion-civics wonder, should have done that a lot earlier. my tech path was all screwy since this is actually my first space race win in BtS. i backtracked to railroad before building National Park because i knew i'd lose access to coal ... but then it still let me build railroads later! even tho i don't have any other cities with coal showing as a resource, i guess it knows i really do have it?

and i, ummm, noticed that there is no "cannot use the Always Peace" rule, so i checked that option *giggle*

the save before the win is here.

 

[shyuhe]

National Park removes coal from the city in question - not from your entire civ. So you can still build RR but the city can't benefit from coal if you build the park.

On a side note, did the park help you get a lot more GP? I'm still dubious as to its value in OCC...

 

[KMadCandy]

National Park removes coal from the city in question - not from your entire civ. So you can still build RR but the city can't benefit from coal if you build the park.

my entire civ was that city tho, so i figured i'd really lost it. it didn't show up in the resource window any more, after all .

i built the park so i could run extra engineers, really. but yeah the health helped too. i was at -4 health before i built it, even having saved forests. that that was an extra -2 from already having built ironworks, but +3 from an aqueduct and hanging gardens. and get this ... i mined my iron up north not in the BFC, but forgot to put a road on it . so i didn't even benefit from the ironworks for several turns, i'm such a permanoob!

the forest preserves let me put off building globe almost forever. i wouldn't have built it, except for the ability to defy resolutions. i had very few happiness resources as you can see! edit: actually, you can't see, since i didn't show my entire borders. the only happies i had were wine and silk . i did run 10% culture for a little while, rather than build globe early, since i already had NEpic and Parthenon and didn't want the artist points. i ended up getting only 2 (the 3rd was from music).

my production was ridiculously high with all the settled GPs anyway, so i think it was worth it. i think 6 of the engineers got settled (1 did half of space elevator), and at least 10 GSs. so i had a ton of hammers coming in even before the tiles got worked, and i didn't miss the coal bonus.

mostly, it really made me giggle to play a settler always peace game . it was fun! i think even i could win that variant on settler without always peace, but it would take longer since i'd have to waste time building military, what a hassle. gilgamesh made 2 or 3 demands, sitting bull never did, wang kon made just one. wang even asked for a DP ! he was at friendly just from civics/religion, such a nice guy. no barbs ever came into my borders. one warrior walked by, that was it. they settled a city to the NW but sitting bull captured it eventually. somebody sabotaged my uranium mine after my ship got launched, so i switched my slider to espionage and researched const/demo for the buildings *giggle*. but that was the only spying i ever saw evidence of.

 

[seizer]

I managed to win this on noble, medium and small mapscript, small world size, playing as Elizabeth.

Spoiler :

The English Empire:

Got lucky in that I had access to both coal and iron. Also, as you can see, a rather nice start with 3 clam, 1 corn and 1 gem.

London:

I made a couple of mistakes, mainly getting way too many artist specialists and not using the whip enough in the beginning.

 

[KMadCandy]

good grief that's a lot of gold/turn without spreading corps! grats

 

[vicawoo]

Wow BTS makes it much nicer.

Haven't had time to play lately, but OCC doesn't take much time, right? Maybe people should build a reasonable military, so the rest of the world is intimidated by the "aliens". Speaking of which, I'm thinking the leader should have a theme. Maybe someone from modern times, or an isolationist. Or I could random and get rid of all aggressive civs.

 

[Quechua]

Building a reasonable military is a given of course. Between Oxford and the Apollo there aren't many improvements to build, so you can keep cranking out military.

I ended up losing on Prince pre-BtS, so take this for what it's worth, but my strategy was to keep on pumping out military during this period and rely on gold from settled prophets and merchants to upgrade while I was building the spaceship parts. You'll get a couple prophets from the Oracle, and the merchant from Economics. I kept up a reasonably good power rating until the very end, when the more advanced civs started getting tanks. My strategy was to pretty much avoid the nationalism line and head towards the Internet via satellites, switching my city to heavy production and relying on the other civs to research for me (I kept ahead in research until Physics).

I was ahead in spaceship production, easily winning my war, and about 10 turns from the Internet which would give my Mech Infantry, when I got attacked by an advanced nation that bordered me. I guess this strategy is a bit of a gamble, but arrgh if only I was a bit luckier....

Anyway, I think I may try it on Monarch now with KMad's wonderful Always Peace idea.

 

[KMadCandy]

Haven't had time to play lately, but OCC doesn't take much time, right?

right. even if you check every city every turn! my game took 1 hour 59 minutes, and i was alt-tabbing out to check forums every once in a while .

Anyway, I think I may try it on Monarch now with KMad's wonderful Always Peace idea.

*giggle* i expected to have tomatos thrown at me for that loophole! i'd only ever played one Always Peace game before, going for domination but having to do it by culture-flipping tiles, that was fun. keep in mind that they're not ever gonna be at war with each other either, so they will tech faster than they otherwise would. i left tech trading on since it was settler, i'll turn it off at noble or higher if i try again.

 

[Cer]

On noble/vanilla, I felt that not going with always-peace was barely a handicap for me. It slowed down the AI's some because of their wars against me. But they never turned out to be a threat to my tech lead. I just didn't tech fast enough, period. I should have spent more time running scientist specialists and not engineers, for one thing. (would have probably gotten me more great scientists for research too)

 

[vicawoo]

I played one out on warlords/noble to 1930. Later on, I got flooded by knights who pillaged two of my towns. Now they're sending cavalry and grenadiers. Thankfully, I managed to stall with machine guns and tech to tanks, now I have a 170 exp great general, combat 5, drill 4, leadership, morale. I could definitely end the war, that might be in line with the prime directive, but I'm enjoying my generals.

Why's always peace more fun?

My first attempt I tried for a great engineer for pyramids, but that didn't work out. Second I just got wonders fast for GPP, and hoped my forge would be enough. Due to slow teching, AI I had to go feudalism->civil service. Didn't get religions, which would have helped a bunch, since later on it seems most of your production and science is settled great people, and organized religion would have been great.
I randomed isabella, good traits. Later on, it was kind of boring, I was just wonder whoring for GPP. I didn't have coal, which is setting my production back significantly.

 

[shyuhe]

I'm going to try monarch on bts... let's bring the hurt on.

EDIT: Got killed in the 1900's. I think I may have had a shot at a backdoor internet ploy, but Izzy attacked me and uh... no defense!

 

[Cam_H]

Not exactly glowing with pride on this one, but ... errr ... a Dan Quayle victory!

Here's the settings and result;

... and the start if anyone wants to have a shot at it as a whim (for what it's worth, I didn't settle in place).

Spoiler :

... and 'yes' - there is a downside to this Gems-and-Food start.

Patched BtS 4000 B.C. save (Bismark)

 

[Welnic]

The score on OCC games usually sucks since your empire is so small. That does look like a timely finish to your game.