What is the OCN in Civ 4?

[davidky5]

Hi, just purchased the game... gotta say i'm beyond excited...

but anyway, i just looked here and there, and it seems that while people tend to mention city maintenance cost, I never see a mention of OCN, like in the old civ3 days.

So, my question is, is there OCN in this game? If so, how is it determined?

 

[JakeCourtney]

I'm pretty sure it's in there.

 

[MNGhost]

What is OCN?

 

[Yzman]

OCN = Optimal city number?

If so, I haven't seen that number anywhere. But mostly I think it is because cities don't work the same as they used to. Now they all cost maintaince, and the farther they are, the more maintainance they cost.

 

[Mercade]

Hi, just purchased the game... gotta say i'm beyond excited...

but anyway, i just looked here and there, and it seems that while people tend to mention city maintenance cost, I never see a mention of OCN, like in the old civ3 days.

So, my question is, is there OCN in this game? If so, how is it determined?

This thread may be of interest to you:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=138473

 

[Fieryphoenix]

There isn't one, because the game mechanic doesn't need an artificial constant any more. Every additional city you add increases the total maintainence for every city. Using fake numbers and a fake progression, if you have one city it costs you two maintainence, if you have two cities, they each cost three maintainance, if you have three, they each cost four, etc, etc. I emphasize that these numbers are not the real ones in the game, but they illustrate the scheme that is going on. If you have powerhouse money generating cities, they can fund a lot of extra cities. Or in other words, the OCN is dynamically generated by the ability of your cities to generate cash balanced with the number of cities that you have. I believe additionally there is a distance from capital factor in there as well, but that doesn't really upset the scheme, just modifies it.