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ran OCC emperor again, this time I thought I'd try the Rifle slingshot with Songhai and go for Domination, was pretty entertaining. The triple gold bonus from barbarian camps is fun to play with early game.
The idea was based on a CFC post where they did it with Babylon and I wanted to see how feasible this sort of strategy was with a non-overpowered civ.
The build for this goes something like worker -> warrior -> monument -> library and hire scientists -> national college -> barracks -> heroic epic. Shortly before 0 BC two great scientists are available to rush Gunpowder, then 4 saved policies used to take Scientific Revolution getting rifles. While I was doing this Bismarck rushed me with a bunch of spears and archers (good move on his part) and I had to pay him off for peace. Once I did get rifles out, I was able to sweep the map clean without much trouble.
I'm not sure if maritime CS are really that imbalanced after this game. The alliances cost a lot of gold (mitigated by investment into Patronage policy tree, but that passes up some other nice early bonuses) and I chose to let them lapse after the early game in order to accumulate cash for rushing/upgrading and to get some CS culture to reach Discipline.
The other point that struck me was that staying on one city for a while in a normal game and expanding late has potential if you want to grab a specific national wonder or social policy ASAP, just because of the way the culture costs and building requirements scale.
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As they give you food per city, Maritime alliances will be just a tad worse in OCC. 
The other broken thing about city state alliances is the AI:
1) Sell resources to AI for hundreds of gold.
2) Use gold to buy city state allegiance.
3) City state gives you about as many resources as you sold, except now you're also getting 3 food in every city and have a war ally!
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That's clever uberfish...I read the same CFC post and they were abusing Babylon's ridiculous UA rather than Scientfic Revolution.
I also played around with the idea a few days ago but instead of a strict beeline I expanded and had it as secondary goal. The way the game flowed I ended up quad bulbing Dynamite instead. Artillery are effective; its only 350g to upgrade Cannon and I had enough saved up to upgrade 5 at once. That was pretty much that.
Darrell
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Not to mention open borders. After the first time which I use to scout out their territory, I always sell OB when the deal expires.
Darrell
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SevenSpirits Wrote:The other broken thing about city state alliances is the AI:
1) Sell resources to AI for hundreds of gold.
2) Use gold to buy city state allegiance.
3) City state gives you about as many resources as you sold, except now you're also getting 3 food in every city and have a war ally!
Give SevenSpirits a cookie!  I've found myself using the exact same tactic; this is the new tech trading, based around exploting city states instead of brokering techs. Here's something I wrote up that talks a little bit more about this (and sundry other things): http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/immortalegypt.html
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Wow, that stinks that the road cost is that bad that you can only really maintain a single road to your front cities. Maybe they should have done multiple units per tile but give each unit in a scaled decrease in performance...
Then you can move them all easily on your one road.
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
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Very nice write up, Sullla. 
I think razing the cities is what caused your defeat. The AI apparently views this as an unforgivable crime, and will hate your guts forever. If ("if"? ) an AI founds a city in a crap location, sorry. You just have to live with it. 
The military power disparity, as well as the happiness list you showed, also appears to be exactly what I was expecting/fearing on Immortal. You are no longer playing anything even remotely like the same game as the AIs. And it is so blatant that I do not think it would be at all enjoyable, even if you want/need a challenge that lower levels and stupid AIs can not provide.
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Sullla Wrote:Give SevenSpirits a cookie! I've found myself using the exact same tactic; this is the new tech trading, based around exploting city states instead of brokering techs. Here's something I wrote up that talks a little bit more about this (and sundry other things): http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/immortalegypt.html
Great write up Sulla! I love reading about your games. Sorry you got dogpiled at the end. I think the main thing that affects the AI DoWs is your ratio of land/power. You had a lot of land but a much smaller army, which made you a great target.
I also think you got rather lucky with the city states in your game. First, just finding so many nearby is great. It looks like there's hardly any on the other half of the continent. Then, getting that early barbiarian killing mission for a maritime city-state was also quite lucky. That's basically the best possible random event to get early.
I agree with you that city states early on are driven way too much by luck. I do think, though, that they become a lot less good in the mid game on immortal and especially on deity. The AI just conquers them so fast, by the time you have enough gold to stay allied with several, they're all gone. Which is probably not the sort of balance that the designers were looking for, but it works.
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luddite Wrote:I think the main thing that affects the AI DoWs is your ratio of land/power. You had a lot of land but a much smaller army, which made you a great target.
If that's the AI logic, then that makes a lot of sense why things changed once you conquered Arabian lands, and that's also IMO a perfectly fair reason to declare war on someone.
This idea fits well with how the AIs handle invading city-states: they have relatively little land, and smaller armies, but if they've got 15 units around 1 city-state, it isn't going to fall without a bloodbath.
Also, this diplo rule would let the player keep control over the situation: a decent home defense force might have been enough to keep the Arabian territory from being an automatic "FREE STUFF!" sign to the AI.
Although I hope they have something along the lines of how most Civ4 civs were less likely (but not impossible for them!) to declare on you at Pleased or even Cautious: while it's a design decision to make sure the AIs, no matter how much they like you, have at least some way to attack, I'd like to see working with the AI have SOME effect. While humans are wily, backstabbing individuals, most of us are less likely to backstab the friends we've been working with for 150t.
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Yeah, at least to me it feels like making friends with any AI is absolutely pointless, because they will go into rage mode whenever they feel like it. Giving back workers captured by barbarians? No thanks.
I miss having some kind of buddy like CIV IV allowed.
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