I hadn't played out a space race or an OCC since forever, so I didn't really know what to do. But I was pretty sure it would be fun, so off I went!

The good tiles are obviously Corn/Wheat, Copper/Iron, and Gold. (Well, and lake fish, which I didn't know was possible.) In the first two cases you get 7 food + hammers (after Bio/Railroads... 6 before), depending on the underlying terrain. In the last case you get 4 food + hammers and 7 extra commerce - a 3 for 7 trade. I though that was probably a poor deal, and went for a mix of food and hammers, though with Stone/Marble, and one each of Gold/Gems/Silver for a quick start.



As it turns out I gave myself a few too many hammers, and not enough food/commerce. Additionally, my mistake was compounded by a bug that was introduced since I last played a OCC, namely that overflow hammers above the allowed limit just... disappear. Oops.

I actually planned out the first few turns pretty carefully - I think it worked well. I started off with a workboat for the fish off 6 hammers a turn, then grew to size 2, then built two workers who made a farm and then mined all the luxuries.



Then I built just about every wonder except the Temple of Artemis, which I sadly missed by two turns. I took Civil Service with the Oracle on turn 59. I made an academy and settled tons of great people. I built the Globe Theater around turn 80. It was sadly delayed several turns as I had to prepare for war against Suryavarman. However, he surprisingly declared on Isabella instead.



I got Education on turn 101, Optics on 106 (grabbing Music first), and then beelined up to Liberalism->Biology which fell on turn 127.



The AIs on the other continent were all best Hindu buddies, which was pretty unfortunate - they were doing QUITE well, especially Hannibal. To solve this problem, I teched up to nukes, built Manhattan on turn 177, and nuked the crap out of his flood plains towns over the next few decades, while being careful not to damage his actual cities. I also harassed the other continent with Privateers. Later, I nuked Cyrus too when he declared on me.




Eventually, I won a space race on turn 305. I had forgotten how many stupid techs there are in the industrial and modern eras so I started bulbing too early, and as mentioned before prioritized production too much over food/science. But I got there eventually. I had 12 techs on my opponents and they had 1 on me (Hannibal had Flight), so my score is 11.


A bit more golden age than necessary?


Starving from Global Warming and because I mined over my hill farm




Who needs population when you could have science instead?

What happens when a city has 15 deer tiles? Stay tuned to find out!

Just a holder post to say that I played this one out, and had a lot of fun with it, but I probably won't get around to posting a report until tomorrow.

Space victory in 1844 AD, turn 292.
Score: 10.

A few pictures. Horse was pure weed. Iron and copper too - I thought they'd be important for production, but forgot about railroads boosting the gold mines. And I should have used some wheats instead of corn, for trade purposes. Finally, Marble and Stone should have switched places.











Then I tried this setup, just for fun:



Unfortunately production and research didn't quite cut it, Hannibal beat me by three turns. (I launched seven turns before him but with one engine and one thruster.)

I didn't spend a ton of time thinking about this unfortunately, so I have no idea if this will be a solid game or not. I didn't realize how the scoring worked until I had already traded away techs no one else had in the late game. I also wasted a decent number of worker turns just futzing about.

The typical goal for an OCC for me seems to be:

1. Build 3-4 workers
2. Bronze Working --> Pottery --> Quarry --> Writing --> Literature
3. 'Mids/Representation
4. Great Library
5. Globe Theater
6. National Epic
7. Caste System
8. Philosophy/Pacifism
9. Oxford
10. Trade in Liberalism for the best tech possible (I think I did RRs or Assembly Line)
11. National Park
12. Superconductors
13. Space Victory

I go for tech as soon as possible, because I find that tech is the limiting factor, more than production.

Normally my goal would be to chop as few forests as practical, get to Biology with 8-12 forests in place, and then use the mass of free scientists to tech away. But I quickly realized that any tile I could have four food on would net the same extra specialist (since I wouldn't be limited in happiness or healthiness due to the NWs), and any food over that would be .5 extra specialists. I would lose the forest production, but given the rivers on every tile, the levee would take care of that.

But I also realized since I was designing tiles, I could get some unnatural combos that would allow me to make up for that forest hammer. By putting a hill on every tile, I would get the hill hammer, plus the railroad bonus hammer, plus the levee bonus hammer (plus forge, factory, power plant, Ironworks), while also putting a fresh water corn on the hill. This would create a 5f1h1c tile after a farm, up to a 6f3h1c tile after levee/RRs/Bio.

So I would go max food, with a hill on all 21 BFC tiles. I put at least once of every agriculture and animal tile, plus sugar and bananas, at least once in the immediate tiles around the city to get extra healthiness prior to the National Park. Everything else was forested river corn hill. I made four exceptions to the max food tiles. I put a gems and gold tile to get extra happiness in the early game prior to Globe and to speed up early tech which can be slow prior to the flood of settled GScientists. I also put a stone and marble tile to speed up 'Mids, Great Library, National Epic, and Oxford. Then I added a choppable forest to 16 of the 21 tiles, because I figured I could get farms up on 5 tiles prior to finishing Bronze Working.



I opened with four straight workers if I remember correctly, maybe a couple Dogsoldiers thrown in. Not much barb trouble.

Diplomatically, I got one ridiculous stroke of luck. The three civilizations that I met (the only ones I met for 200+ turns), Isabella, Sury, and Shaka all went Buddhist and stayed that way until the game was already decided. As soon as I saw this bloc developed, I gladly switched when the demand came, and I was in good for the remainder of the game.

Turn 100:



Less than 10 turns later, the tech rate doubles:



Somewhere around turn 150, Shaka declared war on me like a doof. He couldn't help himself, despite being +9 Pleased diplomatically. I already had Gunpowder and was near Rifling (with Protective on an all hill BFC) when he brought a bunch of out-dated crap my way. I slaughtered his entire stack with the loss of only two muskets I think and then I bribed Sury to go after Shaka. I made peace with Shaka eventually, although it wasn't really imperative, because he couldn't get to me without going through Sury.

Turn 170:



Built Taj Mahal (despite the crappy GArtists points, even though I avoided the Mausoleum for the same reason) just because I could:



Turn 200 changeover. Constantly had to get rid of Prophets hired by the stupid governor:



I'm leading in GNP on Immortal with one city 200 turns in. Absurd:



This is about the most tech I ever hit in a turn. I think I might've made 1799 at one point:



At some point I signed some defensive pacts with Isabella and Sury. Hannibal attacked Isabella before I had even met Hannibal which meant I auto-declared on a civ I didn't know existed. Hello! Nice to meet you! Die! I wasn't too worried because I had Protective infantry on hills. This canceled my DP with Sury. Sury ended up back at war with Shaka and I kept refusing to rejoin, which didn't matter because I was about +18 in diplo at that point. I eventually made peace with Hannibal pretty easily.

This amount of production is just dumb:



I eventually managed to top out at size 45. I guess if I hadn't put hills everywhere, I could've grown up to size 55 .

I launched T285:



I cleaned up some techs and grabbed Internet on the last turn which got me Flight, right as the game ended on T297, in 1854 AD:



Oh shit, it's Alpha Centauri:



Demos:



Hall of Fame:



No one else close to victory:



My tech tree:



Production:



5400 GPerson points needed for next GPerson:



Science breakdown, including 354 base science from specialists:



I did my best to settle all but 2 GPeople by my count (Academy, 1 GAge), although I might've used two more for another GAge, and I got the free Music, Econ, Physics and Fusion GPeople. I think in the end I had about 17 settled GScientists, 6 settled GEnginers, 1 settled GArtist, and 1 settled GMerchant.

Tech Breakdown:




Unfortunately, I traded too much with the A.l., which probably cost me in scoring. Also, damn Hannibal finished Adv. Flight on the last turn, costing me a point.

By my tally:

Exclusive Techs: Mass Media, Laser, Composites, Computers, Fiber Optics, Fusion, Ecology, Genetics, Robotics

+9

Techs Behind: Adv. Flight

-1

SCORE: 8

Executive Summary



* Spaceship victory in 1800 AD
* Score of 20

Report is here

I chose to go heavy on the food and just take a single gold tile, plus the stone plains hill and marble plains hill. Spam hte early wonders, and stick with the simple mass GPP strategy.

OK, so start: worker, working the 3 food 1 hammer corn. Research Myst
T8: research mining
T9: worker built, improve the corn, build Henge
T14: move to gold
T16: Research BW, due in 15
T18: BW in 7?
...
T28: Henge built, build 1 DS, due in 2 w/chop
T40: TGW built (I frigging hate barbs)



T46: Gp born, add to city as spec.
T50: Writing research
T51; Pyramids built
T52: revolt to Rep/Slavery
T61: GS born (low odds but I'll take it...Academy time)
T62: Maths researched



T69: CoL researched, Oracle finished, Bureacracy taken, revolt to Bureaucracy and CoL.
T74: Gspy born. Add to city.
T78: research Mono, revolt to OR (in hindshight should have done with Bureau).
T79: revolt to Confu
T84: finish Parth
T89: finish GL
T90: GS, add to city
T91: Finish NE
T95: GS born, add to city
T97: GT finished, start max growth
T100 HG finished.
T101: Philo finished, revolt to Pacifism.
T104: GA, add to city.
T100: GS
T112: UoS built
T113 Shaka declares war on Sury, thank god.
T116: GS born.



T120: GS



T124: GP
T129: GP. Lost MoM (aw...)
T149 take Lib for Bio
T153 Shaka declares war. With 2 Impis, a HA and 7 cats. Time to break out the muskets.

OK, now I stopped taking notes and just played the game. I ended up getting declared on by every single AI in the game at one point or another, and just dealing with them. I won at 1846 after forgetting to launch the ship for a single turn, and warred with muskets, rifles, Inf and MI, and 2 airships.

Assortment of screenshots:












Cyrus: fission, Radio, plastics, Refrig
HRE: med, Elec, Flight, AL, Arty
Spain: Fascism, Communism, combustion, Arty, Ind, radio, refrig
Carth: Fission,ind, radio, refrig,
Shaka: SM, Chem, Edu, Demo, DR.

That means I'm up...Fusion, Computers, Robotics, Superconductors, Genetics, Advanced Flight, Laser, Compositites, Radio, Satellites, Plastics, Mass Media, refrigeration, fibre optics.

If I'd have milked this game, I'd have possibly gotten 16 by knocking out Izzy, but that would have required not getting attacked constantly from muskets onwards...as it was I scored 14 points.

ADV 48
is an OCC on immortal diff (!) but we can change our 21 workable tiles to our hearts content (well not everything goes but the limitations are small).
An OCC poses always the difficulty of balancing production-research and growth. Especially if you try to spacerace with immortal AI’s.
The first decision I made is that I will forego any floodplains. The health issues the incur are something I want to avoid. The second was that I didn’t use any cottages. They take too long to grow and are therefor hard to replace once pillaged/spybombed. Additional as I plan to run Rep and Bureau instead of the cottage enhancing US/FS it made a lot of sense to use resources for commerce which leads to Incense (4 gl-tiles). For early happiness resources which might be traded for health once Globe is built I decided to use 3 plain hills one with each of the 3 (Gems, Gold, Silver).
For more production without hampering growth I used 3 iron + 2 copper on gl-tiles. That leaves the health+food problem open. I have no use for the weak food-tiles (Rice, Sugar, Sheep) so I made 1 pig,1 wheat, 1 corn and 1 banana gl tile. Additional trade routes and for that intercontinental trade routes are great for commerce so I made my city coastal (3 tiles) and added one of each the fishing resources (Fish, Clam, Crab) which also provide 2 health each(with a Harbor). As we start with fishing this has the additional advantage that we get early growth before we know Bronze-working. Now as I do need to get the Pyramids, Great Wall (to avoid Barb-troubles and to get Great Spies) and every other Wonder I can get my hands on I place 1 stone on the City tile (with the plains hill this resulted in a 3 hammer-citycenter J ) and the last open tile got Marble on it.

As the last touch every tile (beside the coastal ones) got a nice little forest on it.
With Izzy (religious nutcase) Shaka (total nutcase) and creative Sury on our continent and Cyrus + (financial) Hannibal on the other continent we have an interesting setup. I was relieved to see that Hanni didn’t have a coastal capital.

So game started workboat ordered, Warrior sent out to explore and research was set to Mining then BW followed by Masonry to chop out GW and Pyramids.

Contact was made soon (Izzy on t3, Sury on t5 and shake on turn 10). The first created Worker chopped out a colleague and both chopped out the GW on t35 and the Mids on t 49.
At turn 50 Shaka founded Judaism and converted which with Izzy already being Buddhist meant that there will be religious tensions on my continent which is great news. Turn 64 saw the completion of the Great Lighthouse followed by a swift Oracle. The later I used to get CoL and found Confucianism. At that time Sury was still without religion so I used the free missionary to convert him and heat the tensions up a little bit. Myself still remained without statereligion. The Great Lib completed at t81 followed by the Hanging Gardens ~10 turns later. At turn 95 I reached Civil Service and revolted to Bureaucracy and the first war-declaration happened. Shaka vs Sury. Other wonders follwed (MoM, Parthenon, Sistine, Colossus(t118 )and founding of Taoism which was follwed by the first demand (Izzy asked for Philosophie). As I could see the research on my continent (thanks to a settled GSpy) I bagged Lib until I could use it for Steel (on turn 155).
But before I arrived there the one thing I knew would come happened: Shaka declared war on me (t147). His armies consisted of cats and horsearchers and Axes while I could field Maces, Pikes and was 2 turns from Gunpowder so the damage he could inflict was minimal. The one annoying thing was that it took a long time until he was happy to sign peace without asking for something (till t 172).
During the war I build a caravel and sailed it across the ocean where I met Hannibal. Of course without paying attention I traded him Banking + Philo for Printing Press and Horse Riding (+60gold and WM) Now on first glance this looks like a good trade alas I was 1 turn from discovering PP myself so pure on my part. At this time my techlead was still great and after the discovery of RR I used a stored GE to found mining Inc (t189). On t210 I caved to another Izzy-demand (600g) which I did easily as I was making 102gpt while running 100% science (settled Gmerchants and the shrine). 2 turns later the Khmer who have been at war with Shaka and Izzy ceased to exist and naturally Shaka was soon afterwards knocking at my door again (war decl t225). This time it only took 8 turns (peace t233) till he saw the error in his ways. He was fielding Knights while I had Machine Guns, Infantry and at the end Artillery).
In the year 1670AD (t244)Apollo Project was completed and my techlead was still there. More disturbing I have lost the tech visibility on Izzy and never gained it on any on the other continent. With other words those Immortal AI’s have finally enough big and powerful cities to blow through techs/spend enough on Spy-points to kick my ass.

On t260 Cahokia turned legendary and the first intercontinental war broke loose: Izzy vs Hannibal. (btw the intercont. traderoutes earned 12 commerce each). This War soon spread with Cyrus declaring on Hannibal and finally Shaka declaring on Izzy (t270). This also become the last mistake of Shaka as he was wiped out by Izzy on t302. During this time Cyrus decided to gift me flight(t277) so my techlead was definitely vaporing and on t 288 both Cyrus and Hannibal completed their Apollo Project so the race was definitely on.
The aforementioned end of the Zulu also put me on a continent alone with one Superpower so I had to manipulate Izzy into liking me as I would not stand a chance against an immortal AI.
Luckily Izzy is easy to manipulate: I converted to Buddhism (her religion) and to her favorite civic (Theocracy). This move paid rich credit as Izzy decided to declare vs Hannibal (~15 turns later) and working together with Charles managed to wipe out the carthagians. During the next 40 turns till the launch of the Spaceship (t338 ) I sweated blood everytime I saw a spy-message on the screen but luckily they were either thwarted by counter-spionage or preferred to steal tech (which they did several times). Once the ship was launched I felt quite save as Izzy was already friendly with me and I don’t fear an intercontinental invasion although Cyrus has built the Manhatten Project.

Spaceship Victory on t 350 (1930AD). While I managed to have a techlead on Izzy and Charles Cyrus had all normal techs like me so no points here to gain or lose. The other AI (Sury, Shaka and Hanni died )

In the end: I think I might have fared better with building research more often than wonders.
As several of those I only built because I could (Kremlin for example).
A last vies into Cahokia:

and the GNP-graph:

Write up is here. That was a fun game - thx T-Hawk. I decided not to max out on food, rather valued production more. I am considering replaying the game aiming at restricting their tech instead of rushing to space.

I had a lot of fun with this one, thanks for hosting.

20 riverside tiles, one ph to build on and whatever resources I want. This is going to be sweet.

Initial thoughts:

I'll want either stone or marble on the PH (for a 3 hammer city tile) and the other resource available early for some serious wonder spam. I decided to go
with stone on the centre tile instead of marble due to my plans for an early Stonehenge. It means I lost out on some hammers by working the marble instead of the stone, but it meant I didn't need to wait for the stone to be improved before starting my wonder parade.

Other than wonder boosting resources, what else do I need/want? Food, lots and lots and lots of food. Some luxuries would be nice to tide me over until Globe gets finished. Strategic resources iron definitely, copper (boosts Colossus, SoL + spaceship), horses? nah. I'm not planning any offensive wars so horses can go. Luxuries there are 5 pre calendar luxuries (Gold, silver, gems, elephants and fur) so I grabbed one of each. Health is going to be an issue so I plunked down a Deer as well. Since I wanted coastal access 2 Fish were in order. Other than that, I'll want one of each grain (health will be the growth bottleneck between getting Globe and getting the National Park). I added in one extra copper (hammers). Everything else got corn. Then it was a matter of placing forests on most tiles. I wanted 1 6 food source, a commerce tile and the marble available before bronze. So one corn, the gold and the marble were left unforested. Everything else (except the 2 fish tiles) got a forest.

4000Bc:




The early plan: Run the table on all of the early Wonders while teching hard and growing as fast as possible. I'm aiming for 10 Great People by 1 ad with Globe, Nat Epic and Oxford all complete.

Opening tech path:

Mining (gold)
Mysticism (Stonehenge)
Masonry (Stone and Marble, Gwal and Mids)
Bronze
Hunting (happy and health)
Poly (TofA)
Priesthood (Oracle)
Wheel
Pottery
Writing
Code of laws (from Oracle)
Sailing (trade routes)
Math

Initial builds: Worker, workboat, warrior, worker
Stonehenge (2760 BC)
Great Wall (2480, I queue swapped a bit with Mids and ToA to delay Gwall a few turns to cut the odds of generating an unwanted GSpy)
ToA (2080)
Oracle in 1960 bc (again I queue swapped this a bit waiting for writing to finish)
Finished the pyramids in 1680 bc

Great People so far:

G. Prophet (2160 BC, settled)
G. Prophet (1660 BC, Confucian shrine (gold, +1 Gpp, and 3 priest slots)

Once the Mids finished, I made my first civic swap of the game to Caste/Republic. (pic is from the turn I completed Mids, pre-revolt)




Once the Mids were up, I focused on getting some basic infrastructure up (as can be seen from my build queue above).

At this point, my focus was growing to my happy cap (13 pre forge) and getting some scientists up.

Tech path from here was:

Metal casting (a forge was worth +3 happy -->size 16)
Aesthetics
Literature
Civil Service (825 bc) -->Revolt to B-cracy
Drama
800 bc Isabella teched Alphabet and I picked up Alphabet, Meditation, Animal Husbandry, Iron working and Archery in trades)
Philosopy (founded Taoism in 650 BC)
Music (I generated a Great Artist, so I bulbed Music, then settled the Music GA)
Paper
Education (300 BC)
(picked up currrency in 275, my notes are not clear if I teched it or traded for it)
Gunpowder (100 bc)
Machinery
Construction
Engineering (25 Ad)

Along the way I'd built TGLib, national Epic, Globe, Missed the GLH by 3 turns and missed the announcement and wound up finishing the Hanging Gardens by

accident, they'd been sitting in the queue with one turn to go waiting for my pop to grow a bit more). Finished Oxford in 100 BC.

At 1 AD I was one turn (8 freaking gpp) short of Great Person #10 (#1 G prophet->settled, #2 G prophet->shrine, #3 G scientist (low odds)->Acadamy, #4 and #5

GS (settled), #6 G Artist (bulb Music), #7 G prophet->Taoist shrine, every other GP I settled.




Diplomatically, I avoided adopting an early religion. Izzy founded Budhism and I used the free misionary from Col to spread Confucianism to Sury. The early shrine helped auto spread Confucianism to Shaka. This set up some nice inter AI hate (they don't have to love me, so long as they hate each other) although Izzy managed to convert Shaka at some point. The three of them waged a few wars over the centuries.

Surry made the first DOW against Izzy in 400 BC, and a few turns later (250ish BC) I finally adopted Confucianism and Pacifism

At this point I was pushing out over 600 bpt and a solid 248 GPP/turn. I'm on track for getting the National Park up by ~500 AD and I starting to think a 1700s launch might be possible.

(to be continued......)