Weekend OCC

[uberfish]

@Uberfish: Ouch! Were you unable to sign a defensive pact? I think your decision to move 1W was interesting. You gained 2 health but lost a potential 4-food tile. Still not sure which is best. Thanks for playing and reporting

Food was breakeven, although I lost the flood plain I settled on I gained another that was 2SW of the starting tile. I did lose 1 hammer on the city square (and the copper which I couldn't reasonably know about,) but I thought that would be a reasonable tradeoff since I wasn't building ancient wonders. I think I was outresearching you guys before the final war sequence anyway since I had about 12 GS, of course that was a strategic decision not related to the initial founding.

I didn't sign any DPs. I could have gotten one with Mansa but I thought that would be more of a liability in the circumstances. Still not sure what provoked so much aggression this game, probably the dogpile effect.

We did prove that OCC is playable without world wonders - albeit with a top 1% starting position in this case. Should run more of these.

[fluffyflyingpig]

Well, tried this 3 times, got declared on and killed in AD times the first two before managing a 1986 space win in the end.

Its been a while since I played OCC, so I'm feeling kinda rusty. I actually lost the second time because Bismark got too strong and I failed to gift my puppet state buffer Toku to tech equivalency, so Bismark killed him then killed me. Also failed to gift AIs up to speed so they could help research stuff to trade for. I got declared on 2+ times each game, even with attempts at managing diplo, gifting 1 gpt, etc.

I tried running a farm-GP economy then switching to cottages right around the turn of the century. Don't think that was the best idea, pure GP or cottages would've been better, I think.

Fantastic OCC start position. Monarch AI had no chance in the space race, but surviving to get there was a problem.

If these OCC become a regular event (would be nice, good start positions take a while to generate), can I request the next one have conquest as the goal? =D

[sooooo]

Good perseverence in getting through to the space victory fluffyflyingpig .

Yes I think I'll put up another weekend OCC in a couple of weeks time. Not sure about conquest only, but I'll give it a different flavour to this one. This was basically a personal game which I put up. It had an interesting group of AIs, and 2 we couldn't contact until fairly late because we were landlocked and the pangaea was "tokugawared". In terms of starts, for an OCC I reroll until I get 2 food resources (counting floodplains as half a resource because they are unhealthy). The gold and fresh water were just gravy. Next time I'll look at the world builder and maybe make some modifications to make the scenario work to my intentions.

[EricStratton]

This is the first OCC I've played. I had no idea what kind of strategy to go in w/ especially considering we were aiming for a space victory (which if someone had suggested it I would say was impossible). I tried taking Toku out in the beginning of the game but w/ one city I just didn't have the output to do it. He did get wiped out later in the game by the AI. I did my best to keep friendships w/ the remaining civs but for whatever reason my friend JC ended up declaring on me w/ ~75 turns to go (I was just trying to survive at this point) and he leveled Moscow a few turns later.

Now that I've read some working strats I'm going to give this another shot and see how it goes.

Thanks for the weekend diversion!

[fluffyflyingpig]

It had an interesting group of AIs, and 2 we couldn't contact until fairly late because we were landlocked and the pangaea was "tokugawared".

Yeah, this made for an interesting scenario. The lack of Iron made things interesting too, in 2 of the games I ended up keeping Toku of all people in phony wars to keep relations at friendly so that he would sell me iron.

Now, taking out the islands and wonder restrictions and giving us iron would make for an interesting conquest game. Standard/Monarch/Normal should be doable with a strong start position.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Well, I think I've managed to persuade myself that my instincts are awful.

First note: I've eliminated Archery. That's a hold over from playing in Full Tilt Barbie mode of late.

Second note: sometime you have to slow down to go faster.

I've did some experimenting last night with the opening race to CoL, and discovered a couple things.

First, that I was jumping onto the gold mine one turn too soon. If I farm the corn, then build the gold mine, the mine is ready when the city is just about to grow to size three. Have to let that happen, otherwise the city doesn't get to size 6 in time.

Second, that the farms on the floodplains can wait - the important worker task at this point is to get the two plains hills mined. There's enough food to get up to size already, and the farms are slow to finish anyway.

Third, and this was the one that really caught me by surprise, is that Pottery is part of the best play...

If I jumped immediately into the CoL beeline, I'd get stuck at size 5 - no wheel to hook up the gold. And this gets clumsy just when CoL comes in; the two turns to get the wheel match the two turns to climb the gold hill, but with the city about to grow you have to make a hammer for food trade.

The stronger line appears to be Agriculture, Wheel, Pottery. The worker improvements are almost the same, except that wheel has come in while still on the gold hill, so it can be connected to the city (via the plains hill) on the way to building the first plains mine. There's just enough time to get the Granary finished before the city grows the last time (I remember watching that to see, since I thought it mattered, but I haven't checked double checked it), and the Library fits neatly into the queue with it. So the 25% research boost comes a little bit sooner, and the scientists start a little bit sooner, and Academy Jack appears a few turns ahead of CoL (rather than on the very last turn).

In all, you are about two turns behind when CoL comes, but everything is ready, and you already have the granary - your growth rate is going to be a lot better. Size seven appears to be where its at (4 specialists).

The oddball quirk that I had to avoid getting tripped up by: in the games where I take the Pottery detour, Caesar founds Hinduism, and it spreads to Moscow. All sorts of goodness comes from that (fortunately, nothing that invalidates the test).

I've burned some cycles trying to work out how to avoid an extra turn of Anarchy, but I've come to the conclusion that I'm kidding myself here; the only viable alternative appears to be to postpone the change to caste system - instead trying to get the temple up to hire a priest, and it doesn't look to me as though that happens fast enough.

The next collection of techs would appear to be Alphabet, Math, Philo, Paper, Education. If I thought Math would be available for trading, I'd probably queue up Alphabet first. As it is, I've been wanting to burn the second scientist on Philosophy (for the civic and the extra temple), and then try to clear Alphabet and backtrade for Bronze.

I suppose the big issue here is CS - how to most efficiently get that out of the way on the run to education. My head is telling me that instead of pounding out pure scientists, I should send one or two of the scientists to the mines to get the temples done, then hire priests and cross fingers. Once the priest has been burned, trade for Masonry and research Literature.

Questions:
How many Scientists do you get before you fire the priests and start researching CS by hand?

When do we lightbulb the scientists (my feeling is Paper = no, Education = yes)?

[sooooo]

I don't think you should lightbulb any techs. The only non-merged GPs in my opinion should be your first scientist (academy) and your first priest if you have founded and spread a religion.

It's difficult to give a tech order, because this is an isolated game with a variant. For a normal game with wonders allowed, see uberfish's very comprehensive article he linked to in his report for a sound tech order.

Of course, it's also fun to figure out new strategies for yourself. For example, you might find a way to oracle/lightbulb nationalism, and set up an infinite draft centre using the globe to go conquer everyone.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Of course, it's also fun to figure out new strategies for yourself. For example, you might find a way to oracle/lightbulb nationalism, and set up an infinite draft centre using the globe to go conquer everyone.

Granted. I just don't find it much fun to reverse engineer someone else's strategy.

No, that's not right. Closer to say that the lack of progress, and the amount of time required to discover that I haven't made any progress, has been frustrating. There's a long stretch in this game where I don't have any signposts to work from, so I can't tell how I'm doing until the AI starts constructing the Apollo program.

The educational bits continue to be fun. [ If you aren't lightbulbing Philosophy, you don't have to research Mathematics first. Also, producing the great work before you are ready to exploit the outer ring is just asking to be interrupted by the AI - breaking news, that one ]

[Blake]

The thing im surprised about is your culture borders with JC.

heh I didn't notice that snippet earlier.

Since this was not an official RBCiv event I was using my mod to improve AI city placement, that's why JC aggressively settled the sweet floodplains near Moscow. It did surprise me that he could drive my culture back, but I guess OCC Cities just aren't so culturally powerful without their standard load of wonders...

[uberfish]

I've got an idea for the next one and will put one up in a week or two if you guys don't mind