I think I just beat the One City Challenge...

[Black Sunrise]

Ok, so I didn't bother looking up the one city challenge,
but I just won, via trancend, 2341, with Zakharov, on transcend difficulty, with Iron Man on.
Feel free to download my last move and tell me why I didn't -technically- do all the OCC requirements....
Oh, I was at peace not at all, and was never allied with more than one AI. The best I could do was to be at peace with two at once.
I was on a little island, I beelind for crawlers, and put crawlers on a forested road around my entire island, so no one would land and cause problems. Eventually, needlejets started picking them off, and for a while, I had about half of my 'beltway' actually crawlered, but it worked fairly well.
I was pretty far behind, and crawlered my way up. Morgan initiated the ascent, then I stole it with massive amounts of mineral production.
It was, btw, my first secret project.
Indra
Black Sunrise

[Black Sunrise]

4. You must build at least 16 secret projects.


sigh. Does 1 count?

Indra

[Wiglaf]

I'm horrible at OCC, so I shouldn't be laughing. Really, it takes a lot of skill to do that. I'll probably dl the game tomorrow to see how you did it.

[cbn]

Good game.

I am trying OCC myself and I find that the hard part is getting all those SPs. I'm in 2295 and I believe I am up to 6 SPs. Getting those SPs certainly use up the crawlers unfortunately. I am also playing with the build no military at all rule (although I do permit upgrades of stolen units). The darn Hive is now needlejetting my crawlers and so far he loses one jet for every crawler he hits. I have a large navy that I probed away and they are now all SAM ships . I'll lt you know how it turns out.

[Nadexander]

Originally posted by cbn
I am trying OCC myself and I find that the hard part is getting all those SPs. I'm in 2295 and I believe I am up to 6 SPs. Getting those SPs certainly use up the crawlers unfortunately. I am also playing with the build no military at all rule (although I do permit upgrades of stolen units). The darn Hive is now needlejetting my crawlers and so far he loses one jet for every crawler he hits. I have a large navy that I probed away and they are now all SAM ships . I'll lt you know how it turns out.

The OCC was always pretty easy for me. The key for me is to get +6 energy per square. That means :
1) Run Free Market
2) Get the merchant exchange. Switch to planned (with ME you are probabyl already getting max 2 energy/sq
3) Once you get indAuto churn out crawlers for minerals until you run out of space.
4) Doc: Flex then 2 sea formers
5) Crank out foil crawlers
6) Bee-line to lifitng energy restrictions. Go PS/FM/knowledge. Build thermocline transducer.
7)Crawl 6 energy. rush build foil crawler. Crawl 6 energy. Repeat until every unused sea square on Planet is raised,tidal harnessed, and crawered
8)Buy every secret project as you get the tech (you should be getting 1 tech per turn). Especially theory of everything, supercollider, longivity vaccine (+50% econ), network backbone, cloning vats, hunter-seeker, space elevator, manifold harmonics
9)Buy infrastructure or clean units (sea formers and interceptors) as neccesary. Get a couple ODPs. Keep making sea crawlers at least every other build.
10)Corner the global energy market or buy the voice of planet and the ascent to trancendance on consectuive turns.

This work particularly well with the pirates, university, or cyborgs. By mid-game you should have a decisive tech lead and should be making more money than you know what to do with. With all this tech and money its pretty easy to bribe the AI into leaving you alone. All in all, the OCC should be a cake walk with this strategy, the key being the 6 energy sea crawlers. Have fun and good luck.

-Nadexander

[Wiglaf]

I'll lt you know how it turns out.

Still going, cbn?

[cbn]

I was away for a little while before coming back to my OCC attempt. Well I did it. I transcended in 2334 with 17 secret projects. I shared a continent with the drones and the Consciousness as I was right between them and had to to a diplo dance as they periodically went to war. The Drones were my pactmates for all but about 10 turns of the game. I could never make peace with everyone but it became almost irrelevant as the Drones seemed to stick a sea base on every empty square in my trawler field.

Some points

1. I lost out big when I ran thought control for a short period. It peeved off Domai and he cancelled our pact. Since ALL my trawlers were technically in his territory they were ALL returned to base. There went about 2/3 of my energy until I could move them back out. he did this despite the fact that his mood was magnanimous and I had gifted him tech the previous turn. Painful lesson

2. I never built one military unit per the challenge rules but Domai kept gifting myself stuff. I always just brought the units to a base and disbanded them toward SPs or whatever. The units were great except for the turn that he gifted me like 15 units and the added support costs meant that my rushbuilt facility was no longer completed that turn. I learned to always overbuy a bit on my rushes to compensate.

3. Both Lal and Morgan attacked from time to time with ships but in this type of game you have scads of cash so I just probed the ships away and upgraded them to SAM and AAA variants to deal with needles. I could never get out of vendetta with these two (running Demo/FM/ Knowledge) but they were far enough away that they pretty much left me alone

4. I do not believe that I saw a Hive or Gaian unit in the game as I was totally surrounded by the other 4. I did notice that the Drones seemed to be munching some of the others a bit. Essentially my buddies were my land shield and I never faced land attack other than by natives.Sea attacks were bribed away.

Settings were a Large randomly generated world with all the middle settings except it was 70-90% water. Random smax factions except I chose University for myself, transcend level. I do not recall if i had ironman turned on or off but I NEVER reloaded.


Actually its a fairly easy game to play but gets a bit tedious at the end.

[Black Sunrise]

I'll be honest with you: I think the way I was playing it is harder than the actual challenge.
Try allowing yourself as little military as possible, and NO probes. Not one. Ever.
I built I think 1 ground attack unit, 2 or 3 interceptors, total.
No ships.
No probes.
The reasoning: It's easy to have one city get a monumental cash flow.
It's hard to have one city get huge mineral output, as mineral outpud has a cap (eco damage).
So maintaining a military is much much harder.
And you have to earn every tech you get.
Try it that way. Haven't won it yet with 16 projects, no military, and no probes, but I'm getting closer.
Indra

[cbn]

Black Sunrise

I may have to try it your way. Either probes or a military can deal with a military threat but allowing yourself neither could be tough. Building the secret projects was was the hardest since many of them were of little or no value and I was only building them to meet the challenge criteria. I actually made the mistake of building uneeded early ones since I had never paid proper attention to the large number of SPs that appear toward the end of the tech tree.

In retrospect I should have ignored perhaps three earlier SPs in favor of even more trawlers and crawlers. Near the end of the game I was getting a tech a turn at 70% Lab allocation so I could have outright purchased a few extra SPs along the way