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Settler
Local Time: 23:15
Local Date: October 31, 2010
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 1
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Confessions of a later time OCCer
Some years ago I used to play Civilization II. At that time I never searched for strategy tips, just playing to see where I would get all by myself. All in all, it got me to consistently winning a king game. But as I didn't had time to play much, and even when I had I tried to play fast paced games, I never really attained a master player status.
When Civ III went gold, the press buzz turned my attention back to Civ II. I reinstalled the old CD and played a little to remember how it worked. And then I decided to see where people had managed to go with it.
My Google searches brought me here and to a couple of other sites, the most surprising by far being Paul van den Belt' One City Challenge page. What was that? A joke? An evil hoax devised to fool new players into hours upon hours of frustation? Or was it really possible?
Before I fully turned my attentions to OCC I revised the ICS strategy and managed to easily win a Deity/Ragging Hordes/7 Civc game with it. I have heard about it before and it really works (but taking some of the fun out of the game, IMHO).
Then OCC. Was it even possible? Using Paul's strategy guide I could decide that yes, it was possible. Once I was beaten by two years, even launching early.
The point was that the AI would always extract the key techs from my humble city (defended by a couple of ancient warriors, sometimes by an archer) when the space race was about to start. And having too many cities, it could build the ship faster and better than me. Once I managed to almost draw the Celts in 1987, but they won, having launched exactly one turn earlier.
But I could see what was needed. The AI civ must be fooled into believing that some immediate tech is more important. I must have advanced enough ahead of the AI civs to have techs to give that will help then in their wars. So in the city placement I should care a lot about the potential trade, shields being secondary.
I should also care a lot about how many turns my settlers can wander about searching for such a site. In the end I decided out of my head that 3000 BC was the upper limit for settling the city (and even so, only if the site was exceddingly good - 3500 BC is more likely). As I was not playing scenarios, but random generated maps every time, it would always take some restarts until a game could be played.
Then the Wonder problem. Except for Darwin, all wonders listed are mandatory. I sometimes wrongfully traded or given tech to the AI only to have a civ build a key wonder ahead of me (or worst, turn to "my" wonder when it was beaten to a wonder it wanted - as my wonder was usually cheaper, I would be almost always beaten to it in the same turn, without even a chance to rush the building). So I learned that at certain times, it was better to keep away from my allies.
I had luck. I haven't kept a log, but I can remember the key facts well. The Mongols settled what was to be the most glorious city in the world in 3150 BC. I was fortunate in having found enough barbarians willing to defend the city and explore for friends elsewere. Inside the city radius, Iron, Silk, Wheat and Whales.
The city positioning was even better because, by an unkown geographical accident , it was well out of the way of the main civs but had, nevertheless, a direct land path to three potential trading partners.
While still building the Colossus I found first the Greek then the Chinese, and allied myself with both. I later found the Japanese, who wouldn't ally because they disliked the Greek but signed a peace treaty. One important deviation here is that I stopped looking further. I never saw the white "key" civ for tech giving (since I was Pathetic for the duration).
When trade arrived, I delivered my caravans to Chinese cities.
For some reason the Greek never colonized the southern portion of their land, buffering me from the Chinese and the Japanese, and mainly leaving me alone. I was able to grow and research unchecked. I build every Wonder except for Darwin, which an uncontacted civ, the Aztecs I believe, built out of the blue while I was still completing Newton's.
When I build Apolo, the Greeks took notice and sent some troops to talk. I ended up getting away with it by giving them some military techs much needed to destroy the Chinese. The Aztecs also payed a visit, in the form of a destroyer that killed the three ancient warriors defending the city. Unfortunately (for them), ground troops couldn't reach me soon enough. My spaceship flyed alone and reached AC in 1977 while I building up every defensive unit I could in case the Aztecs decided to show in person or the Greeks noticed they were losing it badly.
So I made it in an OCC. Not like the gurus in the logs, who manage to reach AC before the 20th century in the most strange settings, but I didi it anyway. I just think I should post it here as an incentive to those "regular" players like myself, to show that it is possible, it can be done by mere mortals, with just a little bit of luck.
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