CIVIII and its impact on OCS

[ShuShu]

When you are old and bald and creeky such as myself, the arthritic fingers can handle just so much clicking. Aeson's Impi swarms are just not feasable.

The One City Strategy (OCS) has immense appeal because it reduces clicks as well as play time. It won't win you any contests, but it is an interesting challenge and fairly dependable.

I believe it is time to outline some specifics. I practice OCS on Emperor with a Pangea. The AI production on Deity is too high, and Isolation kills the single city.

The other point I need to make is that I do not play a purists OCS. I am allowed to build other cities.


Enough of the intro, time for the observations:

Wonders are at the heart of any OCS strategy, and the CIVIII OCS strategy is no different. However, the reason has changed. In earlier versions, the Wonders served to advance your civilization technologically so that it could beat up the enemy via space or military in the end game. In CIVIII, the wonders are there to win the cultural race.

POINT 1: CIVIII OCS victory will be 20K culture in capital city.

To that end Great Library is important because of the 12 culture points it will contribute per turn, not because of the techs that you will otherwise have to buy.

The Colossus and Hanging Gardens and Oracle are also nice. I find that I can usually get 2 of the 4. Fortunately, the Research buildings are also the best cultural buildings. Research becomes improtant in the fourth age, as players become less willing to trade technology. At first I found this to hinder OCS because you would invariably fall behind to 10 ton gorilla that has been gobbling up the other notions. But the shift in emphasis from Space Race to cultural victory turns this into an advantage.

POINT 2: Never trade space race technologies in the fourth age.

I found myself coming in second in the space race when a cultural victory was only years away. Keep your eye on the prize. You want to slow down the global research rate to give your city time to reach 20K.

The biggest problem with early civ OCS strategies was keeping the other nations off of your land. CIVIII makes life much easier. Whereas earlier versions required you to choose between the wonder or the border town to build a military force, CIVIII makes that decision go away.

POINT 3: The sooner nations colonize next to your city, the sooner you will have more than one city.

Your, cultural powerhouse city will overwhelm the cultural ratings of the civ that builds next to you. Proximity to your capital will do the rest. When you get the first convert, BUILD A BARRACKS and military. When you get your second convert build a granary and settlers. Your settlers sole purpose is to control resources. Control resources to get something to trade. Trade to make friends. Never fight a war, you will lose.

Now that your city is 100% dedicated to culture/wonder building, the question is how.

POINT 4: Choose a race that can build a wonder from the start.

After building two warriors to preserve the peace and protect agains barbarians, it is time to start building a Wonder. You cannot build a wonder without the tech for a wonder, so make sure you have one to start with.

POINT 5: Rush wonders whenever possible.

Okay, I lied. After two warriors, you need to build a granary, because that will rush your growth and growth boosts production and production means faster Wonders. Also, build on a river because it doubles your production (pop of 12 vs pop of 6). You won't have construction before the first wonder completes. Pay cash for that factory and THEN return to wonder building. You can rush the factory. Take time out to build the temple. You need it to assimilate the neighbors.

POINT 6: Its all about the bucks.

Research only serves to increase the wonders available. Go for the high culture wonders. only use wonders like SunTsu as a holding place for Copernicus or Newton. Plan on buying/trading all of your techs in the first two ages. Get them cheap in the third, and stray from the space race in the fourth. As such, research the minimum until the third age. Research to Lieteracy at 40 turns a pop but buy it if available sooner. Be careful, you can easily complete pyramids in fewer than 100 turns, so complete a cheaper wonder first and restart the Great Library build quicker if you are not getting help racing towards Literacy.

POINT 7: My friend's enemy is my friend.

Maintain peace with all. Acceed to everyone's demands. Do that and your friend's will goblle each other up. When they do, unclaimed land opens up. Be ready to claim it. Focus more on resources than city desirability. Most of these cities will never amount to much, but their trade value will. Pay cash for a library in every new city. You barracks city is still producing defensive units, right?

Well, that's just about all of the points. I have used this strategy with the Iriquois(found wonder in huts), the Americans, and the French (managed to trade Alphabet for a wonder early) with success. All the games used culture, all the games ended without a shot fired except at barbarians. All the games were close (space ships assembling by the leader).

[Arrian]

Wouldn't Egypt be a good civ for this? Start with Masonry (Pyramids), and Ceremonial Burial (early temple).

Babylon would also be good for this, assuming you start on the coast (start with bronzeworking -> Colossus).

-Arrian

[alexman]

Yes, the Babs are the ultimate OCC civ.

Commercial is garbage anyway, but even more so when you don't have corruption.

Industrious is great in general, but not when you have to improve terrain for only one city.

Millitaristic won't do you any good since you're not going to be fighting. (Okay, besides that cheap harbor)

Expansionist is OK, but the early tech advantage from goody huts will disappear fast once you reach the middle ages. You're better off chosing another trait and building some warriors to meet other civs so you can trade.

That leaves scientific, and religious. Five high-culture buildings half price, three free techs, and no anarchy. No brainer: Hamurabi!

[ShuShu]

... But I have difficulty with Babylon.

While the Colossus is nice, it is hard to find a river/port location with 12 good production squares. Combine that with no techs anybody wants and a slow construction crew, and I find Babylon rapidly becomes a cultural expansion/space race game rather than an OCS style. The flip side is that my leader board is mostly red...

I have not given Egypt enough tries. I agree that the combination is appealing, but they kept ending up near flood plains and deserts when I tried them... Another key point that I didn't mention, is that the improved worker speed, makes a huge difference in the early wonder race, and that too plays in Egypt's favor. I guess I'll have to give them another try...

[ShuShu]

... Axelman

Industrious is important because you net an extra 25-50 shields in the first hundred turns.

Commercial is nice because EVERYONE wants alphabet, plus you are only 80 turns from the Great Library.

Expansionist is nice because those goody huts contain Temples and early wonders.

Religious is good because of cheap temple, and quick break even (in switch to republic) if you have two or more hill mines

Scientific brings nothing to the table. The Great Library gets you Monotheism (or buy it), Nationalism is a useless tech (for a civilization that never fights a war) and Rocketry has no relevance as its the Computer/Nuclear path for the culture. The cheap construction costs mean little because it is saving only a turn or two, buy the time it comes to build the library and university (post copernicus, pre-newton)

Militarty seems to buy nothing.

[alexman]

I still think Industrious is very poor for this. I agree it makes a difference in the beginning of the game, but this difference is not even the price of half a temple. You can use only as many tiles as you have citizens, and when you have one city, your worker can usually keep up to your population increase. If not, you're growing very fast and you will need to make another worker soon to keep unhappiness under control (since you're not building settlers). Two workers can certainly handle things!

As for Commercial, granted, Alphabet costs as much as Ceremonial Burial and Bronze Working combined. But that's basically the only advantage of the trait for the entire game! I think you place too much emphasis on starting techs.

The main advantage of Scientific are the half price libraries, universities and reseach labs. Hardly "nothing to the table"! But the free techs are nice too, provided you can sell them to an AI that doesn't have them.

We more or less agree on the rest.

Having said all that, I probably don't have the right to argue with your experience, as I have played only one OCC game (yes, as the Babs).

[ShuShu]

... AXELMAN.

POINT 8:
OCS is won in the early stages. And defended the rest of the game...

In CIV II, OCS was about COLOSSUS and the research Buildings. Winning hinged on that exact path.

In CIV III, OCS is about building enough buildings to get your perturn culture rate over 100 by the fourth age. If you don't build those early wonders, you will never make it.

[Alkis]

I play on Emperor and aim for a space victory. Although my builder strategy serves me well I always look for lazier ways to win.

So I tried your culture strategy and won but I must have made several mistakes because I achieved cultural victory on 1960!!. That's really late, isn't it? In order to do that I had to make sure that the leaders of the game would be in a war constantly. Another dissapointing thing is that I could have built the spaceship anyway and I could finish the game a lot earlier doing that.

The maximum culture I got from my capitol was 89 per turn. What I want to ask you, is when do you normally win? Also how much culture per turn does your city have just before winning?

I think that the race I chose was not the best. I took the Babylonians and had to lose some tempi moving around till I found a coast. I think the Egyptians would have been better. Also the expansionist trait, one that I never use, may be interesting.

One idea which may be an improvement is to build a temple before any warriors. I think you should try it.

-

[ShuShu]

I ring the bell in the mid to late 1700's. I also have over 100 culture per turn.

I used to build the temple first but sicovered the following.

1) If a milataristic civ finds you before you have a warrior, game over.

2) If a barabarian finds you before you have a warrior, game over.

3) The number of culture you lose in the early stages is less than one turn at the end of the game.

4) Temple followed by two warriors takes longer than two warriors followed by Temple, and it is the race to the wonders that really matters.

5) Expansionist is great. Playing the Egypt I found I really missed the scout when looking for my starting location.

[kimmygibler]

To me, a true OCC can only be one by launch. I know deity launches were achieved on the previous versions. What about the newest version? Has anyone done it? Mabye someone can direct me to the thread.

[Alkis]

I think the subject here is not OCC, but rather culture victory and how to achieve it. After all Shushu admits that he is allowed to have more than one city.

Shushu, I agree with you about the scientific trait, it's pretty much worthless. Also your observations about temple first are interesting. On the other hand having a temple really early may be more than one turn in the late stages. Anyway, tell me please how many of the ancient wonders do you actually manage to build. I don't have your experience of course but in my experiments I only manage to build 2 wonders, the Gl being one them always.

Do you build a second city? In my last experiment I went, temple-warrior-settler and the settler after he founds city builds another warrior who goes to the capitol. Also the second city builds more workers who eventually join the wonder city.

I haven't finished that game yet but I want to tell you that I chose the Egyptians. More on that later.

A clever way to build the temple quickly is to cut a forest. If you are industrious this will take 5 turns. Btw I was near the Germans who are militaristic and they didn't try to get my undefended city.

-

[Christantine The Great]

I think I'll try a regent one with the Babs. I'm going to aim for 2 cows an a wheat in my starting position. I'll tell you the results.

[Alkis]

The last post got me thinking...

So, I have to say that maybe our settings are different. I play standard map, random settings and accept every terrible position the AI gives me. But maybe some positions are not meant to be won in this way.

-

[ShuShu]

... in general. Occasionally I get more but not often. I believe you are also correct that the gist of my thread is that CivII's OCC is now a cultural victory race in CivIII.

Location, location, location... Check out Aeson's thread about his terrible starting location. In addition to watching a master at work, I held a conversation with him about the risk/reward of searching for better ground.

Bottom line, do not settle until you find a river site that will host 20+ production at size 12.

Interesting thought about building workers to pump up the wonder city. I think that will more than offset the loss in tempo from building that settler, especially when you are adding the workers after size 6. I will need to try it...

Christantine
With that start position on regent, your biggest problem is going to be over production, you will be finishing wonders with no new wonder to begin. You will need to make contact and trade for wonder techs.

[Gaius Marius]

Great thread - I, too, am an OCC junkie.

Something that might be fun for those of us that play this way is a repository of 1st turn saves for OCC games.

By this I don't necessarily mean somewhere to stick that "8 cattle and 3 whales + all resources" position that makes OCC, honestly, easy (though that could go there, certainly). It would be nice, though, to put games that are interesting for OCC for some reason - on an island with certain resources but not others, in the middle of 3 militaristic civs, etc.

Most of this could naturally be designed through the editor (to make challenging OCC "scenarios"), but I find that, more than you might think, each OCC game has its own terrain and placement quirks that, since you only have one city, greatly affect strategy. Seeing how different players respond to this kind of thing might make OCC more fun/interesting and make better players out of us.

Just an idea...

[Christantine The Great]

For my first OCC I think I did fairly good. I got the cultural victory in 1955. The wonders I had:

Oracle
Pyramids
Great Wall
Great Library
Hanging Gardens
Sistine Chapel
Sun Tzu (I was saving up for JS Bach's but I found that no one else was doing it, so I decided to keep it)
JS Bach's

I also had:

Temple
Library
University
Cathedral
Coliseum
Granery

I decided to just play one where Babylon was close to a wheat and a lake instead of two cows.

I was trying for Free Artistry for the Globe, but someone demanded Democracy from me, spread it around, and soon everyone was doing it. I was beaten by 4 turns.

[Geekinstein]

Shouldn't this be called "1CS" and five city "5CS"?

...I get ICS and OCS confused...

...but then, on the other hand, 1CS and ICS looks too close also...

[playshogi]

So far, I haven't been able to win with this strategy on Emperor. My best start was 4 game squares, no river, and I was able to build Colossus, Oracle, Great Library and Hanging Gardens. Ultimately, got Copernicus, but was beaten to everything else. Built Magellan when I get beat out for Newton and JS Bach. At 1315 AD I had 7475 points and 66/turn, but the Aztecs decided to wipe me out at that point. I suppose my biggest mistake was refusing a demand from the Aztecs for Monarchy. At the time, I was 21 turns from building HG and was afraid someone would beat me to it. Big mistake, I guess. Also, it seems if you "accidentally" trespass on AI territory early in the game, they will eventually attack you, too. Another game, I played I reached over 17000 points before losing by space race.
In that game, I caved in to all demands and never trespassed.

[ShuShu]

... and never get into any fights is required unless you have cultured a lot of cities and have a war factory that is...

I hope you weren't trading any techs in the late game when you lost the space race...

because of the culture acquisition maybe the strategy should be called One to Many City Strategy...

[Gaius Marius]

I play strictly OCS - that is, no more cities, even if by culture. This isn't to dis the OCS + culture switched cities variant- I may try it and it is definitely a cool CIV III addition to the OCS game.

But, I do find that wars are sometimes useful. It is the only way to get leaders, and sometimes is useful in a "Let's you and him fight" strategy so that wars slow down other people's development.

Some random notes on OCS wars:

- Basically, I never get into a war with my nearest neighbor unless I can't avoid it. They aren't so bad before the advent of Cavalry makes war more lethal, but before then you need to be concentrating on the next wonder. After Cavalry, especially your neighbor has a tech or resource advantage (which they nearly always do), you will lose.

-Wars with enemies further afield can be fun and profitable, though. Their supply lines are long, and you can usually hold out against the long trickle of units they send (getting hopefully promotions and leaders). If you have the tech, you can hit some of their outlying cities to force a peace treaty as well.

-This can work especially well when a country has to go through someone's territory to reach you. If you see that an attack force is approaching, try to get the intervening power to join in an alliance vs. the aggressor. Almost always the two will end up fighting - and it is very bloody, since the state which you were originally at war with has forces in the third state's territory. This usually ends up in one of the two being effectively eliminated, maybe because some other power intervened as well. When things really heat up, any of the powers at war with you will see you as the least of their worries and likely sue for peace.

Cataclysmic world wars are great for quiet culture building.

[ShuShu]

As long as its not your city getting pounded. I hadn't thought of the Fortify the boarders to get promotions trick. I may have to try it.

I also hadn't thought about the pick a fight so you can hire allies to fight it for you trick.

I agree, you need wars to slow down everyone's trading. You just don't want them fought on your 21 tiles of the world...

[playshogi]

The river is extremely important. With it I was able to compete in another try as the Babs. It's 1070 AD and I already have 8304 points and 76/turn. Only 154 turns from victory! (What year will that be?) Right now, the race is to build Newton, but I'm slipping badly in tech. One city flipped to me and using it I built 2 more hoping to culture bomb a few more cities, but not much luck there. These 3 cities are contributing about 51 beakers, so I think that helps.

No, I didn't lose the space race because I traded space techs. I never made it to the 4th age.

Question to Gaius. What level are you playing? How can you take time out to build military if you're trying to win by 1 city culture method?

[Alkis]

The way I play is entirely different. I don't care much about one city challenges. All I am interested in is a lazy way to win (I am also old btw).

I build a settler and the second city builds more settlers eventually. In the game I won as the Babs I was first in technology, population (with just 13 cities) and even military (in the end).

I use diplomacy a lot. A nice way to slow down the AI is to have them fighting each other. You start a war and at some point you leave and let them continue by themselves.

I have a starting location, it's a good one but nothing great. Just in case someone is interested, I will put the file here. Maybe we can play the same position and see each other's strategies.

The starting location has a river and a game and a cow and a wheat but it isn't costal. Our tribe is the Egyptians. Barbarians set to roaming. Standard map, Emperor level. Here it is.

[Gaius Marius]

I have won OCC culture victories on Regent and Monarch. If you check other threads, you'll see that OCC LAUNCH victories have been done on Deity, but I don't know if this has been accomplished in v1.21f.

Anyway, the point is, a limited war strategy works on these levels. It may or may not work on Deity.

Usually the production of my city is large enough that I can produce most units before Cavalry in 1-3 turns. Especially if there is a time when I have no wonder to build, this means that an army can be built quickly.

Also, since usually at least one of the first three resources is missing (iron, horses, saltpeter), it is possible to build large armies of units quickly, trade for the msising resource, and upgrade them. 10 turns of Horsemen @ 1 per turn + some gold = nice Knights or Cavalry army. Same is true for, say, spearmen-musketmen.

[Alkis]

I also heared about OOC launch victories on Deity but they were done under "certain conditions" as far as I know. I dare say that if an honest person plays standard map random settings he will not win one game out of 20 no matter how good he is.

So essentially these players bring about a position that is winnable and then try to prove that it is.

Emperor level, culture victory, conclusions:
This, I think, is possible but not at all lazy. To win a spacerace is a lot easier. In my game as the Egyptians I built a second city, then many workers who were added to the wonder city eventually. I managed to build The Oracle, The Pyramids, The GL and the HG. The Pyramids gave me a golden age which enabled me to build the other wonders. At one point I had 27 shields production (in the ancient age).

Why then am I not satisfied? Because later on I colonized all of my island (yes the starting position is on an island) and I had a position where I was (I am) very strong in everything.

I just entered the modern age (the others are still in the industrial) and I can win a culture victory in another 60 turns or so but (and this is the important point) I can win in other ways too. The simplest would be to build the spaceship. Therefore, going for a culture victory is neither quick, nor easy.

Also waiting for the wonder to be built before the other civs and especially when there are only two turns left can make an old man have a heart attack

-

[Alkis]

Just for the record I won said game on 1808 by culture victory. My culture output was 120 per turn. Number of cities 23 IIRC.

Two things I consider important:
1) Have a second city to add workers to the capitol
2) As Shushu said, the game is won in the early stages, so a golden age in the ancient era is desirable.

-

[playshogi]

That's a lot of cities! No wonder you think its a lot of work. The best thing about SCC (single city culture win) is you shouldn't have to build so many. I got a (diplomatic win in 1766) with only 6 cities and the 6th city a got by way of culture flip late in the game when I didn't need it. For a long time, I was doing fine with 4 cities until I needed that coal resource 2 squares beyond my border. My handy settler was available when the existing city on the coal square got razed by the AI. I built Colossus, Oracle, Great Library, Hanging Gardens, Great Lighthouse, Sistine, Copernicus, Bach, Newton, Shakes., ToE, Hoover, UN and 3 small wonders.
I never attacked nor was attacked. Maybe, not being attacked at all is a lucky exception? This game was the Babs on Emperor, my first win on that level. I was 5-6 turns away from SCC win when I built the UN and took a chance to win a few turns early.

[ShuShu]

Is more in line with my pacing. Those of you who are winning in the 1800's or later, I agree a space launch is feasible and quicker.

Alkis, I am impressed that you could win early wonder races on an island, I find I just can't get the techs quickly enough to build them when I cannot trade for them.

Playshogi, a lifetime of peace is not a lucky outcome. I find most of my games happen that way.