England's Glory: An OCC challenge.

[connorkimbro]

OCC game 2
Settings:

Warlord
standard map size
roaming barbarians
pangaea, 80%water coverage, normal, temperate climate, aged 5 bil years
random rivals

I wanted to try a somewhat different strategy with this game, so I chose the English. I really havn't figured out the best civ trait combination for OCC games yet, but i'm not so sure that Industrious is as necessary as it is for normal style games. In this game I wanted expansionist, in order to take advantage of the pangaea style continent, and meet my opponents MUCH earlier, and i also wanted to compare commercial verses religious. Anarchy sucks, but the extra commerce should make up for it. We'll see how it goes! I'm including the save game if anyone else wants to give it a shot. Don't embarass me too bad, if you do.

[connorkimbro]

bc4000 - Hmm, not a bad opening position. That river is damn tempting, but food won't be nearly as important as that gold and mountain will be. being right on the ocean will give me a shot at colossus, which can combine with newtons and copernicus to create an SSC as well. If things go well, Alpha Centauri just might be possible. Lets hope for the best. I move the settler up one square to the left, and start building a road in the starting square. Also, the fish and spices are a nice addition

bc3950 - London founded
bc3850 - contact with the russians, very close by. Got bronze working for alphabet. Great! Now i can build colossus.
bc 3750 - contact with the french, to the east of the russians. Got masonry for pottery and bronze working.
bc 3300 - london builds a second scout (after having build a warrior for defense) starts on colossus
bc 3200 - contact with germans, got warrior code for alphabet. sold warrior code to france for 10 gold
bc 3050 - contact with babylonians. they offer ceremonial burial, but i'm to discover it next turn anyway, so i turn them down.
bc ? - i made contact with the persions sometime here, but forgot to log when, they didn't have anything interesting for me anyway.
bc2350 - with the discovery of mysticim, i'm ahead of all known civs by at least one tech. i don't expect this lead to last, but it's nice for now.
bc1250 - france has a one tech lead on me, but i just got iron working and discover that the one mountain next to me has iron in it! what luck. that should significantly help production.
bc 1150 - colossus completed. i take 2 turns to build another worker before switching to another wonder. also, GA begins
bc 450 - switch to monarchy.
bc 350 - i'm on top, techwise again
bc 310 - enemy civs complete oracle and pyramids, i switch to hanging gardens
bc 50 - gardens complete. start on great library
30 ad - complete road connections to other civs. trade mathmatics to russia for wines and some gold.
50 ab - tied with france and babylon for tech lead
320 - behind several of the other civs by a few techs now. the GL should catch me up nicely
380 - it's obvious i can't stay ahead through research now, so i change all commerce to tax, and start purchasing techs.
420 - aztechs finish GL. dammit. i'd have finished in 6 turns. i switch to great wall, as it's the only other wonder available, and i don't want to waste all those shields
430 - somehow the french finished the GL too, this turn now i'm starting to get creeped out. Great Wall finished
950ad - switch to republic
1170ad - i was prebuilding sistene chaple with sun tsu's. it was the only wonder available. this turn, the aztechs finished sun tsu's, so i made a mad dash to get theology, and switched to sistene. i hope nobody finishes before me.
1315 - the persians completed sistenes chapel. i had 6 turns left to go. dammit! this game isn't going as well as last game. i switched to marketplace. hopefully the extra income will help me buy techs faster, so im not so behind in building the wonders. perhaps i should have built the marketplace earlier, like i did in my last game.
1360 - france got copernicus. this game is probably over at this point, other civs are just too far ahead, it seems. i'll keep playing for a bit though, maybe i can catch up.
1365 - babylon completes js bachs. not looking good.
1515 - france completes newtons. i'm starting to catch up in tech, actually. france and russia and i forget who else are several techs in the lead at the moment though.
1640 - french destroy persians. they're about to destroy the russians as well.
1675 - switch to democracy
1768 - completed shakespears theater. yeah!!!
1820 - i think i've narrowed the tech gap some, but those french are still way ahead, and are sure are on a rampage. this turn they eliminate the germans.
1948 - bah. i'm giving up on this game. everyone else is just too far ahead. i think everyone being close together caused people to fight more, and then rich got richer faster, poor got poorer faster. I couldn't trade techs back and forth enough to keep even, because the ones that were behind me couldn't afford the techs i had, and eventually were eliminated. this caused the french and babylonians (and aztechs, to a lesser extent) to just grow much much faster. I'm doing alright culture wise, but i won't win by the deadline. Also, i should have perhaps moved north instead of east, that way i'd get both of golds in that mountain, and have more inland tiles instead of all that ocean to work with. I didn't need the fish like i thought i would at first. It was a learning experience.

[punkbass2000]

I once discussed OCC strategy with Sir Pleb and we discussed the usefulness of the traits. I believe that only Religious, Scientific and Expansionist are useful in OCC games. Militaristic is of no value as you shouldn't be in any wars, Commercial is useless because your empire isn't large anyway, and Industrious has some value, but not much, as your one worker can improve things about as fast as you need it to anyway. Religious and Scientific are obviously useful for half price culture and expansionist should be as useful as it is in a normal game, ie. if there's lots of land it will be worthwhile.

[hr_oskar]

Similar conclusion that I had come to - Expansionistic is a no-brainer, Scientific probably second (especially because of the free techs), and Religious third (for the short anarchy).

Anyone ever completed OCC Conquest??? Perhaps I'll try that in Warlord...

[connorkimbro]

OCC conquest? how would that work? lol.

OCC science or diplomatic, sure, but conquest or domination involves, well, taking other cities.

religious/scientific was going to be my next attempt.

[hr_oskar]

No, that's the thing - Conquest doesn't necessarily involve taking other cities. Just raze 'em all!

Invasions without the support of captured cities are admittedly rather difficult, but possible still. But hey, Warlord/tiny/pangaea - I think I'll try it

You're forgetting the 20k culture win, which in my mind is the most obvious one for OCC. I tried it in Monarch, but it was kind of daunting; can't say I wouldn't have managed in the end though (everything's possible, just ask Aeson ) ...

[Sean]

An interesting experiment Conner. And the report made excellent reading. A shame it didn't work out . Still the game is designed to favour large empires, even as it tries to punish large empires...

[alva]

Originally posted by hr_oskar
Similar conclusion that I had come to - Expansionistic is a no-brainer,

What do you mean here??? bad or good???

While i agree, that at first glance it is easy to dismiss expansionist for an occ game, but it does have it's merits.
Namely: goodie-huts, especially on a pangea game this can be so very usefull. Getting a few extra free tech can make a big difference IMHO.
any comments?

[hr_oskar]

I mean that it's good for OCC

We might say that any attribute which provides absolute benefits are what we should look for in OCC, while relative benefits are less beneficial.

Examples of absolute benefits: 1 free tech per era (no matter how big your civ is); goodie-huts always good, can build scouts; 1-turn anarchy

Examples of relative benefits: cheaper improvements (the more cities, the more shields it saves you); easy promotions (the more units, the more benefit); faster workers; reduced corruption

By this logic, I find that Expansionistic and Scientific are the most useful (Russians for OCC?), while Religious is also good (depending on your agenda).

Played that Warlord OCC Conquest game btw, on a small pangaea map, Zulus. It was kind of a walk-in-the-park, so I quit playing after a while; basically just a crazy archer-rush, one civ after another, then switched to Horsemen and on with the show...

Think I'll rather start again with the same challenge, but either Regent or even Monarch, to make it worth the effort.

[connorkimbro]

hr_oskar: be sure to keep a nice game log, and share your results with us! i'd like to learn from your experiences. . .

[ToeTruck]

That was a very enjoyable game. Thanks, connorkimbro, for the start position and the challenge.

I started with the intention of trying for a spaceship victory, but found myself able to build wonders that are usually out of reach under deity: Sistine Chapel and Shakespeare's theater.

As a result, I found myself in the Industrial Ages with a ton of culture and not enough time to shoot for a spaceship. My end result was a 1936 AD Cultural Victory with the immensely entertaining score of 316!

I've attached my log and the save game from 1934. I've also attached the save from 1025BC, the turn before the Great Library was built.

If I were to reload, I would try from the 1025BC save and be more aggressive in sharing techs. Since I ended up with over 28,000 gold, I know the game has a lot of room for optimization.

The one thing that surprised me was the extent to which the AI was willing to pay gpt for techs. I had offers of 70+ per turn from both the Aztecs and the Iroquois for over half the game. That (and Shake's) allowed me to keep research at 100% for quite a while.

Talk to you all later.

- TT

[connorkimbro]

Congrats ToeTruck! You're a better player than I! I'm glad you enjoyed my challenge. I'll be sure to download your log and saved game, and see how you did things better than I did.