Hi there, all OCC-players!

I just finished my first OCC game (I must have only ONE city during the entire game with deity/raging and win by landing to AC). For me it was a learning and practising game where I did loaded a couple of times (which is of course strictly forbidden in the OCC-rules!) as well as I had TWO cities for two turns!

So why did I had two cities? That happened when suddenly I found out that one my of precious mined hill tile was occupied by another city. I went out to find out and there was a newly built allied French city. I moved my military unit on that tile but that didn't help. Is this because of alliance? So I bribed that city and rush-built a settler to remove it and then I disbanded that settler. And my question, what should I have done to obey strictly OCC-rules? I really coulnd't afford losing permanently a city square?

The instance I loaded was that I really badly wanted an alliance with Aztek who had a lot of money and he demanded me to go to war with my neighbor French and I did that.. in a hope that I can negotiate a cease fire afterwards. Well, French really got mad with me and sent a bunch of dragoons to pest me

I really didn't want to wage war against them (I was building a wonder and didn't had too many defenging units) so I learned that NEVER EVER go to war with your neighbor!

I had an interesting end game My long time ally English who was biggest and from whom I got thousands of gold as gifts got weary of our alliance when I got space flight and wanted it. I refused (of course!) and soon the evil queen of England was sending a huge army of armors, artilleries and bombers towards my precious Washington. I was lucky that there were many no-road tiles between English empire and me I had to stop building structurals and built barracs, then my own armors and bombers. Then I build a nice trap: I sent my engineer to build a fortress to a mountain choke point five squares from my city and fortified a couple of armors there. Then I watched how the pile of English iron rubbish grew under my mountain

I managed to land at 1894 and just for fun continued the game to see how I would do by conquest with my only city. My city built a howie every turn and a stealth bomber every second and it's really incredible how strong they are when enemy had all his cities railroad connected! I just went on conquering, rush-building barracks and then more howies/mech infantries in all my new cities and in 30 turns I had conquered the French and Babylonians, captured London and seeing England divide into two empires (half of her cities became Viking). I took all the main cities of both as well as the Azteks' I really had a lot of fun!!

[Scouse Gits]

As you discovered - you can't displace allied 'workers' from city squares - the trick if that is the right word is to ensure that your city is using all squares that might be available to an allied city - this may mean that you are suboptimal for a short time - but as you found - you cannot afford to lose the square.

Bribing the city was I fear a no-no - your only real choice was to reduce it to rubble - either by repeated attacks (without city walls) or by poisoning down to 1 and then flattening it - in fact the poisoning trick would reduce the number of workers and then you would be able to reclaim the mine - of course your carefully conserved alliance is unlikely to survive these tactics.

A better bet would have been to have had a few none units placed as scouts to keep closer tabs on the immediate surroundings - a settler will not found with a military unit in an adjacent square (even an allied one) - I believe this to be fact not urban myth - but can anyone else comment??? - and that allows you to avoid the embarrassment in the first instance

Hope this helps,

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Scouse Git[1]

"CARTAGO DELENDA EST" - Cato the Censor
"The Great Library must be built!"
"A short cut has to be challenging,
were it not so it would be 'the way'." - Paul Craven

[East Street Trader]

I have not seen an AI settler found a city while I have a unit nearby. I sometimes make use of this so as to harrass a neighbour early on.

Outside of OCC I do not maintain alliances with AI neighbours so can't say if that makes a difference.

Thanks Gits & EST for your answers I think that it's better use those scouting NON-units to prevent AI city building nearby.

For the destroying city matter I thought that subverting that damn city and disbanding it then would be better off to my reputation than destroying it with military. Is this so? By subverting I managed to keep the alliance though French wasn't too enthuastic toward me afterwards..

[Hueij]

quote: I thought that subverting that damn city and disbanding it then would be better off to my reputation than destroying it with military.

You thought right But if you have two cities it isn't an OCC game anymore, no matter how you got that second city...