OCC: A Fresh Perspective

[RedFred]

I finally got around to giving the basic One City Challenge (OCC) a shot. Up to this point I had only attempted and completed one other challenge: the "build all the SPs" one.

My thought was that OCC would be extremely difficult and only suitable for the top notch players. This turned out not to be the case. In fact, the SP challenge was much harder for me. It was easy to build most Secret Projects, difficult to build all but one or two, and extremely difficult to get them all.

I succeeded in the basic OCC challenge on my second attempt. I played Cha Dawn and I was up against: the Gaians, UoP, Morganites, CC, Data Goofs, and UoP. Running Dem, Green, Knowledge I was only in SE conflict with Morgan until near the end of the game when CC got irritable because I ran Eudaimonic.

The lack of frontrunner status for a change was so pleasant. No evil random events, and a huge diplomatic bonus to boot. I had off and on wars with Morgan and the Gaians but for at least half of the game I was treatied or pacted with everyone.

Settings: transcend, random maps, directed research, standard sized map, default everything else. SPs built: only the ME, Supercollider, ToE, Voice and Ascent. The Vats might have been a good one to nab as well, since in the first attempt I lost four or five turns away from building the Ascent. The Gaians kept cranking out carbon copies of themselves and then voted Deirdre in as supreme leader.

UoP and CC really encroached my territory down to next to nothing, so I survived by poaching friends' and pactmates' resources with my crawlers and sea crawlers. My worst moment was when CC downgraded me from pactmate to friend, instantaneously teleporting dozens of sea crawlers home.

Another bad moment was when one of my pactmates (CC) accepted cash for the destruction of another (Gaians). I continued to whine at her to call off her war and, much to my surprise, she eventually did.

My thought (no doubt to be instantly disputed by those who know better ) was that the Cult is as good of faction as any for this type of challenge. I was able to resolve a few early conflicts with my native army that I then put to work combing the fungus of my pactmates' territories for worms for more cash.

In summary, this is an excellent beginner challenge. I was able to transcend at 2316 which is better than I often do with a couple dozen cities and double blind research. If anyone wants a look at my .sav, let me know.

[Sarxis]

Send it to me!

I have never accepted the OCC challenge, but I would like to see what you have done.

koba@home,com

[Googlie]

Impressive, RedFred.

Instinctively I would have thought that playing an OCC as the Cult was a bit masochistic.

But you are right about trying to keep from warring with anyone for any length of time. The "anodyne" factions are maybe best suited for this type of game. (My earliest was with the Pirates, who have no aversions, and seem to get on with everyone).

I've OCC's with the Gaians, Hive, Pirates and PK's, but never with the Believers, despite about 20 attempts. I'd have to think that's one of the harder ones (but again, I'd have thought that re the Cult, too)

Did you actually start the Ascent, or rush in and build/complete after another faction commenced?

G.

[RedFred]

Hi Googlie, and thanks again for restarting me from my crash.

I was able to complete the Voice and get started on the Ascent before any of the AI factions got going. So, of course, they switched SPs in midstream and had an early mineral lead. But it wasn't close. I didn't have to resort to hitting on the AI for loans or cash in many crawlers. Only redeemed a few land crawlers on endangered land and some sea crawlers that were suddenly working +3 energy fungus instead of +6 tidal harnesses after the Voice kicked in.

It didn't seem too bad to be late off the mark building a hab dome. Getting past 14 is great, but with #$%^%$ AI factions encroaching like mad, you can't hit the max number of workers of about 20. You lose your GA after you get too many specialists. Normally the specialists are even better, but with one city it is not as clear cut. Depending on your SE, all your energy crawlers could get a -1 hit. I guess I could have tried to kill my food production by unimproving tiles.

BTW, so which factions do you consider "anodyne"?

[zsozso]

RedFred,

If you want to make OCC harder, then combine with Zero Facility challenge: i.e. you can have only one city, and cannot build any facilities in it (you can keep what comes free with your faction if any).

You can even further tighten it by not allowing to build Secret Projects (except Voice and Ascent of course). Further step is to forbid military units too, even harder to also forbid putting armor on supply/former/probe units.

But it is _still_ possible to do it even with all these restrictions in place. I did it with Gaians (plain SMAC).

Then tried an even harder version in SMACX, where I was not allowed to make friends or pact with anybody (in addition to all the above restrictions) and chose the opponents to be the most agressive ones. This one I failed every time I tried (made about 5-6 attempts).

Zsozso

[RedFred]

There is no question that the zero facility challenge much, much harder, zsozso. Successful completion is an amazing accomplishment. IMO, harder by far than the advanced version of OCC where you are not allowed to build any military. Looking into my crystal ball, I see crawlers, many many crawlers.

I find it interesting and instructive that your faction of choice for fastest transcend challenge and the zero facility challenge was the Gaians. I do a lot of random faction games but I have always liked the "Green" game of the Gaians and the Cult the best. Most of my best results have been with one or the other.

[zsozso]

Using the Gaians allows some 'bending' of the rules early on, i.e. not building any military units can be balanced by capturing some
Of course you have a limit of less then about a dozen units even with the highest planet rating, but it still gives a little bit of army.

I should try a ZFOCC with 'no alien life-form capture' rule added...

BTW, you are right about lots of crawlers in such game. They can be used even for efficient air-defense: I had my little city nicely surrounded by multiple (3-4) layers of crawlers all the time. When Miriam decided that she hates me and started an air-campaign against me, she simply couldn't fly into my city. Kept blowing off some crawlers, but I replaced them as fast as I could. I even forced a lot of her noodlejets to crash by blockading their routes to fly back to the bases for refueling - it was soooo funny to see her expensive planes crashing after killing a puny little crawler

Anyway the key to such games is of course to build huge energy parks (raise land above 3000m and place solar collectors and echelon mirrors in nice patterns, on the coasts make borehole in every other square) and harvest them with crawlers. You should also use probe teams to 'gather' some free research

[Blake]

I think the cult rules in OCC, free worms are great, because if pactbro tries to enroach "escort" his colony pods with a young worm then release the worm! This means Gaians and Caretakers are also good OCC factions.

I actually find playing Gas'n'Drown works better for OCC than making friends, I'm playing one as morgan at the moment (Random enemy factions), I couldn't think of a worse OCC faction than morgan, that's why I chose him Miriam wiped out Zak, Yang wiped out Roze, Spartans wiped out most of Roze and part of Yang (Roze surrended to Santigo I think), Sven is my ally. The tech was weird, directed but I had power SE choice and D:AP before crawlers. Now I'm in the process of chopper-gassing and marine-gassing Spartans, but I have to repeal the charter because I think I'm near my limit of sanctions.

I'll try a "no crawlers, no weapons" OCC next, OCC without crawlers should be fun.

[RedFred]

Thanks to Googlie, zsozso and Blake for some interesting ideas on making the basic One City Challenge harder.

As a postscript, I decided to take up Googlie's Miriam OCC challenge first off. Things went swimmingly to 2299. I had visions of a Peace challenge victory as well. Somehow no vendettas got declared against me for 200 years. I was about even in tech with the best of the AI and building up a vast array of crawlers. Then it fell to pieces. Sunspots hit and I was no longer able to communicate with the Drones who had been showing up red in the body scan no matter how much tech I fed them. Due to the sunspots I couldn't talk to them, so I couldn't give them more tech. So they sneak attacked me. The number one military against my number seven military was not pretty. I am still alive but the crawler hit has been huge enough that I doubt I can salvage the game.

So I have been humbled. Can't wait to try Miriam OCC again!