Barb cities in OCC

[East Street Trader]

So I read this thread - subject occing or occers or ockey or some such. Surely nothing for the honest trader here, I thought and nearly passed on.

But hold. OCC, One City Challenge. I bethought me of current trading partners in Rotterdam, Hong Kong and the City just over the river, not to mention dealings long ago with like minded fellows from Carthage and the pleasantly devious folk of Venice. Perhaps this is something for an honest street trader to try after all.


Weeel the session last night ending in the very small hours (yaawwwn) with the challenge tantalisingly poised - middle game coming to an end and difficult end game in sight.

Of course all was not plain sailing - in fact no sailing at all whether pearl or plain as the starting site proferred in the game I randomly picked had two gold mines, a river, iron and a good looking spot for a little prospecting - but was INLAND! Enough to dishearten all but the most commitedly trade minded. But then Marco's correspondence was always full of the pleasures, and profit, of the overland journey and I recall that the merchants of Samarkand were not too inhibited by their dry and dusty location.

Problems beset my single city in its early days when merciless (sorry Ming, better make that "hard hearted") barbarians slew our hard working settlers in the course of their toil in the fields (they were doing no harm to a living soul, guv, honest - that barbarian who said his pocket was picked is nothing but a lying toe rag)!

Luckily the mines prudently built before the incursion of the fleet footed barbs continued to provide us with the wherewithall for our trading and, after a century or two, we persuaded some wandering nomads to come from the far off land of Non to take the place of the dear departed (I keep telling the Nons that the day of their enfranchising into the city cannot be far off - but I fear the time when this was a real prospect may, in truth, have receded for ever).

Superhighways have been built. The industrial age dawns. I can hardly wait for the day's distractions to cease so as to be able to return to my labours and to learn the end of the tale.

And so to my question. I squeezed out the time to speculate a diplo at some point (do other people do that?) and sent her out to see what she might come across (pace Marco, a boat is such a boon to an honest trader) - but up til now she has been in the right place at the wrong time or the wrong place at the right time (but there's women for you - woops, sorry Empress).

But what has happened now is that the careless English, in unBriton like fashion, have let the hard hearted barbarian hordes through the gates of one of their cities. It is placed comfortably distant from me and in a normal game my diplo would spend a lengthy period on secondment to the barbarian court softening the hard of heart and employing filthy lucre to recruit them to more civilised ways. Now should she do likewise in an OCC challenge? Seemingly not as the filthy lucre is needed for other things. But what does a converted barb fetch when brought back to the city after civilising? Already I have found the flexibility of the "disband" command to be most useful at key moments. Has anyone any experience of this in OCC?

Let it not be thought that an honest street trader will allow to be forgotten a friendly tip or two on such a subject from the august and learned denizens of this board. It is not, perhaps, to be expected that one whose study of the pleasures of trade has been, til now, pursued in solitude and obscurity should have aught to contribute to the wit and wisdom so royally displayed in these threads. But if, as sometimes happens, the trading partners with whom the East Street Trader corresponds should happen to mention some matter worthy of a wider consideration I will hasten to post it here by way of recompense.

[poppawoppa]

One possibility is to bribe those barbarians, send them to a nearby city and get the civ there to complain and ask you to withdraw your troops. When you agree, the newly bribed troop/settler or ? will be given a free one way trip to your One City.
While the gold cost of 61 or 82 or 105 gold pieces is considerable, you then can disband one of your older less modern home troops and depending on your government policy of support for troops, you can relieve your civ of the shield support for that newly disbanded troop, gain the disbanding shield bonus for your current building project or WOW, and substitute a NON troop of greater defensive or offensive prowess. All for a few gold pieces. Seems to me to be a reasonable exchange. Go for it.

[East Street Trader]

Thanks Poppawoppa. Good plan.

One problem is that I had a good exploration phase and emerged with a full set of alliances.

So no free one way tickets currently available.

But I suppose it might not hurt to drop one of the aliances for a while. I'm giving away so much tech that I think (?) I'd get the ally back at need.

East Street Trader

[East Street Trader]

All done.

Caesar the Terrible landed in 1820 with a civ score of 315.

I'm chuffed.

Got to admit that it was the stragegy guide which gets the credit - only the blunders were wholly mine. But a win is a win is a win.

Hurrah.

I kept some notes so I might post a log, if only for the practice. But maybe some kindly OCC regular might look at it and tell me where I went right and where I went wrong (I don't need telling that to be careless with your Non settlers is not too great an idea).

Meanwhile one or two curious things happened in the game.

1. The barb city (London) sent out one armour unit. Heard of that - not previously seen it. But when London got attacked by sea it turned out to have only a series of warriors in it - not seen barb warriors before either.

Now what's with this strange disparity in barb units? And why only one armour unit? London was size 6 and under barb control for quite a long time?

2. Also the barbs defended London with the appearance of intelligence. The armour unit came out and occupied a hilltop fort which interdicted diplo access. Before being outflanked by the naval attack it then picked of a small succession of diplos which the surviving English city sent against it.

Was this just an instance of the barb pref for occupying forts, (coming out of a city to do so) or is it too much of a coincidence that this looked to me like the best chance of a good defence? I've previously seen speculation that barbs use a different (and brighter) A1 that civs. Maybe this is a bit of evidence in favour of that?

3. In the event I didn't take my diplo to Lndon. It was just too far and the game too advanced. If, contrary to her previous conduct, she had been lucky enough to pick up the armour, though, I'd have loved it - so maybe some regrets there (she did nowt for me as the game went so a wasted speculation as it turned out). I wonder what barb armour costs to bribe?

4. Well a final question that occurs to me is, if I'd made the treck and opened diplomatic relations with the barbs, could I then have gifted them tech? And if so would that count towards cutting back the tech lead (quite a laborious task in OCC, to judge from my experience)? And what do the other A1 civs think of someone who consorts with barbs?

If any reader is a fellow addict who is holding back from giving OCC a try, fearing humiliation - well dive in. Follow the strategy guide and you'll do OK I reckon. You're bound to love it - the pace and totally focused play is great.


Now abot those lost settlers. I've named them Tom Dick and Harry. We preserved their remains and, on arrival in Alpha Centauri we gave them burial with due ceremony and dedicated the succesful venture to their eternal memory. If you knew how close they came - encouraged no doubt by my frantic jumping up and down and shouts of "Get them, get them." - to fighting off those damn barbs, you'd know that they deserved no less.

East Street Trader

[vik]

I'll try to answer the questions. Please excuse my (relative) brevity...

1.) Never seen a barb armor unit before. My theory is that whatever the English were trying to build in London before it got sacked, was what the barbs kept building. I've never seen barb warriors either, unless I made some for a scenario or something.

2.) I don't think the barbs were being anymore intelligent than normal AI here in the defense of London. That is, find a fort; sit in it and fortify; attack whatever is next to the fort; if nothing is next to fort, do nothing.

3.) I've never seen barb armor, so I have no idea what it would cost to bribe. Probably worth it, though. You can use the cheat menu and re-create a barb armor and see for yourself.

4.) You can't really have diplomatic relations with the barbs. You can establish an embassy, but you can't pull them up on your foreign advisor screen, therefore you can't give them techs.

JMHO

[Paul]

3) As far as I know buying barb units always costs two time the unit's shield cost + 1 gold, so an armor would cost 2x80+1 = 161 gold.

[East Street Trader]

Brevity, Vik? What's that exactly?

Anyway I'm struggling a bit with the cheat menu but it seems the barbs were able to switch to warrior if an enemy unit got to their gates (they also had settler and barracks available - I got London to make a settler but then couldn't get it to move).

I didn't check the cost to bribe the armour and now I can't duplicate whatever it was I did with the cheat menu to get to play as the barbs. I have a 1500AD save game when London was barb but they hadn't got the armour then. Anyway, cost*2+1 must surely be right.

East Street Trader