One City Challenge suggestions

[soldyne]

I want to try the Once City Challenge and work on Megalopolis and Gigalopolis achievements. I am trying to plan out my cultures. of those of you that have done these achievements what cultures would you suggest?

I am leaning toward Mycenaean in Ancient times. the emblematic district produced stability and counts as a makers quarter while the unit production bonus is good for early war if someone settles close.

I have no idea what else to consider for the other eras. with only one city everything becomes important and I can assume you would fall behind very quickly.

[utilityguy]

Are you doing one region, one City challenge? Or can your single city gain more regions?

If it's the latter, I think Egypt -> Great Pyramid -> Carthaginians -> ??? -> ??? -> Persians + Constitutional Monarchy civic would be the best to allow for ease of building districts, as all those Money/Industry cost reductions stack.

The only thing I could suggest, if you're going for the former, is to make the region sizes to their maximum--just so you can have enough space for development.



I think the biggest pain will be movement speed of your units, as without multiple cities, you're gonna need to have either railroads between regions, movement speed buffs, and/or have your units all be calvalry/vehicles.

edit:
Theoretically, you could go the route of warring others and turning their cities into Indipendant cities, and that would be able to help you out in terms of Science gains through maximum patronage. But otherwise... hmm...

[nullpo]

I'm thinking of Zhou, ascend, taino, mughal, persian, singaporeans.

Zhou basically give stability and science. Early culture bomd also secure one wonder of your choice (for me always pyramid). Classical ascend to help with fame gain and make more confucian school. Medieval taino for huge food gain. Mughal and persian to fix production, they're also good for big capital. Singaporeans basically speaks for itself, they want you to have huge capital.

[utilityguy]

I've turned on the game and am going through it now.

So:

• Single Region challenge

What kills you; here, is starting on a map that has small regions, not having enough industry and food to pump out units + quarters in a competitive pace, and A.I not taking your as a serious player the moment they realize you only have one region (as they should).

The Small regions problem is fixed--to an extent--by setting the region sizes to max. The A.I problem is fixed by going peaceful mode, playing with only non-combative personas, lowering the difficulty, playing on a small map size (most realistic fix), etc. The rate of production problem I don't think is fixable, at least not on normal or fast speed. The only way I see you being able to address the rising industry cost problem, is by going the aforementioned cultures, wonders, and civics that deal with reducing buyout and build costs.

Science is also an issue, but you can deal with that through patronage--since just about every independent people will be spawning near your only region in the later eras, as long as you keep em empty.

And this isn't acknowledging how you are pretty much So Out of Luck when it comes to luxuries and strategic resources.

• Single City + regions

This fixes the space problem, allows you to use regions to capture resources, but makes the industry problem exponentially worse--due to how HUMANKIND chooses to counter the Human player FIMSI growth problem by always increasing the build costs for everything, each time the player builds a quarter, or attaches an outpost to a city, along with later era things being vastly more expensive.


edit:
oooh, I just realized Faith is impossible for the first few eras--due to a lack of competitive population growth.

[soldyne]

thank you for taking the time for such in depth analysis.
I am going to attempt my first run at this today or tomorrow. I want to get up to 4 achievements at once including single city, city with 20/30 attached territories and owning more than half the territories.

Of course, I don't need to attach all the territories until the very end to get the achievement, I just need to win with a single city.

I was thinking of starting with pangea, only a few other civs, large map and peaceful.

I will start with Myceneans and see how that works for me. I will let you all know how it turns out and what my initial problems are.

NEW QUESTION: for the achievement, if I occupy a city during a war and then relinquish it afterward does that void the achievement?

[utilityguy]

ah, you're going for the Spartan Achievement.

Yeah, obtaining cities through war and or other means will void the achievement.

[soldyne]

I finished it. I went the easy route with a single competitor set to peaceful, pangea, large map (should have gone for something smaller, but, oh well).
I felt that I was very much ahead the whole time and my culture choices weren't that important. for what its worth, this is what I ended up with:
Mycenaeans, Maya, Taino, Ming, Italian, New Zealand

Mycenaeans gave me a very strong stability base and I was at 100% the entire game.
Maya gave me a good production boost early game.
the rest of the time it was about getting influence. capturing territories and attaching them gets very expensive especially if you want 30 territories for a single city. I also went for capturing more than half the map which is why large was a bad choice (but I did get it).

FIMS were never really an issue eventhough I only ever had one city.

My biggest problem were the aggressive independent peoples ransacking my stuff.