Single city challenge

[Dino the Dinosore]

Does anyone besides me play single city challenge games? This was a popular thing back in the day of the original Civ 2. The challenge is to win at hard level while having only one city for the whole game. Obviously you go for a space win (I once did destroy all enemy cities but it was pretty tedious.) What I like is that it makes for a quicker game.
The problem is what to do when you get a free city from a hut - the accepted method is to give it away, and if you can't do that, have it make a settler and set the disband city option. While making my own custom ruleset I figured out a way to prevent getting a city from a hut by editing the "default.lua" script.

Code: Select all

-- Randomly choose a hut event
function _deflua_hut_enter_callback(unit)
  local chance = random(0, 11)
  local alive = true
  local owner = unit.owner

  if chance == 0 then
    _deflua_hut_get_gold(unit, 25)
  elseif chance == 1 or chance == 2 or chance == 3 then
    _deflua_hut_get_gold(unit, 50)
  elseif chance == 4 then
    _deflua_hut_get_gold(unit, 100)
  elseif chance == 5 or chance == 6 or chance == 7 then
    _deflua_hut_get_tech(unit)
  elseif chance == 8 or chance == 9 then
    if not _deflua_hut_get_mercenaries(unit) then
      _deflua_hut_consolation_prize(unit)
    end
  elseif chance == 10 then
    alive = _deflua_hut_get_barbarians(unit)
  elseif chance == 11 then
    if unit.owner:is_human() then
      notify.event(owner, unit.tile, E.HUT_BARB_CITY_NEAR,
                   _("An abandoned village is here."))
    elseif not _deflua_hut_get_city(unit) then
      _deflua_hut_consolation_prize(unit)
    end
  end

  -- continue processing if unit is alive
  return (not alive)
end

[drgerg]

Do you want to have ocean/lake?

Dolp!

if one doesn't then one would have to bribe another player's freighter in order to move off of your island for trade purposes as an example.

While I have bribed enemy units, I have never attempted to bribe a vessel. I suppose it would be possible.

[drgerg]

would you buy the improvements "Mass Transit" or "Recycling Center" which minimize the creation of pollution, or would you keep on hand a pair of engineers to cleanup pollution terrain?

[Dino the Dinosore]

Finding a good spot for your one city is the first big task, I usually allow about a dozen turns before giving up. Need specials (esp trade), river is good, ocean for trade access is essential. Once I had an ocean that turned out to be a small land-locked sea, it had one land edge tile, one square wide, which I transformed to ocean to allow ships to get to the rest of the world. It is possible to bribe ships, I've done that.

I usually build "Mass Transit" and "Recycling Center" so my pair of engineers can do more than just clean pollution. You will need at least a pair of them.

[drgerg]

This is not a trivial game. I tried it with the Europe scenario with about 7 or 8 nations with AI set to normal.

I was on a river at the edge of the Baltic Sea (sorta like one of the cities in the Hanseatic League). My first mistake was going for Monarchy first. Nope, I now believe that going for Trade first is very important. Trade gives research, and research is very limited with just one city. I fell way behind on research.

Alliances are very important. I have always liked large cities, so medicine and sanitation are important for growing beyond a size of 12. No one else in "my" alliance had learned those. With my three partners, I traded those two technologies for 14 other technologies that I needed to learn.

What was interesting was that Turkey would build build a caravan in every city and send it to my single city.

[drgerg]

One more item that surprised me was that when I did research trade, I was limited to only two trade routes. I remember reading that the limit was four, and all of my other freeciv games have limited me to four simultaneous trade routes. This game limited me to two and it surprised me. Would someone point me the webpage that mentions the lower limit for trade routes. I thought I know this game inside out. Guess I don't.

[Dino the Dinosore]

The number of trade routes is controlled by the ruleset. One of them starts with a limit of 2 and increases it as various things happen.

[Ignatus]

Played such game in 3.0alpha (default settings just with 2 initial Explorers to make embassies easier). In fact, it was easy; the AIs handle the game ending of space race lame and declare war only when it is too late; if you have made peace with them early in the game, they not at all want to attack even with destroying mood and military government. What I have missed to get the biggest score (I've finished with small over 1000 and one of thr AIs had over 1600) is that a production-boosting wonder should be hunted for early in the game, even if it expires fast it will allow you to build more useful ones.

[Dino the Dinosore]

declare war only when it is too late

Mostly true in my experience, but I have had a few games where I was getting seriously attacked before finishing building my space ship.

production-boosting wonder

Yes indeed, I always go for King Richard pretty early. I'm usually in Republic by then and really need the shield boost.