In playing and learning Civ 5, I've always been a big believer of consideration when putting hammers into wonders. I didn't really "get" the civ games until I forced myself to avoid wonders. Which isn't to say that wonders don't help, only that for me they always got in the way of understanding the basics. So naturally, I had never played as Egypt. Until now...
Egypt, deity, wonder spam to cultural victory. Given how deity can be like a game of solitaire (i.e. some games can't be won no matter your skill level) due to your draw of maps, I decided to give myself a fighting chance by restarting until I saw a workable marble withing 4 to 5 tiles of the starting settler.
I explored and saw that I had a few CSs nearby, I steal a worker at T20 and we're off to the races. My start is desert and somehow I land Desert Folklore even though I'm the second pantheon out. That was the first of many breaks. I didn't get many breaks in production tiles beyond the cap, so I decided to go OCC even though I think OCC is a heap of a bullshit. (Also, OCC refers to one-city challenge even though I didn't tick OCC on setting up the game -- it's just a convenient way to refer to the fact that I'm doing this with one city only.)
One anti-break (an obstacle, I guess) was the other civs in the match. The first civs I uncover are Mongols, Huns, Iroquois, and Americans. Seriously. Four expansive dipshits, two of them serious warmongers. Later on in the match I encountered the remaining civs: Germany, Carthage, and Japan. Two MORE expansionists, one of whom (Bismarck) is kind of a nemesis for me. He's a gigantic dick.
So I've got one hell of a draw here. It's nice that they're going to be fighting with each other, but it's bad because at least one of them is going to come for me. They're going to be expanding in on me (and they did). Again, though, geography was on my side this game, there was a CS and big useless desert between me and everyone else to the east, jungle and Genghis to the north, a CS and ocean to the west, and ocean to the south.
Because of my luck with the geography, I made the decision to limit my defense to 4 archers and a warrior and lay the hammer down on the Wonder Spam 3000. It's insane. By roughly T125, I have Stonehenge, Temple of Artemis, Hanging Gardens, Petra, The Oracle, Chichen Itza, Alhambra, and Terracotta Army (which was hanging around late for some reason). That was really amazing to me. I didn't know wonder spam could be that spammy. And note that it wasn't like I neglected everything else: I've got a serviceable army, it's only 5 or 6 units but it buys me time to negotiate peace.
And that's one of the unfortunate things (and I use that lightly as I abused the hell out of it) about the AI is that when you play OCC, the negotiation process really breaks down.
My friend to the north, Genghis, was effectively a mugger throughout the match. He's equally happy with me if I negotiate peace and give him 15g or 1500g, provided either amount is 100% of my bank. This was a cycle he and I went through three times in the game between ~T155 (his first DOW) and T290 (my win). He attacks, I quickly deplete my bank via rush bought buildings or CS gifts, I sacrifice military units as long as I can, and eventually I buy him off for 100g or so. That's it.
I would imagine that, if I had additional cities, he'd have wanted a few...but with no cities to give, he just wanted whatever money I had on me. Which is disappointing, in a way, because that's effectively a mugging. It's unbecoming the difficulty level, but that's OCC.
Even though I played OCC, I don't have much respect for it, because it "breaks" the game in ways that aren't meant to be broken. There's an underlying assumption in so many mechanics of the game that you have more than one settlement. The fact that you can succeed with just one city, like some kind of mega CS, doesn't make sense to me. Plus, the culture system is set up to reward that style of play with shitloads of bonuses. It shouldn't be that way if the AI is not able to respond to single-city civs more aggressively.
i'll play u in that bro.
in' craziest fever dreams ever. God, I don't think I've ever seen such a mishmash of crazy shit in one place ever before.
or 
ports?[/QUOTE]
