There were two things that gave me really big headaches,

#1 was the other civs attacking me just before I launched the space ship, causing major
delays and headaches, and I even had to restart from earlier saves a few times when they
overran my meager defenses. The other civs would keep demanding large amounts of
cash . Naturally, I refused. (Should I have given it to them?) My loyal allies declared war
on the Civ that attacked me, but that didnt actually do me any good.

My solution was to alternate building space ship parts with defensive units. I built a
barracks, then two mechanised infantry, then SAM missile defense. That put a stop to
the attacks, or at least rendered them insignificant. This worked fine, but delayed the
launch of the ship until 1908. Is there a better answer?

Problem #2 relates to production, I tried to get the level of shield production up to the
level of 80 shields, but I found that when I did that, it generated so much pollution that it
caused a food shortage. My two engineers and one settler just couldnt keep up with the
problem. I had built a Hydro Plant, which helped, but not enough. I could have built the
Solar plant, but I would have to delay space ship part production to do that. Is that a good
idea? Is there some particular amount of farmland squares needed to avoid the food
problems?

For your first question, make sure you have good defenses before starting the spaceship. Fortify riflemen or alpine troops on hills or mountains within the city radius; the AI will waste a lot of units attacking them (stack to prevent bribery). I almost always refuse demands for cash unless they have battleships in my harbor.

Paul has a good site with strategy and the tech path to follow. http://home.planet.nl/~belt0018/occ.htm

Hope this helps.

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Will everyone stop bloody quoting everyone else in their signature damnit. - Graag

This is Paul's strategy guide. It is generally agreed by the OCC guys that Paul has the best understanding of how to win.

question 1: other civs attacking after SS launch? truthfully, i usually have an archer or something defending my city by the time i launch a spaceship. No one ever attacks me. Why? I think it is because I spend the whole game building relations with the AI. I ALWAYS give EVERY tech they ask for, and if they don't ask, I give it to them as gifts.

Make sure you contact and ally with your neighbors early. Keep these alliances -- don't break them for anything. If you got your allies surrounding you, it makes it hard for enemies to get to you.

But if there is one rogue AI nation still bugging you after SS launch, set your science to low, taxes to high, and bring out the diplomat. I build a diplo fairly early, actually. It's hard to beat a 50-gold non-rifleman, or a 250-gold non-engineer.

Now for number 2, if you got 2 engineers, then you got no pollution problems. Your city will produce between zero and one polluted squares each turn. Put both engineers on the polluted square to clean it, and it is gone that very turn. Of course the engineers will be doing little else than running around cleaning it, but two (2) is all it takes.

Sten: I didn’t realize or had forgotten about stacking the engineers. I hadn’t built rr either,
and that’s a good idea since it builds production too. My engineers were so busy runnin
around cleaning the place up they hadn’t the time! Maybe I need a third engineer?

I have the earlier (242 ?) version, I didn’t like the MGE version, it doesn’t run well on my
system for some reason. And anyway I usually don’t end up with much of a military, the
barbs kill them!

Vik: The weird thing is that the AI got REALLY nasty while I was building the ship,
when I really need the money for rush builds. Otherwise I would have given it to them
under the circumstances. ( Just one archer trying to defend against bombers!) Ouch. And
after giving them tech all through the game too. I felt so ....USED !!

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Scouse Git[1]