Not as many as might outwardly appear...
The C-8 was not very well "fleshed out" in the design phase since it was basically never anything more than a proposal. Also, the construction of the two rockets were radically different.
The Soviets had a lot of problems building and transporting large rockets... especially in the 60's and early 70's. The Proton was the largest "realistic" rocket that could be built in pre-manufactured sections and transported by rail to the launch area, then assembled from the block components (external "strap on" tanks surrounding a central tank). N-1 was of course going to be MUCH larger, and Korolev wanted single oxidizer and fuel tanks per stage. The tank gores were manufactured in the industrial heartland of Eastern Russia and transported by rail to Kazakhstan, and then the rocket was actually manufactured from the component parts there. The large pressure vessels necessary for the monstrous tanks were at the limits of what Soviet industry could do, so they were manufactured in a simple spherical shape (most efficient and simplest pressure vessel to design and manufacture) but that made the rocket much taller than its American counterpart, which used cylindrical tanks with elliptical tank domes and a MUCH shorter intertank band between the fuel and oxidizer tank on the first stage. On N-1 basically the entire conical part of the stage was an intertank, going from the equator of the upper fuel spherical tank to the equator of the lower liquid oxygen tank. The aft thrust structure and manifold piping to feed the thirty NK-33 engines in a ring around the back was behind that. The upper stages of N-1 were also hypergolically fueled, which with its greater density reduced the stage size, but the poor ISP of storable hypergolic propellants meant MUCH lower performance and required larger tanks and more propellant to do the smaller amount of lifting it could do... it also required four stages instead of the Saturn V's three. The second stage was of the same spherical tank and large conical intertank construction as the first stage. These factors led to a MASSIVELY inefficient rocket design that produced around 11 million pounds at liftoff (versus Saturn V's 7.5 million pounds of thrust, and the C-8's roughly 12 million pounds of thrust) but could only lift about HALF the weight of a Saturn V... (about 70 tons to orbit versus the 130 tons of the Saturn V...) Plans were in the works for liquid hydrogen upper stages for N-1 that would have GREATLY increased its capabilities, but they weren't much past the proposal phase when they were canceled (other than LH2 engine work done by Isayev...)
IF we had actually seen the C-8 designed and produced, it would almost certainly have looked somewhat different from the proposals shown here... for instance, the first stage "ring" of engines is just about the worst way to do it... it creates a MASSIVE low pressure area behind the rocket that causes exhaust plume recirculation and massive heating of the bottom of the stage and the engines, requiring a substantial heat shield to prevent the structures from weakening or melting and to prevent the engines from being destroyed. N-1 originally planned to use "air ingestion" into the exhaust to increase thrust, and did to some extent, but the Russians underestimated the massive heat from exhaust plume recirculation in the base region and had to add a huge heat shield to protect the aft end of the rocket... which of course is extra weight. Part of N-1's problems were caused by severe base heating, as a matter of fact. One of the N-1's unused heat shields is actually a pavilion cover near the cosmodrome to this day-- it was inverted and put up on poles to make a massive covered pavilion!
The most logical way to reduce the base heating issue would be to put four F-1's in the center and another four in an outer ring offset by 45 degrees from the inner four, just like on the Saturn I/IB. The engines would have to be spaced wider than on the Saturn IB since the F-1's are much larger (to reduce power-robbing plume interactions between engines) but they would reduce the low pressure area in the center of the base area. These engines could probably be fixed, reducing the control complexity as well, just as in Saturn I/IB. The outer ring of four F-1's would of course be gimballed for control of the vehicle. The wider spacing between these outer engines would allow more airflow in between them, thus further reducing the base plume interactions. The large conical aft fairing wouldn't be required-- smaller half-conical fairings like Saturn V would suffice, probably equipped with fins.
The second stage tanks would likely have been a common bulkhead design, if at all possible... the massive weight savings over a double-bulkhead seperate tanks and the intertank required to connect them would create a huge payload advantage.
Later! OL JR 
