I'm somewhat new to this game, been playing for just a few weeks. Now I'm on Warlord and I just had a 4-hour game today.

It started with 5 civilizations and I defeated 2 of them some time before the game ends. My main opponent was Egypt, and she was the closest to winning, so I tried nuking all over her cities. I then noticed that she had 1 city left before she won by cultural victory, so from then on I concentrated on nuking that city. Damage seemed insignificant due to cultural defenses, but I kept trying nonetheless. I tried to win by domination, so I sent settlers as far out as possible to get the necessary stats for domination victory, but when I did gain enough land and population control, she won by next turn, just 1 point past her city's requirement for cultural victory. The saved game attached is the turn just before her win, right after I spam out settlers and ICBMs.

Does anyone know why she won even though I achieved domination victory first? Also, how do you defeat cultural victory, aside from nuking their strongest cities, which have strong cultural defenses?

Just capture/raze one of their legendary cities

This is obvious when you've played the game a bit more - you conquer the cities and raze them :D (Unless you care about keeping the wonders, in which case you'll need to arrange defense)

I forgot to mention she is on a different continent, so my troops will be easily overpowered by her naval army since I concentrated in conquering my own continent. This was of course the main reason I kept using ICBMs.

See my thread:


http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=265906


Firstly play as either Qin Shi Huang or as Loius to make it a lot easier with their UB's and Industrious trait.


NVM, I though you wanted to know how to win a cultural game :p


To beat them easy, just Nuke the cities.

My advice to you is this - if you can build ICBMs, then you must be fairly advanced, so have a go at building up a navy quickly and do what you can to get an invasion going.

If you can't gain naval superiority quickly enough to deny her the win, you may need to just take this as a learning experience and start afresh :)

If my culture cities got nuked though, I would cry an awful lot :(


Its not nice nuking them.

This does raise an interesting point. What happens if your pop and land % go up on the same turn as an opponent?

What probably happens (all of this derived from your account, no facts) is before each players turn there is a check for victory. This check is done before the demo screen is updated. At the beginning of your turn you did not have the requirements for a domination victory. You spammed a few settlers, and before you hit end turn, had acquired domination victory numbers. Let's say Hatty is next after you. This must mean before she hit end turn her last turn she had accumulated enough cultural points, however, due to my suspicion that the victory check is done before the demo graph is updated, she had already won before you even settled the remaining settlers.

I'm at work, anyone have the XML files handy? I'm wondering if on the same turn the human player and AI achieve victory who wins. I'd be willing to bet in single player mode the human gets it...but multiplayer gets interesting.

It would be hard/impossible to win on the final turn. What you could have done earlier perhaps, was a switch to US with a very low research slider. Rush buy that navy! 4-6 battleships and a bunch of transports filled with marines/CG infantry/siege. If you were packing nukes you probably could have fielded a naval raiding party like such. Queue all your landlocked production cities towards massing marines/infantry/siege and have them go to a naval city, where you are rushbuying every other turn (to avoid the penalty). Before you know it, intercontinental warfare is easy. You can send some BIG SoD's easily this way (even with just galleons/frigates actually, though having the destroyer or battleship bombardment and amphibious marines sure does help if you're not the Vikings).

Once you have a beach-head, just find and raze a legendary culture city or the one going for legendary (this is assuming, of course, that one of them is not coastal! If it is your job becomes amazingly easy, but if it isn't go with the beachhead). This is one of those extremely rare times that having heavy CG promotions is actually useful-you did give those to your infantry before you loaded them on the boats, right? I'd give the marines combat/pinch typically. Siege gets the usual city raider or bombard.

I win a lot of dominations on continents maps this way. I used to HATE cross-continental warfare because I hated naval warfare...but well-promoted ships aren't that hard to get, and after just garrisoning seafood and having sufficient cover for transports, you don't need much of a navy. If anything, the computer is EXCEPTIONALLY poor at naval warfare, making it much easier than expected.

The one caveat is to make sure you've massed up enough troops into those transports...expect heavy, focused resistance where you make landfall, unless for some reason it's a 3 city island or something. If your target is a legendary city though, it's likely you'll be hitting the mainland. Plan accordingly.

Wow, your post is going to be very useful in the future. Guess I should copy it down somewhere. By the way, what's that penalty you're referring to? The upkeep?

Let's say Hatty is next after you. This must mean before she hit end turn her last turn she had accumulated enough cultural points

At that point, no. If I recall correctly, her third city was off by a couple of points. It's in the saved file I attached. After I was done with my turn, her city (Heliopolis) then updated to the new value, which was 25001 (the minimum was 25000).

Wow, your post is going to be very useful in the future. Guess I should copy it down somewhere. By the way, what's that penalty you're referring to? The upkeep?



At that point, no. If I recall correctly, her third city was off by a couple of points. It's in the saved file I attached. After I was done with my turn, her city (Heliopolis) then updated to the new value, which was 25001 (the minimum was 25000).

Right, because on the turn before yours (just for keeping the arithmetic simple) Heliopolis had 24999 culture and generated +2 per turn. Therefore, after Hatty hit end turn, you were allowed to go. On your turn a victory condition check went, failed, and you were allowed to spam your settlers. Her next turn, victory check passed, she wins, but you dont find out until your next turn which your victory condition check passes as well. But she just happened to beat you by a turn.

Think about it the other way around.

Heliopolis has 24997 culture and has the first turn spot(you are second). You need one more city to win domination, she needs 25000 to win culture.

Hatty(0): 24997, +2C
You(0): 67% need 68%, plant settler and it produces +1%.
Hatty(1): 24999, +2C. Here she thinks shes going to win, because she knows her city will produce +2, putting her over the threshold after she hits end turn. But she forgets that there is a player after her in between her next turn.
You(1): 68%, you win but Hatty doesn't find out until:
Hatty(2): 843 has won a domination victory (although technically, she has 25001 culture right now and is upset).

So basically the victory check is performed at the beginning of the corresponding player's turn.
Man, talk about a close shave. I was so sure I was going to win too :sad:

That could be complete rubbish too... but it seems to make sense.

Chalk it up to experience. I thought I had my first victory with Wahington as a time win, not really understanding the game. All the while I was friendly with Mansa Musa, and noticed him building the Apollo and all sorts of spaceship part. Not understanding teh game, I waited for the final 5 turns to get my first win only to see Musa launch and myself lose.

Reagrding your game, under victory conditions you should be checking for any AIs in the future piling on the culture. Once they have 3 balanced cities that are about halfway there, you need to start acting. Best strategy for an AI on the other continent is to prepare a naval assault, Attack one of the big three from the sea (rare not to have one of them coastal) and raze it to the ground! Declare peace and just make sure they did not have a close fourth cuty.

This also works if you are about to lose a space race. Raze the AI capital city to ruin the entire space ship.

Enjoy

AI legendary cities are usually inland cities in most of my games. Does the AI do this on purpose to prevent a naval razing? Or is it just that i've been unlucky?

If anything, the computer is EXCEPTIONALLY poor at naval warfare, making it much easier than expected.

So basically, if you set the map to be mostly coastal, you can make it very far in the difficulty level?

So basically, if you set the map to be mostly coastal, you can make it very far in the difficulty level?

Not really since in higher difficulty levels AIs compensate for poor strategy through sheer numbers :p

Wow, I must suck really bad since I got obliterated on an archipelago map, on Warlord. Not only is my score the lowest, my land area is also the smallest... I just can't seem to be able to fully utilize my resources when I'm surrounded by water bodies :sad:

Wow, your post is going to be very useful in the future. Guess I should copy it down somewhere. By the way, what's that penalty you're referring to? The upkeep?



At that point, no. If I recall correctly, her third city was off by a couple of points. It's in the saved file I attached. After I was done with my turn, her city (Heliopolis) then updated to the new value, which was 25001 (the minimum was 25000).

The penalty I was referring to is the penalty associated with rushing or whipping something without having any hammers put into it already. I forget the exact amount, but it is pretty significant. If you could afford a battleship EVERY turn, your economy is through the roof.

Also, I said the computer is poor at naval WARFARE, this does not mean your rival civs will suck otherwise on water maps. Also, some civs (especially financial) can use coastal tiles to gain extra commerce fast. Carthage is particularly annoying this way, at least in warlords.

Generally struggles on heavy water maps are similar to the normal stuff - over/under expansion, or not enough troops. Water just adds an extra element as you have to balance making ships with making military (you don't want to get DoW'd either way). I also avoid those archi maps, because moving settles, archers, and other nonsense all over the place to settle a bunch of little islands annoys me. I also like to play with enemy movement not shown, and unlike a continent where you can quickly reinforce cities by the time the AI can land anything serious anyway, it's difficult to move new troops in in time on archipelagos, meaning it's an offensive war (which the AI doesn't seem to be able to handle) or you're going to be fighting pretty inefficiently, since they can hit any old city of yours and the military probably won't fill in time.

However, it IS true that if you make it to the age of transports, destroyers, and marines you can WRECK enemy civs very quickly. A stack of battleships can destroy defenses on cities fast...if you have 4-5 in one barrage even for higher culture%. You can then just blast the cities with however many marines are needed and move on. At least with archipelago you don't have to garrison as much - the AI's forces will also be divided so you won't see things like 30 units hitting the city you take or something...normally

Thanks a lot for the input. I don't really like having water bodies in my civilizations. It's generally inefficient and troublesome. I haven't even touched some aspects of naval units, such as the trade route blockage, as well as the concept of intercontinental trading. Is there any guide or article you can recommend on this matter? Also, in this game, is there a way to link the different islands together (via a bridge for example) to allow more accessibility to land units? Maybe there are things I'm still missing.

By the way, is there a guide on the net that teaches you how to manage aerial warfare? My games usually end before they start, so I lack experience in handling aerial units, and dealing against them.

Not really since in higher difficulty levels AIs compensate for poor strategy through sheer numbers :p

I dunno, I find archipelago maps ridiculously easy. It's about the equivalent of dropping the difficulty 1 level, especially if you're a financial civ and/or one of the naval civs.

I usually play epic speed, so city gets to legendary culture at 75k culture points. So if on the vicotory conditions screen it shows that some AI has several cities which are at about 30k to 40k culture then it is almost given that this particular AI is going for cultural victory. At this point I start building transports and tanks. Aim for about 30 to 40 tanks. More often then not AI that is going cultural stops researching so it is stuck with riflemen or even longbows. In which case 40 tanks is way more then enough to take it over completelly.

If AI is advanced i.e. has industrialism at least, then this is more likelly to be a one way ticket. So if you manage to take a city then raze it, because chances are you will not be able to hold it.