SP game play idea - win by stalemate

I'm trying to stay interested in BNW and thought I'd try this game play idea this weekend: 1) Deity 2) Huge continents 3) Standard speed 4) All VCs enabled

****But****

the only way to win is if you OR another civ wins by time. If you or any other civ wins by any VC other than time, the game is lost.

Would that be a difficult challenge for an immortal player?

I'm struggling to forsee how to stop any of the 11 other deity AI's from winning any of the VC's other than time in what amounts to nearly 500 turns.

I guess the trick would be to get a lot of influence in the WC to slow the AI's down and also to capture any of the culture filled/tourist heavy cities where they exist in the world and liberate them to players who have no chance of winning?

Perhaps it would be too much of a grind? I'm looking for a change.

Thanks

Well, let's consider each different victory type separately.

DmV: you simply need to avoid taking every capital, or rather, make certain that someone else holds one of the other capitals.
SV: constrict any remaining AIs to a single city with limited resources.
CV: this is the one which will be most difficult to avoid if you are reducing people to a single city. My suggestion would be to avoid pushing culture, and toleave at least one AI until the late game before you invade them.
DpV: easy, just control the world congress but don't use all of your votes.

My suggestion, then, would be a late-game conquest. Fix the opponents so that Venice is one of them, and give him one of the other AI's capitals before you invade and take over his capital. Don't make peace with him, and steal all his land with citadels; put great works into cities and then raze them. Try to delay reaching the Atomic Era, so as to delay the founding of the UN and thus avoid the world leader motions which will give him votes. Ally up all the CSs so he can't trade with them.

I would struggle to pull all of this off above about Emperor, but I'm certain there are players here who could do it on Deity.

Thanks loserforsale.

I looked up possible strategies in the Civ5 wiki and it succinctly refers to time victory as "stalemate", so what I would be trying to do is to actively create a stalemate scenario and consider stalemate as victory.

If the difficulty were low enough, becoming a superpower would immediately assist in blocking domination and culture. It would also assist in controlling the WC and avoiding DpV. It would also help controlling SV, since as a superpower I could actively reduce the economic power of any civ I like without worrying about trade and diplomacy.

There seems to be a sweet spot in the difficulty when the difficulty is increased enough so that it is impossible to become a superpower, but still have enough options available to create stalemate.

On deity it would be very hard to prevent a science victory. An AI civ with one city however small will eventually grind out the spaceship before turn 500. The only way is to let an AI dominate the other civs first then kill off this AI and bring back one of the other civs back to life so they will be very far behind.

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It's basically impossible to prevent the AI from getting a science victory in that long, so you'd probably need to disable that. Seems interesting though.

Maybe this is stupid and I don't understand, but why not just disable all victory conditions except for time?

It's a good question docbud no problem.

The idea is to see if there reverse logic that means that interesting strategies and games might happen. If the player is not trying to win, but trying to prevent others from winning, it might mean that there is no need to force the same boring start every-time (NC+education+universities).

There is no need for science to be the dominant strategy anymore. Also, playing on higher difficulties knowing that military defense and offense is going to be important, means that this game play is probably going to have to force difficult decisions that mix it all up more at the bottom of the tech tree.

@Teproc, if a science VC is going to be nearly impossible to stop, does the AI stop building the apollo project if it thinks it is going to get wiped out by it's neighbours? Loserforsale thinks that the AI's would have to be reduced to one city, but perhaps if they are kept at three cities and constantly plundered and harassed, they might not get the space ship finished before timed victory is triggered by any other the other players?

Remember you win if anyone wins by time not just you.

Vitruvius said:

On deity it would be very hard to prevent a science victory. An AI civ with one city however small will eventually grind out the spaceship before turn 500. The only way is to let an AI dominate the other civs first then kill off this AI and bring back one of the other civs back to life so they will be very far behind.

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Click to expand...

Thanks that sounds a promising idea! I have set the map conditions so that the AI will grow too fast (standard speed on huge with enough room) and so the AI could possibly also self implode into rebellion to make life easier?

Thanks for explaining, glider1.

glider1 said:

@Teproc, if a science VC is going to be nearly impossible to stop, does the AI stop building the apollo project if it thinks it is going to get wiped out by it's neighbours? Loserforsale thinks that the AI's would have to be reduced to one city, but perhaps if they are kept at three cities and constantly plundered and harassed, they might not get the space ship finished before timed victory is triggered by any other the other players?

Remember you win if anyone wins by time not just you.

Click to expand...

Time victory is at turn 500... Deity AIs get SVs around turn 300 if not sooner, so you'll have to do A LOT to prevent them from eventually getting there. You're welcome to try, but preventing cultural and diplo victories seem hard enough to me.

What about first keep it simple, and play deity but play as Alex against eleven Shakas (separated by colour or name)

So the strat would be to play as Alex with enough culture and military to prevent the two domination VCs. Science is actually not that important because the science rate will even out come the post 300t mark. Then use Alex's ability to control the WC. Then all that has to happen is to allow one of the Shaka AI's to dominate the others (since they all will be trying the same, you can leverage the diplomacy better). Then start liberating back the other Shaka AI's towards the end of the game while the dominant Shaka still thinks that he can win by domination. The point is that Shaka undervalues space ship parts by a lot when I look at the leader stats. The game should be interesting enough because I already have seen that each independent Shaka AI does not go down the same policy path.

If you played your game with this specifically in mind it seems doable, even on deity.

You'd play it as a domination game, but leave one capital of a not too advanced and not too culturally backwards civ in place. If you invest nothing in tourism and sell of tourism buildings where possible you should be able to easily keep your tourism from overcoming an AI capital. In order to prevent the science victory you're going to have to spend the rest of the game at war with the one remaining civ, covering his territory with units and starving his city as much as possible.

Thanks TyBoy ok I will watch out for the tourism problem and continue to contain the Shaka nextdoor to me with a perma-war that he started while pursuing the bigger picture. That way I have two intact capitals and more chance to survive against the domination VC's. So far so good, I'm on five cities +14 happiness with plenty of room to expand peacefully if I wanted, and neutral alignment with a monster Shaka on 11-cities and six techs ahead with five other unknown Zululanders...

Does the AI simultaneously build the SS while also pursuing domination VC? I've never experienced an AI that won by domination yet. If they do try a simultaneous build, I am in big trouble. If they try only one VC at a time that would make the job a lot easier. I made things harder for myself by using the Smart AI mod which apparently makes the AI assess different VC's better

AI will build spaceship parts whenever the tech is available.

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Thanks, that makes sense and makes winning by stalemate more difficult at the same time. I guess that if the AI felt threatened enough, they would prioritize military over SS, but I doubt that on deity I am going to be able to make them feel threatened enough on a huge map...

I think I might go back to a standard map size and try playing as a domination civ that has good potential for culture, against seven copies of one leader that is low on expansion high on tourism, and see if that makes the job a bit easier.

Yea like tyboy said. Play a domination game. And lock the last AI with citadels around its last city. It will keep producing units which will keep dying. You will probably end up clicking next turn for 200 times after that.

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Another idea:

set up a space-part grinder for the civ as science is the main problem. If you can wait for him to build the apollo project somewhere then nerf that city by pillaging everything and war then the city will be worthless for building parts. A nuke or two is a good way to do this. He'll start building them elsewhere. Pillage road connections and capture and destroy spaceparts headed that way. This is opposed to actually taking the Apollo city as this will allow him to build it elsewhere. He will never be able to win scientifically as you can't build apollo anywhere else! Now, who cares if he gets up in science. He can't win if he can't assemble his spaceship haha!

Thanks Vitruvius and dana
Does anyone know of a youtube playthrough of deity domination? Everyone seems to be converging on a domination being the strategy to win by stalemate, but I'm finding it really hard to play domination on deity (not to mention the tediousness of moving units). Inspiration video needed!