I call BS

Vajrajina said:
It's not emperor that's impossible, I played a game after with the Mayans where Casimir got WAY out of control and I think I can still win, I'm playing with Siam and this game was a breeze, but that specific game was not possible to win because how Alex had every single cs and was able to diplo win as soon as we entered the information era. Oh, he also had a crapton of turism, a massive army and like I said, was barely behind in tech.

And yes, I am sure, after 2 pages of discussion people still don't believe me that that game was not winnable. Maybe if you go into the save I uploaded 'Okay, there's gonna be a problematic diplo civ' it's a different story, but I had no idea what was coming until well into the modern era.
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If he was "barely behind in tech" then you surely could have won a war against him. Having 10 turns of battleships (you beelined that instead of Globalization, right?) vs. frigates is worth his best coastal city. If that's Athens, then you won. If not, then 10 turns of bombers planted in that coastal city vs. his triplanes is worth his next city. Rinse and repeat until Athens is yours.

But more importantly, I'm not interested in playing your save, primarily because of your closed-minded attitude. Every game at Emperor (assuming not completely non-standard settings) is winnable. For some players, I think that may even be true for Deity. I suggest you have an open mind to the suggestions already proffered and try them yourself. If you still don't get it to work, then people will be more sympathetic and may even try to play your save.

But if you're more interested in continuing your closed-minded rant, don't count on finding any sympathetic ears. The best you can hope for is someone playing your save motivated only by proving you wrong. I suppose you think you'll win that bet, but plenty of players with more experience at higher difficulties think otherwise and my money's with them.
 
fyar said:
Post some screenshots from when you first discovered that he was a runaway, if you still have a save from near that period of time, and I'm sure there that some of the more "experienced" players in this forum will have loads of advice.
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Plus one on this request. OP, is that your T164 save?

I have not had trouble peacefully blocking Alex from DiploVC since I learned this one trick: AIs will only ever drop 500 gold.

You only need like 3 CS allies yourself to block DiploVC, and you need not be at war with Alex to keep him from stealing your CS allies. You just need the usual amount of GPT. Save up until you can buy out a CS from underneath him, then save up more so you have 1000 spare on top of that. Spend what you need for ally status then gift 1000 more. If you have opened Patronage and can spare a spy to swing votes in that CS for the rest of the game, then you probably will not have to spend any more on that CS. So you can start saving up for the next vulnerable CS.

But I want to repeat the question someone asked about OP starting continent. Where there not a couple or three CS there for you to start with before you even met Alex? If one or two are inland, that should be one or two that Alex cannot touch with Gunboat Diplomacy.
 
I have not taken a look at the save, but going on what beetle said, If you are having trouble getting money and have a few friends you can take out loans from them for gpt if you can't find anything else to trade and if you are still short sell a few things. Use their cash and yours to buy the CS you need the turn before the vote. That may save you on this vote, then you've got more time to either invade him or win yourself before the next one. You can pick the ones that have feasible missions too such as trade routes, gold, or military aid quests. For future games, keep in mind the best defense against diplo winners is to just keep a few CS allies yourself from early in the game. I always do this and defend them so I don't have this problem. If he has a successful coup on one I usually cash-buy it back but half the time they kill their own spies trying anyway.
 
danaphanous said:
I have not taken a look at the save, but going on what beetle said, If you are having trouble getting money and have a few friends you can take out loans from them for gpt if you can't find anything else to trade and if you are still short sell a few things. Use their cash and yours to buy the CS you need the turn before the vote. That may save you on this vote, then you've got more time to either invade him or win yourself before the next one. You can pick the ones that have feasible missions too such as trade routes, gold, or military aid quests. For future games, keep in mind the best defense against diplo winners is to just keep a few CS allies yourself from early in the game. I always do this and defend them so I don't have this problem. If he has a successful coup on one I usually cash-buy it back but half the time they kill their own spies trying anyway.
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In my current game Alex couped my closest CS and after the Coup I was at 5 influence and Alex was at 150.

Fortunately I'm playing for diplo victory myself and put a spy there and I'll get it back with Treaty Organization eventually but there was nothing I could have done about that first coup without leaving a spy there on defense; which I don't have to spare as I'm actively trying to get OTHER CSes.
 
@OP
Well, I opened your save file and had a look at it. I must admit, I did not play any turns. But I managed to see quite a lot.

On the positive side, your workers don't seem to be automated, and that's already a big plus. I'm quite serious here.

However, the rest is not so good. In the city screens you have everything on Default focus, Manual specialist control boxes not locked. On higher difficulties you want to have more control here. You had Marble, a lux resource worth 4 happiness, in the third ring of your capital Paris, yet you let Kiev - a city state! - to reach and take it, although it was FOUR(4!) tiles away from Kiev. As a result you have no Marble now. A bit too generous on your part, I'd say. Yes, you have 16 happiness, 3 cities and 1 settler on route I don't know where to (well, maybe for that 2nd citrus and bananas), but still. You don't want to let city states steal your luxuries in such a way. Your second expo Orleans had 9(!) iron in its 3rd ring and yet you let Sofia to have it, although it was also in Sofia's 3rd ring. I believe with a little effort you could have had it, seeing that it is the only iron source in the vicinity of your empire.

Let's recap the time: it is t164, 1040 AD.
You haven't yet researched Optics, now worth 2 turns of research, which would let you to embark and cross that little bay and destroy that barb camp near the Vatican City that both Vatican (faith) and Kiev (culture) have missions for. Both of them plus Wellington (food) in their vicinity have also issued missions for a trade route. You have 3 trade routes available, yet you're using only two land caravans. They are going from Paris to Sofia and Mongolian city Turfan. As your only coastal city is Paris, and with so much happiness to spare, you might have wanted to help grow Paris and send those caravans as food caravans from Orleans and Lyons to Paris, that would have resulted in more science generated in Paris than the current meagre +2 beakers from the route to Turfan. Alternatively, if you deleted one land caravan (or reached Compass for another trade route) and had two trading ships going from Paris to Kiev and Vatican, plus a land caravan to Wellington which cannot yet be reached by sea, you'd fulfil their quests for lots of influence. If you managed to destroy that camp, you had two allies more. If you're neglecting city states in such a manner, no wonder somebody picks them up, you don't even need Alex.

By the way, why do you have your army concentrated on the other side of your empire, far far from that notorious camp, and on the border with Theodora? She seems pretty friendly and inoffensive and a useful trading partner. You should be more worried about checking Genghis.

Paris is generating the most of your gold, yet you are missing a market there. You have picked and completed Tradition, yet your total income is only +20 gold? I'd thought you went Liberty if I did not check.

You picked Aesthetics as your second social policy, so I guess you're aiming for the culture victory. Yet your faith generation is exactly 0, although you have the Byzantine Eastern Orthodoxy which in your case would let you buy for faith Cathedrals(!), Monasteries(!!) and... Mosques(!!!). The exclamation marks are here for the degree of their awesomeness, yet you're completely ignoring them!

Your spy is in Mongolia which has 1 tech less than you and has a stealing chance in 32 turns? A bit too long a shot. Have you tried notIstanbul? ;)

I'm pretty sure this game is still very, very much winnable at this point.
Just continue to improve your playstyle. Read a bit War academy articles, if you're into reading, alternatively you might want to check a couple of the latest SBFMadDjinn's youtube videos - Indian Culture victory and Poland liberty games. On Deity:). They are pretty old now and pre-latest patch but still valid, imho. Have less stress and more fun!
 
Chum said:
Are you aware that "recently" does not mean "Last turn?"

The CS AI won't necessarily hand out a quest on the turn right after they've been tributed. You can see this in multiplayer.
Click to expand...

I wasn't aware.
 
MrRadar said:
@OP
Well, I opened your save file and had a look at it. I must admit, I did not play any turns. But I managed to see quite a lot.

On the positive side, your workers don't seem to be automated, and that's already a big plus. I'm quite serious here.

However, the rest is not so good. In the city screens you have everything on Default focus, Manual specialist control boxes not locked. On higher difficulties you want to have more control here. You had Marble, a lux resource worth 4 happiness, in the third ring of your capital Paris, yet you let Kiev - a city state! - to reach and take it, although it was FOUR(4!) tiles away from Kiev. As a result you have no Marble now. A bit too generous on your part, I'd say. Yes, you have 16 happiness, 3 cities and 1 settler on route I don't know where to (well, maybe for that 2nd citrus and bananas), but still. You don't want to let city states steal your luxuries in such a way. Your second expo Orleans had 9(!) iron in its 3rd ring and yet you let Sofia to have it, although it was also in Sofia's 3rd ring. I believe with a little effort you could have had it, seeing that it is the only iron source in the vicinity of your empire.

Let's recap the time: it is t164, 1040 AD.
You haven't yet researched Optics, now worth 2 turns of research, which would let you to embark and cross that little bay and destroy that barb camp near the Vatican City that both Vatican (faith) and Kiev (culture) have missions for. Both of them plus Wellington (food) in their vicinity have also issued missions for a trade route. You have 3 trade routes available, yet you're using only two land caravans. They are going from Paris to Sofia and Mongolian city Turfan. As your only coastal city is Paris, and with so much happiness to spare, you might have wanted to help grow Paris and send those caravans as food caravans from Orleans and Lyons to Paris, that would have resulted in more science generated in Paris than the current meagre +2 beakers from the route to Turfan. Alternatively, if you deleted one land caravan (or reached Compass for another trade route) and had two trading ships going from Paris to Kiev and Vatican, plus a land caravan to Wellington which cannot yet be reached by sea, you'd fulfil their quests for lots of influence. If you managed to destroy that camp, you had two allies more. If you're neglecting city states in such a manner, no wonder somebody picks them up, you don't even need Alex.

By the way, why do you have your army concentrated on the other side of your empire, far far from that notorious camp, and on the border with Theodora? She seems pretty friendly and inoffensive and a useful trading partner. You should be more worried about checking Genghis.

Paris is generating the most of your gold, yet you are missing a market there. You have picked and completed Tradition, yet your total income is only +20 gold? I'd thought you went Liberty if I did not check.

You picked Aesthetics as your second social policy, so I guess you're aiming for the culture victory. Yet your faith generation is exactly 0, although you have the Byzantine Eastern Orthodoxy which in your case would let you buy for faith Cathedrals(!), Monasteries(!!) and... Mosques(!!!). The exclamation marks are here for the degree of their awesomeness, yet you're completely ignoring them!

Your spy is in Mongolia which has 1 tech less than you and has a stealing chance in 32 turns? A bit too long a shot. Have you tried notIstanbul? ;)

I'm pretty sure this game is still very, very much winnable at this point.
Just continue to improve your playstyle. Read a bit War academy articles, if you're into reading, alternatively you might want to check a couple of the latest SBFMadDjinn's youtube videos - Indian Culture victory and Poland liberty games. On Deity:). They are pretty old now and pre-latest patch but still valid, imho. Have less stress and more fun!
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I do change specialists when there is enough to be changed but at that point it's just 'get the food and grow. If you look again, I'm pretty sure some of my tiles were locked that I wanted the city to work.

Kiev went STRAIGHT for that marble. I'm talking all their territory expands went straight for that marble, all 4 tiles. I was pretty pissed off actually. Later into the game I stole it with a great general.

Iron was the same, they got it very early, when I settled my city it was a bit of a 'will I get that iron' situation but I ended up not getting it. Believe me, I tried.

The Settler was gonna be founded after I destroyed the city of Theodora. I had a nice spot for a 4th that she's stolen. My army was also about to take her out, and in the continuation of this game I made short work of her.

I was also getting those cathedrals later into the game you were talking about, just not yet, I was busy building wonders, tech and food buildings, I just didn't have the turns to focus on religion, I pretty much ignored it altogether. I don't ignore it all the time (in fact, I usually don't) but in this game, I decided to do that. If you have a look in my save file, you can tell that I had a number of things built that took up all my production, including those units that were about to wreck Theodora.

I understand your frustration over me not getting all those things, like routes and optics and whatnot, but on Cultural you MUST rush those wonders, especially with France, because if the AI picks up 1-2 your cultural victory is absolutely screwed. I did pick all of that up later, but I cannot stress enough how I had other priorities.

Spy in Mongolia because he hated my guts so I had no issues spying on them and getting a free tech or two. Theodora was about to get rekt so there was no point in sending a spy to Constantinople. In the continuation of this game I got all my naval tech from him for free.

My city was in a very well defendable location so I wasn't worried about Genghis Khan. Later into the game he did attack me but he got absolutely demolished.

In this game I was building Wonders, Food, Cultrual, Science and Production and you are telling me 'You had no gold and no faith, and you didn't have naval tech'. Well, I can't have everything, can I?

If you think it's winnable, go ahead and try. I'm telling you, it's not winnable, but of course nobody believes me, so whatever.
 
Vajrajina said:
If you think it's winnable, go ahead and try. I'm telling you, it's not winnable, but of course nobody believes me, so whatever.
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I think the point is that if it's unwinnable it's because you put yourself in a bad position by playing badly, rather than it being impossible to play against Alex or there being 'nothing you could have done to win', as your OP claims. There was plenty you could have done to put yourself in a better position that you found yourself in.
 
Was curious about this one. Loaded the turn 164 save and played the game out. I'm a very long way from being an elite player but managed to post a comfortable science win turn 386. File save available if required.
 
Nokmart said:
Was curious about this one. Loaded the turn 164 save and played the game out. I'm a very long way from being an elite player but managed to post a comfortable science win turn 386. File save available if required.
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I hope you took Athens :D
 
Vajrajina said:
If you think it's winnable, go ahead and try. I'm telling you, it's not winnable, but of course nobody believes me, so whatever.
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Your biggest problem is that you declared war on city states 2 times. The influence with CS drops twice as fast. It's no wonder you can't keep any allies, and Greece won Diplo.

It's still very winnable though. Got a CV following your described strategy (attack Byzantium and go for cultural win) with 7 turns to spare until the first leader vote. But Greece still would not have won on first vote since I had 1 CS ally that stopped him from winning. I couped the CS one turn before victory but by declaring war on greece I could have been able to deny them from taking the CS back. That means 27 turns left for doing whatever.
I did a lot of mistakes, mainly because I wasn't paying attention. I forgot to theme some museums. I lost LToP and Globe Theater both halfway though. I did get two level 3 spies killed in coups. In the end I entirely underestimated the tourism required, I only performed one concert on Greece, and I had one more musician just born, plus another one I could buy with faith. So I could have finished a lot earlier. But really the difficult part was not being able to keep city states because of the double influence drop. I stopped doing quests at one point because they were pretty pointless.
 

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Vajrajina said:
If you think it's winnable, go ahead and try. I'm telling you, it's not winnable, but of course nobody believes me, so whatever.
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Here's the thing about this statement, and the title of this thread.

You are insinuating via both that the game is somehow rigged and it is impossible for you to win, when many many other people have won many many other games and have not experienced the same troubles. When one of those people attempts to tell you what you are doing wrong, you get offended by it and go on the defensive and double down, instead of realizing that the way you're playing the game is suboptimal. Obviously if your strategy is suboptimal, you will have a plateau of difficulty levels where you can no longer win.

Alexander is not an all powerful, all encompassing foe. Shaka isn't either. When people come to this forum and complain about those AI's, you're basically saying "I don't know how to deal with them, and it's frustrating me." That's fine. We get that. We'll tell you how to beat them, but you've gotta drop the attitude. Your frustrations shouldn't be directed towards us, we're the ones telling you how to improve your game. We're not telling you what you're doing wrong in the game so that we can laugh and point at you, we're telling you so that you can improve your game and correct the situation that's frustrating you.

2 people have beaten your "unwinnable" game. A number of them have explained your missteps to you. Read them, learn from them, and go on to win the next game, or at least improve your situation. If your game isn't winnable, it's due to your own actions (or lack thereof).

Have people been winning harder maps and difficulty settings than yours? If the answer is yes, then the problem does not lie with the game, or the AI. The problem lies with the entity sitting in your chair.
 
I've not downloaded the save yet, but if he's on another continent, you should have spammed submarines and declared war. Sink his entire navy and all the embarked units he tries to throw at you; meanwhile you're teching to battleships. (was Athens coastal?) You want to capture Athens, and liberate any AI's that he has totally eliminated from the game even if you have to liberate a capital to do so. (you can capture it again later if necessary)

It still won't be easy to win if all the CS's hate you, but you can keep him from winning and that buys you some time for a culture victory, etc.
 
I think we've seen the last of Vajrajina in this thread.

I hope this doesn't sound condescending if he's reading it, but I genuinely hope that he learns from this experience. Not just about better Civ V strategies, but about taking criticism, having an open mind to the experiences of others, and being a listener instead of a complainer. That lesson would serve him well outside of the gaming world as well.
 
Vajrajina said:
If you think it's winnable, go ahead and try. I'm telling you, it's not winnable, but of course nobody believes me, so whatever.
Click to expand...

Here you go, t367 CV:
Spoiler :


Although I see that at this point it hardly matters anymore, but as I've completed the game, I thought I'd post a screenie and some description.

As you can see, claudiupb has done it much more efficiently, despite (or in part thanks to?) going to war. I did not go to war with Theodora, I DOFed her and signed RAs with her and paid her to go to war with Genghis. Three times or so. These were the best wars - your neighbours are mutually occupied, there is a great deal of action, no territorial gains, and you trade with both of them.

I gifted away most of the troops to the CSs under attack by Genghis, but it was hardly worth it due to the double influence decay penalty. Excessive aggression towards CSs has a hefty price, don't do that. They are there for your benefit.

My transports on the way to that barb camp met Alex's caravel just a few turns after t164, so I had virtually no advantage due to knowing beforehand that he was on the map.

Of notable wonders, I've got Sistine and Louvre, though filled it somewhat later, proposed and won the International Fair, lost Eiffel to Theodora - that was painful, but she kind of compensated for it by being my personal ATM in times of need, for example when 1 turn before WC I noticed that it was actually the first WL election and Alex was only 1 vote short. Had to sell some luxury to Theo and buy more influence in Vatican so that I could successfully coup it. Alex came out 3 votes short and the second WL election never happened. It was a bit his own fault - during the previous session he did propose the International Games - just in time - and I came 100 hammers ahead of him. I imagine that carpet of Greek battleships in the middle of the ocean were pretty impressed by a couple of French violin virtuoso concerts, each worth 9600 tourism.

So what can I say - use less anger and more reason for your actions. Best of luck in your current and future games!
 
Being in a situation where you can't win is nothing unusual. If you screw up the early game, getting beaten becomes pretty likely.

But this is why I rank Greece (and Sweden) as high-tier civs. Not just because they are good at Diplo wins, but because having a lot of CS allies has a lot of other benefits too. There have been games where I never built more than 1 or 2 units and still had a respectable army, because I had a couple of military CS allies for a long, long time. Then of course there's faith, culture, etc. etc.
 
Then, you should have killed two or three CSes. Then, not enough votes.

And unwinnable on emperor ? Please. Most likely you ve let things happen and that s the end of it. As for the fact he kept up in science, probably the science bonus from CSes from the patronage policies.

The main proof that your claim is wrong is that people using your mid game saves reach post 300 turn CV or SV. Which on emperor is bad.
 
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