How did I lose?!

sav

sav

Prince
Joined
Mar 19, 2002
Messages
596
Location
Middle Earth
Long story short - spent much of the late game nuking Persia to stop them winning a cultural victory, culminating in my taking of the capital. From there, their influence over the other nations started falling - only India was holding them off.

After taking out the Incans, only the Indians and I still had our capitals, so I thought I'd mop up and end the game. But on taking the Indian capital, as I raised my arms to the air in victory, I was met with an unexpected sight... ruins being dug up future archaeologists! :eek:

I checked the messages feed, and sure enough, the game decided Darius was the winner, despite what remained of his empire being a radioactive wasteland with a rapidly diminishing cultural output. Meanwhile I, he who controlled every world capital and had a score twice anyone else's, was deemed the loser...

:mad::mad::mad:
 
Gots to post a save or something here, man. Can't tell you much without it, besides utter guesswork.

(Sorry about your game, though. That just bites.)
 
Primacide said:
Gots to post a save or something here, man. Can't tell you much without it, besides utter guesswork.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing by eliminating the Indians, the Persians were deemed to have overtaken them to win by culture... *after* I took the capital!

I haven't got a recent save, just came here more to rant than anything!
 
That sounds odd...

Did you ever press "next turn" - because I thought a Domination Victory happened as soon as you took the capital.

My only thought is that the cultural victory is the only victory that actually crosses two different civs turns - which might make the turn based coding hard (and possibly messed up). The culture victory requires comparing my tourism, which changes during my turn, to your culture, which changes during your turn.

My only guess is that there's some countback mechanic that if your culture changes after you've finished your turn (say because you lose a city) it goes back and redoes the tourism vs culture calcs. Or, possibly, that it maintains the cultural influence metrics continuously and does this before it checks for the Dom Victory condition.
 
The only way Darius could win by Culture victory, is by him having to conquered you culturarly by surpassing your culture with his tourism, which sounds strange given the fact that he had few cities

You sure time didn't come up? The wya you described it dosen't sound realistic that Darius had more points than you.

Science is a possibility but you would've mentioned "Darius finished X part in the capital"

Strange.
 
My guess: you did not control every original capital.

Maybe someone else was taken out early and you never even met them. Maybe you were going off the civilopedia entry that says you must be the last one with your capital and it doesn't matter who controls them?

Whatever the case, most likely there was still an original capital not in your hands, and by removing India's biggest culture producing city, Persia managed to overcome him.
 
So, here's what happened:
* Persia is dominant culturally with all other civs but India.
* You eliminate India
* Persia is dominant culturally with all living civs and wins the game

The fact that Persia is currently a radioactive wasteland doesn't matter - they piled up enough tourism when they were strong that your culture hasn't caught up yet. Two win conditions were satisfied during the same turn - Persia became culturally dominant with all living civs and you won a domination victory. The game apparently checks culture first, and anointed Persia the winner.
 
sav said:
I checked the messages feed, and sure enough, the game decided Darius was the winner, despite what remained of his empire being a radioactive wasteland with a rapidly diminishing cultural output. Meanwhile I, he who controlled every world capital and had a score twice anyone else's, was deemed the loser...

:mad::mad::mad:
Click to expand...
Now you know how the AI feels every time a player wins a non-domination victory on Deity. :lol:

But I don't find that too unusual, Civs like Persia and even more Egypt, will often build wonders in their secondary city, so if they've already got a lot of tourism, they'll still have enough to overtake other Civs, even if you take some of their tourism away, that's especially true if you actually kill(!) the Civs that aren't influenced yet, if you cripple their culture output or if the game lasts long enough that they get the bonus from the internet - OR if they only need one more civ, because the Ai does actually use musicians as culture bombs every now and then. You can always check the tourism-victory-page, as long as it says "rising" or if the difference is just very tiny they still have the potential to win.
 
sav said:
Long story short - spent much of the late game nuking Persia to stop them winning a cultural victory, culminating in my taking of the capital. From there, their influence over the other nations started falling - only India was holding them off.
Click to expand...

Bwahahaa. You lost because you went and killed the only guy on the block that's preventing anyone from winning at all XD

Also, Nuking persia does not stop the culture from gaining. You have to smash them and take over their artworks. The city will continue to generate culture even the city is in ruins however the buildings isn't destroyed and that includes the museums holding great works of art, etc.

If you eradicated Persia then went after India second, you would have been the uncontested winner of domination victory.

And buildings in a city isn't destroyed by the nuke, because they only get destroyed when you reduce the city's population to zero thereby burning everything to ashes as the city disappear off the map, only capitals is impervious to nukes.

Next time, don't just toss a nuke to kill the artists in the city, you have to get down and dirty to finish the job.

It was funny to read XD
 
Callonia said:
Next time, don't just toss a nuke to kill the artists in the city, you have to get down and dirty to finish the job.

It was funny to read XD
Click to expand...

I *did* do that... I captured the capital, where all the culture was, and checked the culture screens that his influence was falling, before I even took on Gandhi.

I guess the explanation is what someone said above - it checks for cultural victories before it checks for domination. :cry:
 
Rooftrellen said:
My guess: you did not control every original capital.

Maybe someone else was taken out early and you never even met them. Maybe you were going off the civilopedia entry that says you must be the last one with your capital and it doesn't matter who controls them?

Whatever the case, most likely there was still an original capital not in your hands, and by removing India's biggest culture producing city, Persia managed to overcome him.
Click to expand...

Or maybe this - there were two civs no longer in the game and Delhi was the only Indian city left, so yeah. This could be it. I figured as I was the only one left with an original capital I'd be the winner!

I think you might have cleared up the mystery. :goodjob:
 
As far as I'm aware, being the only guy who holds his capital isn't enough to win anymore. It used to be the case, but now you need to hold every single original capital at the same time by yourself.

You can check at the domination victory screen, it should say who holds which capitals (I feel a bit stupid because I guess you already know all this, but w/e, I will say it anyway.)
 
Keep an eye on the tourism section from time to time. Cultural victories often come in surprise... the tourism also warns you that another culture is already influential and how many civilizations need to be influenced afterwards.
 
Yes - the capitals thing is why I asked if he ever had to press "Next Turn"...

If he did that then he's lost fair and square and there's another capital he didn't own.

If he got the defeat screen immediately on capture it's because there are two victory conditions satisfied and he's lost out for some reason
 
The victory screen shows which capitals you have captured and which ones you haven't.
 
Winsling's explanation seems compelling to me.

Was Delhi India's last city? That is to say, when you captured India's capital, did you simultaneously eliminate them from the game?

The cultural victory only checks for existing civilizations, which already affected me in a different way before - in one game, I was playing Germany, going for an autocratic diplomatic victory with Gunboat Diplomacy, and then a few turns before the final UN vote the Shoshone captured Egypt's capital and gave me a cultural victory. Egypt had been the last civ for me to get culturally dominant over.

But that leads to another question. Every turn, does the game check for the cultural victory before the domination victory? Because if not, both you and Persia should have won on the same turn, unless you were missing an original capital. Does anyone know the answer?
 
LoneRebel said:
But that leads to another question. Every turn, does the game check for the cultural victory before the domination victory? Because if not, both you and Persia should have won on the same turn, unless you were missing an original capital. Does anyone know the answer?
Click to expand...

Delhi was the only Indian city. I think it's a case of me not holding a capital belonging to one of the civs that was eliminated early in the game - I thought that wouldn't matter, but now I know better :crazyeye:
 
There is no "winning at the same time", turns are sequential, so whoever comes first wins first. So if you take the last capital during your turn, then the AI always wins, because its turn begins before your next turn starts.

That means - if I'm not missing something - you can't win the game until you either remove Persia from the game, get enough culture to no longer be fully influenced, get another civ to no longer be fully influenced or make sure that India has a second City
 
Ryika said:
There is no "winning at the same time", turns are sequential, so whoever comes first wins first. So if you take the last capital during your turn, then the AI always wins, because its turn begins before your next turn starts.
Click to expand...

But then shouldn't he have won the moment he captured Delhi? (assuming here that he did hold every original capital) Or does the domination victory not take place until the turn after?

(Yeah, I don't do domination that often.)
 
LoneRebel said:
But then shouldn't he have won the moment he captured Delhi? (assuming here that he did hold every original capital) Or does the domination victory not take place until the turn after?

(Yeah, I don't do domination that often.)
Click to expand...
Mhhh... yeah. Just thought about it again and literally everything I said in the last post was utter nonsense. If one takes the last capital (and own them all), then the victory screen should trigger immediately.

Which leaves me just as clueless as the rest. :lol: And quite interested to find out if cultural victory can indeed be triggered without being the active player.
 
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