Is cultural victory still possible?

I'm trying to get a cultural victory with Brazil and it's turn 389 /king, CP and various small mods:


I completely dwarf all others (culturally), yet the Aztecs just went crazy in this game and have more outputs&troops than all others combined. In 10 turns I'll dominate everyone except Aztecs - they have +566 tourism against my +521. Even in a golden age (brazil's ua doubles the tourism output then) the tooltip says I need ~150 turns to become influential over them. We're at war -no peace possible, so no trade or open borders bonuses for me.
I noticed this pretty late (yep I'm a noob), and decided to nuke them back to medieval ages; yet my dear ally Sweden proposes nuclear non-proliferation and I've got only one a-bomb. No matter what I've tried, that proposal always passes; I really don't want to go 50 turns back and focus on nukes. Do you think it's still possible to win the game, and how so? I can't think anything other than outright conquest of their capital, and they are more powerful than all the world combined +plus honor&order civ +have the lead in science. Also another civ goes for science victory and needs only 2 parts, so I'll need to take their capital in the meantime.

Moderator Action: Wide image wrapped in spoiler tags

Maybe you could buy Great Musicians and use them. Also, make a trade route to their capital and maybe Open Borders \o
I think it's possible \o

Thanks but we're at war and I cannot peace out so no musician swarm&trade&open borders :/

balparmak said:

We're at war -no peace possible, so no trade or open borders bonuses for me.

Click to expand...

Why not? That's the only way you're going to win the game peacefully at this point -- need a diplomat, trade route, and/or open borders.

If you legitimately can't get peace, then war is your only option. At a minimum you need to take out a lot of the Aztec's cities (including their capital)..and ideally you'd just wipe out every city of theirs to remove their culture (and since you're influential over everyone else...).

If you want to post your save I can make a demonstration video of what you need to do (aka, conquest without nukes)...my only concern is potentially whatever Civ only needs 2 more parts. Might need to conquer them first or engage both at the same time to delay them.

Of course you can musician swarm while at war. In fact, often the only way to do concert tours is to DOW your tourism rival (since he probably won't give you open borders in any event). A gamey tactic is to found a new city, put multiple musicians just outside that city's borders, gift the city to your enemy, immediately DOW the new owner, walk your musicians across the border and bulb them -- all in the same turn.

As for the civ that only needs 2 more parts, taking their capital will do nothing to prevent their finishing the spaceship -- if you take their capital, another city becomes their capital and they ship the remaining parts to the new capital to finish the spaceship. (If it helps with immersion, imagine that newly completed spaceship parts are sent to the capital to be shuttled up to orbit, where the interstellar spaceship is being assembled -- not tethered to whatever city happens to be the capital -- yes, the victory animation shows the SS taking off from the capital but you just have to suspend disbelief and roll with it.) Although the AI can take forever to research the techs required for the last parts, it is pretty late in your game, so you may have to eliminate that civ altogether to prevent them from getting a science victory.

Do you have the ability to build Missile Cruisers and have researched robotics? It looks like you should have that tech, if so, over half his cities are on the coast so I'd build 3-4 of those and then spam destroyers since they are cheap and needed to block other ships.

Missile cruisers kill everything, especially cities since they can park 3 tiles out of range and fire away. Build nothing but destroyers after getting the Missile Cruisers, then move along his coast capturing and burning every city to the ground. Missile cruisers kill planes and subs, and destroyers capture the city and block everything from getting to the cruisers. If you have other naval units bring them along for more blockers.

If you don't have robotics yet, build the destroyers first until you get it. If you already have battleships, use them until you have the cruisers or they are sunk. You can squish him in 111 turns doing this, especially if you research and build XCOMS and stealth bombers next.

Here is the recipe for death:

3 http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Missile_cruiser_(Civ5)
6+ http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Destroyer_(Civ5)
6+ http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/XCOM_Squad_(Civ5)
4+ http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Stealth_bomber_(Civ5)

Social policy wise, if you don't have something better to grab and happen to get another policy in the meantime, open Exploration and take the tenet giving 3 production in coastal cities. These two will immensely help you war efforts. If rationalism/3 tier ideology are not finished yet though, get those first they are far more important.

More advanced players can probably do the same thing with better efficiency using aircraft carriers and bombers (And other tricks I don't know yet), if you want to do that go for it just make sure you stick to one upgrade path and take air repair as soon as possible. I like simplicity though, and this plan is simple and I personally know it works great since I do it with Friggin' Frigates 300 turns prior to where you are now.

EDIT: Crap didn't see another leader needs two parts. Well you can do the same thing to their coastal cities if they have any, and get those XCOMS ASAP. You're on Satellites now, can't be too far off, and XCOMS can invade anywhere on the map.

Terrific points, I didn't even know you can use musicians against enemies (why did I think that anyway). I also thought conquering capital would destroy spaceship parts (checked it, that was one of whoward's mods) so was a bit optimistic about that. At least I have dof with that civ, and backstabbing will make that easy. I was in the process of building missile cruisers&carriers + paratroopers, will go with cruisers+xcom only then, thankfully aztecs don't have a naval buildup. Though I cannot really try them now -finals dammit. I'll let you know once I have the time.

Also, about saves: I may post it but some of whoward's mods affect savegames and I have an absurd amount of them working now.

balparmak said:

Terrific points, I didn't even know you can use musicians against enemies (why did I think that anyway). I also thought conquering capital would destroy spaceship parts (checked it, that was one of whoward's mods) so was a bit optimistic about that. At least I have dof with that civ, and backstabbing will make that easy. I was in the process of building missile cruisers&carriers + paratroopers, will go with cruisers+xcom only then, thankfully aztecs don't have a naval buildup. Though I cannot really try them now -finals dammit. I'll let you know once I have the time.

Also, about saves: I may post it but some of whoward's mods affect savegames and I have an absurd amount of them working now.

Click to expand...

Keep going with the paratroopers, they upgrade to XCOMS for some random amount of Gold, I can't remember how much. Build them, and then use conquered city gold to upgrade them once you research Nanotech.

Be wary of subs though, this is why I recommend spamming destroyers. Three missile cruisers with no promotions can level a cities defenses in 1-3 turns, and a destroyer can sneak right in and capture it. Losing the missile cruisers to a sneaky nuclear sub is no fun, even with their bonus against them it'd be better for the nuke sub to run into a destroyer and expose itself prior to running into your ranged city smashers. Then they can all take it down together next turn. Losing a ship that takes 375 hammers to build is better than losing one that costs 425, especially when that ship is ranged. Ranged dominates in this game, which is why carriers win since planes have the largest range.

Its also good to spam destroyers so that they can be rammed into a city to capture it. Destroyers are the only naval unit that can capture a city, and since they are the cheapest modern naval unit there should be many to block off the fleet from outsiders when not slamming into cities.

Edit: This whoward guy's mods may throw all my advice out the window. If you can destroy parts in space by capturing a capital, that'd make this game even more winnable.

You only need very few destroyers to capture coastal cities, 2-3 are more than enough. Although I prefer cover 2 promoted Xcoms since they're much better at capturing cities and also inland ones. Focus on missile cruisers, they're good at bombarding land units and subs as well as cities. I forgot whether CP mod gives the AI ability to move and shoot within same turn, so you might have to watch out for subs. Otherwise it's pretty impossible to lose any units to subs. Also try to surround city with missile cruisers/Xcoms to prevent recapturing if the city is wide open.

Browd said:

Of course you can musician swarm while at war.

Click to expand...

Except he has <900 faith with only 23 faith per turn. At most he'll be able to buy one Great Musician, and maybe have another "born" naturally soon. This isn't a situation where he has 5000 faith banked or something to do the musician swarm.

Browd said:

As for the civ that only needs 2 more parts, taking their capital will do nothing to prevent their finishing the spaceship

Click to expand...

Yes, it will -- it'll deprive them of one of their best cities (and likely cause them to lose a bunch of turns on a part they were making there) as well as slow down their tech rate.

Browd said:

Although the AI can take forever to research the techs required for the last parts, it is pretty late in your game, so you may have to eliminate that civ altogether to prevent them from getting a science victory.

Click to expand...

It's turn 389 on *King.* My first Immortal victory was a Science victory on turn 440ish. He likely has another 30-40+ turns (though would need the save file to check) -- for example, none of the AIs may have the bottom of the tech tree researched starting from Combustion-ish (which is only needed for the Nanotechnology part) and thus he might have a hell of a lot longer than that even.

Wild_Woojsha said:

Here is the recipe for death:

3 http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Missile_cruiser_(Civ5)
6+ http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Destroyer_(Civ5)
6+ http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/XCOM_Squad_(Civ5)
4+ http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Stealth_bomber_(Civ5)

Click to expand...

This is bad advice. You don't need more than 1-2 Destroyers or XCOM squads. Try more like

6+ Missile Cruisers (the more the better)
2 Destroyers
2 XCOM squads
6+ Stealth Bombers (the more the better)

Hint: Destroyers have 55 melee strength. Missile Cruisers have 80 melee strength.

Wild_Woojsha said:

You're on Satellites now, can't be too far off, and XCOMS can invade anywhere on the map.

Click to expand...

Not counting Satellites, he could be 5 techs away from XCOMs.

Wild_Woojsha said:

Be wary of subs though, this is why I recommend spamming destroyers. Three missile cruisers with no promotions can level a cities defenses in 1-3 turns, and a destroyer can sneak right in and capture it. Losing the missile cruisers to a sneaky nuclear sub is no fun, even with their bonus against them it'd be better for the nuke sub to run into a destroyer and expose itself prior to running into your ranged city smashers.

Click to expand...

Missile Cruisers with no promotes will one-shot enemy nuclear submarines without taking any damage in return. Missile Cruisers only have 3 problems:

1, they can't capture cities. You need a Destroyer or two (or XCOMs or embarked units).

2, their AA is lackluster (only 100 strength rather than 140+ for Fighters/SAMs). It's actually frustrating when I have a carrier with double intercept Fighters and a Missile Cruiser decides to intercept rather than a Fighter...because it doesn't one-shot the enemy bomber like the Fighter does.

3, no indirect fire, so can't ignore LOS issues like a Battleship or (Rocket) Artillery.

Sclb said:

You only need very few destroyers to capture coastal cities, 2-3 are more than enough. Although I prefer cover 2 promoted Xcoms since they're much better at capturing cities and also inland ones. Focus on missile cruisers, they're good at bombarding land units and subs as well as cities. I forgot whether CP mod gives the AI ability to move and shoot within same turn, so you might have to watch out for subs. Otherwise it's pretty impossible to lose any units to subs. Also try to surround city with missile cruisers/Xcoms to prevent recapturing if the city is wide open.

Click to expand...

This.

LordBalkoth said:

Except he has <900 faith with only 23 faith per turn. At most he'll be able to buy one Great Musician, and maybe have another "born" naturally soon. This isn't a situation where he has 5000 faith banked or something to do the musician swarm.

Click to expand...

Chill out. I wasn't commenting on how easily the OP might fix his situation. All I was replying to was the OP's assumption that he couldn't do a concert tour while at war. Of course he can, but he certainly would need to generate musicians in rapid succession to use concert tours to win the game. You can't tell from the screenshot whether he's even built his musicians guild, much less worked those specialist slots. If not, he should generate several musicians in quick succession. Has anyone built Broadway? Another GM there. And he's close to 1000 faith, so, as you note, another one there. Most problematic, I would surmise that the Aztecs have built the Great Firewall, which is a real problem.

Yes, it will -- it'll deprive them of one of their best cities (and likely cause them to lose a bunch of turns on a part they were making there) as well as slow down their tech rate.

Click to expand...

Again, I was responding to the OP's assumption that he could avoid a science loss by merely conquering his rival's capital. Yes, war can slow down the AI. First, the mere fact of a DOW may cause the AI to change its tech priorities or even suspend construction of parts it is currently building, shifting to producing military units. The invader might also capture a completed part as it is being transported to the capital. And taking the capital may disrupt construction of the last part, and deal the AI a setback in its parts construction program, BUT it will not PREVENT the AI from completing the spaceship. Construction might be slower in another city, but it can proceed. If the AI took Freedom, and has enough gold, it can buy the last parts. Or, if it took Order, use a GE or two to finish the last parts.

Most importantly (and the point I was responding to): conquering the capital does not force the AI to re-construct all 6 spaceship parts -- those parts that were already attached to the spaceship remain attached. The OP acknowledged that he did not understand that.

It's turn 389 on *King.* My first Immortal victory was a Science victory on turn 440ish. He likely has another 30-40+ turns (though would need the save file to check) -- for example, none of the AIs may have the bottom of the tech tree researched starting from Combustion-ish (which is only needed for the Nanotechnology part) and thus he might have a hell of a lot longer than that even.

Click to expand...

If I am correct that the Aztecs have the Great Firewall, they have researched Computers, which is but 2 techs away from Nanotech. Even on King, the AI can surprise you. (I'm surprised the AI let you get to turn 440 on your Immortal game -- they are usually faster than that.)

at turn 389, there is plenty of time to wipe out the Aztecs if the mods you are using haven't made the AI more intelligent in combat.
(If you are still seeking cultural victory, it will be much faster to use conquest to remove the Aztecs from consideration)

Browd said:

Chill out.

Click to expand...

Er, I'm not mad at you or anything? Not sure why you think I'm upset about something.

Browd said:

I wasn't commenting on how easily the OP might fix his situation. All I was replying to was the OP's assumption that he couldn't do a concert tour while at war.

Click to expand...

Oh, I didn't even see his second post there (third in thread overall -- looks like he posted it as I was typing my first post in the thread).

Browd said:

You can't tell from the screenshot whether he's even built his musicians guild, much less worked those specialist slots. If not, he should generate several musicians in quick succession. Has anyone built Broadway? Another GM there. And he's close to 1000 faith, so, as you note, another one there.

Click to expand...

Musician's Guild gives 3 base points per turn, plus another 6 for working it meaning 9 total. Say you even manage to get the maximum (I think) 183% bonus (Brazil, Aesthetics, National Epic, Garden, Pisa, Freedom/Order tenet, Arts Funding)...that's 25.47 points per turn. Which still would take 24 turns after building the guild to get 3 Musicians. More realistic to probably expect 40+ turns for those musicians from the current turn...and in those 40 turns he could either wipe out the Aztecs anyway or potentially lose to launch. That said, we can't see the raw culture numbers so maybe even three 5kish Musicians would make enough of a difference (two from guild, third from faith)...especially if he manages to trigger them during a Golden Age.

But that's assuming he hasn't made Musician's Guild at all.

I also don't see any possibility of Broadway not being built unless his mods REALLY changed the AI. If he's not the tech leader and is in the Information Age himself...yeah.

Browd said:

Most problematic, I would surmise that the Aztecs have built the Great Firewall, which is a real problem.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I see what you mean, and yeah, it is a real problem. I've actually done a culture game or two where I specifically diverted to get Great Firewall solely to deny it to a high culture AI. I didn't look at the numbers too closely except for his 521 Tourism which made me think "Uh-oh" (assuming he has Internet, which seems confirmed by the Great Firewall interaction).

Browd said:

First, the mere fact of a DOW may cause the AI to change its tech priorities or even suspend construction of parts it is currently building, shifting to producing military units.

Click to expand...

Indeed.

Browd said:

And taking the capital may disrupt construction of the last part, and deal the AI a setback in its parts construction program, BUT it will not PREVENT the AI from completing the spaceship.

Click to expand...

We're missing two parts, though, not just one. That makes crippling the AI a lot more feasible than if it was a situation where the AI only needed one more part and either had the tech or was about to get it.

Browd said:

If I am correct that the Aztecs have the Great Firewall, they have researched Computers, which is but 2 techs away from Nanotech. Even on King, the AI can surprise you. (I'm surprised the AI let you get to turn 440 on your Immortal game -- they are usually faster than that.)

Click to expand...

About the King AI surprising me...I present you with this: https://youtu.be/cDkjqH6GooU?t=8286

That's a culture victory on turn 318 long before I even reached The Internet, let alone National Visitors Center. Someone asked for help in that game because they had Shaka to the east and Hiawatha to the west...and that scared the player. So I loaded the save, immediately declared war on the *entire* world (not just those two), didn't build any settlers (he was still on one city on turn 55), never conquered a city (except for a (razed) 1 pop city Hiawatha tried to settle in a spot that would block some trade routes I wanted)...and won said cultural victory being at war with the entire world the entire time. Which means no diplomats, trade routes, open borders, etc. And of course no research agreements or being able to sway more CSes to my side.

As I recall the Immortal game was on a Fractal or Archipelago map which slows the AI (and the player) down some...there was also a lot of war throughout the game. My first Deity win was a 350ish Diplomatic victory -- again, a lot of war slowing stuff down.

Save your musician buy/generation until you next golden age and then try to get 2. Should be enough.

Finally I had time to finish it, or rather Aztecs did that by getting a science vic. at 408. Seemingly they weren't even pursuing that, remained far behind others until the end. It's like they suddenly decided to go for and put everything into it. I had a sizable navy, 2 a-bombs and 3 x-coms by ~405 with more in production and was just about to start the invasion. I've got two musicians during GA, but still I needed 40k tourism and Aztecs had great firewall. It seems pretty unwinnable to me, unless I get back to turn 320. Also I wasn't using whoward's said mod, so even conquering their capital would not stop them.
On a sidenote, I don't really know how vanilla AI is, played too little of with it and that was years ago, so wasn't sure about how much CP adds to AI. Comparing it to what's said in comments, my impression is that AI techs, builds and definitely attacks better. Regardless, I somehow think there was something broken in this campaign, difference between Aztecs and all others is just weird. Most mods I run are minor stuff, but maybe policyplus and other little mods interacted and gave way to some quirks. Example: a small Aztec city one-shotted my carrier (net 100damage-1 tile away), I reloaded and moved the carrier to the other side of the city (2 tiles away now), this time it only does 28damage. AFAIK damage should not scale with the distance? I'll be more cautious about conflicts next time. Thanks all.

I don't understand...if you were at war with the Aztecs at turn 389 how did it take another 16 turns to be ready to attack? That's a significant issue right there.

But good luck in the future.

Eheh fair point, they dow'ed on me but we are so far away, I figured focusing on defence would work in deterring them. Actually it did, but as I was going for the minimum possible military, I couldn't attack. It all boils down to my carelessness for last 100 turns, I'd gotten too comfortable and overlooked Aztecs. Well practice is the best cure for noobishness