Victories

Ive played a few games of BNW as of tuesday and one thing ive realised is that the victories (Diplomatic, Scientific and Cultural) are all very close together. If going for science, you are going to pass the techs that include hotel and airport, and all the great writers/artists/musicians you will rpobably place as great works. As well as you will probably try to ally up the city states for the science boost you get from the policy in the patronage tree.

Back in G&K, You wouldnt get to globalization when going for science so you wouldnt get a diplomatic and you most liekly wouldnt finish 5 policy trees to get cultural.

Anyone else find this issue or have been going for a certain victory and mistakingly gotten another?

bbobb23 said:

Back in G&K, You wouldnt get to globalization when going for science so you wouldnt get a diplomatic and you most liekly wouldnt finish 5 policy trees to get cultural.

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Isn't that still the case?
Globalization (Diplomatic Victory) and The Internet (Cultural Victory) are way off the path for Scientific Victory.
Likewise, you probably won't be Influential with enough civilizations to win Cultural if you are concentrating on something else, because you'll be missing wonders with Slots for Great Works, you probably wouldn't go for Aesthetics, so no double theming bonus, and certainly won't be filling enough slots to generate the Tourism necessary anyway - at least when compared to someone concentrating on Culture and Tourism...

I can see the problem with Diplomatic Victory, as it gets activated for everyone once anyone reaches Information age - maybe make it so that someone needs to research Globalization before the vote for World Leader starts?

The nerf bat to Scholasticism was applied around 6 months after release to Vanilla. (Indirect; an early patch removed the ability of city states to build national wonders, most important to the humans being National College.)

Also, you don't need cash to become city state allies; the most important thing is station a spy on whichever city state(s) are more important to you than having as a Diplomats.

I'm not sure how you'd win a cultural victory without the Internet which wouldn't be a tech taken going for science.

I suppose some AI might research Globalization though if you're not fast enough launching the space ship.

100% of my games have ended in diplomatic victory, on the first World Leader vote. All by me except once lost to Alexander. (was going for science in that one, and he allied every single city state ) They really should increase the number of votes needed to win by 4, to offset world religion/world ideology/forbidden palace. It should be very hard to win on the first vote IMO. Playing on Emperor/Immortal. Patronage tree is just too good to pass up in any victory condition.

My first game in BNW I played Poland and wanted to get a Diplo victory. Well I dropped the difficulty a little more than I needed to so I could learn the new systems and also was trying everything out and I accidentally got a culture victory because all other civs were ignoring culture in that game for some reason. Go figure.

I actually agree with the op, for most of the game (if you want to win fast) gaining the science policies/techs fast makes any victory faster. Things like rationalism/Porcelain Tower/RA spam/Scholasticism will help you with a culture victory faster than not going rationalism/Porcelain Tower/RA spam/Scholasticism because you will get to hotels/airports/Internet WAY faster.

My fastest culture victory i ignored culture until i had a massive tech lead, i got archeologists out first, i had internet/hotels/airports super fast and control of the World Congress due to my city state ally spam. All of this possible with buffed RA spam & scholasticism and order factory ideology. Immortal AI's going for culture simply can't keep up...

What this means is no matter what way you want to win, going down that path is the fastest route to winning. Tech is king, more so than ever with BNW.

Well in G&K, I would play on emperor but I dropped down to prince for the first few games BNW just to get a feel and even when rushing science, I would still pick up a few writers/artists/musicains along the way (even with science funding in place) and with the hotel and airport, you can produce around 250 tourism, add on the national visitors center and thats a good amount of tourism even while not being focused on it. With the amount of culture the AI gets on Prince, I find myself winning cultural most of the time.

Ive played 5 games so far, 1 has been won with diplomacy as Venice, 1 has been won through domination as Assyria and 3 have been won with culture as Poland, The Shoshone and Morocco. The thing is, I was hoping for a science victory with both The Shoshone and Morocco but the cultural victory snuck up on me.

Okay, some thoughts:

A science victory requires getting to a certain tech level and making the spaceship. Bear in mind, for this you pretty much have to be the leader in techs, or very close behind, in order to complete this before another AI achieves some form of victory.

A diplomatic victory requires owning lots of delegates and/or their votes. This does not require you to be the one to cause the World Congress to enter World Leader voting (someone else could be the one to be far enough in techs to cause this). In other words, here, you would focus on CSes and the like and not so much worry about science, as, presumably, any other civ going for a non-Domination victory would, as you say, reach the threshold to make the World Congress vote for victory.

Thus far, those two victories don't overlap too much: you really do take different paths.

Where I agree with you, though, is on cultural victories. Realistically, there are three main ways to win culturally:

1) Build most of the cultural wonders (Uffizi, Sistine Chapel, Louvre, Broadway, Globe Theater to name most of the vital ones). Then horde Great Works in larger numbers, and with greater theming bonuses, than everyone else.
2) Have a good number of cultural wonders, and win the International Games for +100% Tourism bonus (huge, huge benefit).
3) Have a good number of cultural wonders and get to Internet, Visitor Center, etc. (all late-game techs for unlocking) well before everyone else.

Thus, cultural victory can, as you say, come down to just leading in techs. This is especially true when considering that your own hope of hard-building almost any of the important wonders, at least on some difficulty levels, is to use RAs, GSes, and Rationalism to get a tech lead and bee-line them.

So, in some ways, cultural victory does overlap science. However, different SPs likely are chosen in each path, so it's not quite so simple, but yes, on the topic of cultural victory I do agree with you.

Part of the difference is that social policies are no longer mutually exclusive. To get the fasted cultural victory in G&K you often went for the Piety policy tree. If you were going for a science victory you would opt for Rationalism. Now you can take both if you choose (and Piety is no longer the path of choice towards a cultural victory although it can be a nice contributor).

Mesix said:

Part of the difference is that social policies are no longer mutually exclusive. To get the fasted cultural victory in G&K you often went for the Piety policy tree. If you were going for a science victory you would opt for Rationalism. Now you can take both if you choose (and Piety is no longer the path of choice towards a cultural victory although it can be a nice contributor).

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We can take both? Now someone tells me... I've been avoiding rationalism if I'd done piety to avoid the unrest!

Mesix said:

Part of the difference is that social policies are no longer mutually exclusive. To get the fasted cultural victory in G&K you often went for the Piety policy tree. If you were going for a science victory you would opt for Rationalism. Now you can take both if you choose (and Piety is no longer the path of choice towards a cultural victory although it can be a nice contributor).

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This is true, but only part of the story.

Now there are no mutually exclusive SP tracks, yes, but you're also getting culture slower in most cases, as culture-per-building was greatly reduced, making it easier to go smaller (via Great Works) while making it a lot tougher to earn SPs when wide (really have to crank out Great Works and rely on some Wonders).

After all, now we have to wait until Archaeology to get landmarks, and even then they aren't guaranteed to provide +6 culture (now it depends on era). No more Great Artist landmarks.

Thus, while it's true that you can take both Piety and Rationalism at once if you like, it's also true that taking one may drastically slow the other (unless you went Piety from the start, which is possible now... generally I go Tradition, though, as smaller starts are now easier, especially given the 5% hit to science per city).