Foiling a Civ's Science Victory

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feldmarshall

Dictator
Joined
Jan 25, 2007
Messages
387
Is there a way to prevent/set back an AI's science victory, other than annihilating it?
I took its original and current capital, as well as a bunch of its major cities, and nuked the rest. But looking at Science Victory box, they still seem to have their Science Victory programme intact (just 2 parts away from launching a space ship)
 
There is no way to stop it besides wiping them off the planet. Whenever you take their capital, another city becomes the new capital. They can build spaceship parts and launch them out of their new capital, as there is no "original capital" requirement for spaceship parts. The only two ways to stop a science victory are

1. Win first
2. Wipe them off the map
 
If you've captured their largest cities and nuked the rest, than you shouldn't need to obliterate them completely. A bunch of irradiated towns are going to have a hard time getting the production needed to actually finish the spaceship.
 
You can also trade for their aluminum, because yes they really are that stupid. Of course they can still get more through deals, CS, or recycling centers, so it's not completely reliable.
 
Yeah, unlike any other victory type, Science is just "Research X technologies and then amass Y hammers in spaceship parts". Other than strategically picking off any travelling parts, there's really no way to set that progress backward.

Your only recourse is to effectively kneecap them by taking away the cities that supply large percentages of their beakers and hammers. Annihilation is safer - that last city or two you leave them might still pop out a final part after a number of turns.
 
Cutting off their Aluminum supply can be effective, but by that point in the game it's very likely they'll have Recycling Centers, so it's not always as easy as just pillaging or stealing it. If it comes down to nuking their cities, especially from afar, the game's largely out of your hands by then.

Spies in high production cities can at least put some control back in your hands when it comes to figuring out how to slow the AI down, unless you need them for Diplomats. You can see where the AI has Recycling Centers, their parts being built, and sometimes even completed parts getting wheeled into the capital.
 
Invade their powerhouse cities, nuke the others, pillage their land. Scorched earth.

Also prey they don't adopt Freedom.
 
If they're going to launch nuke the crap out of them. Use everything youve got in a full scale invasion and try and take their capital and other high production cities. If they've got a strong military try and do it with nukes and paratroopers.
 
This is about the only thing I miss from Civ4! Taking an AI cap should cause them to loose all SS progress.
 
They should be having issues building the rest of the parts. If you took most cities then you did the right thing in hindering their progress because ss parts take a long time to build and if a civilization is left with 1 or 2 small cities that could be enough. However, its not like the ai has enough gold left to purchase the remaining parts, so you have to see how much gold an AI will pay for peace. If you can get a civilization reduced to a city or 2, then taxing for ais gold for them to be for peace could slow down ss building for civilizations further.
 
Myth and Legend said:
If they're one or two parts away, nuking them won't cut it.
Click to expand...
Pre-G&K, nuking should cut it. They may have 4 or even 5 SS parts, but if you bring bring them down to a civilization-wide total population of 5 or so, it should take about 500 turns for them to research the final techs.

Then spies came along, allowed for tech stealing and pretty much ruined that (at least I think - can you (or an AI) steal 2nd tier information age techs?)

A good argument to playing without spies enabled.
 
The problem with nukes is that the AI loves playing wide to begin with and most of the usual AI SV contenders are expansionist leaders like Cathy, Washington and Suleiman. It's only really Wu and Sejong who like spaceships and consistently build tall empires. You would need a ridiculous amount of nukes (assuming you even had the uranium and hammers/gold to build that many) to sufficiently cripple Cathy or Washington once they're only a couple of parts away from launch, even if you only targeted their founded cities. These leaders are also keen on nuclear warfare themselves, so you may end up paying a heavy price for nuking them.
 
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