Blocking SS VC - anyone thought of this? tried it? works?

Consider this likely scenario.

You are friends with a runaway civ. You're getting good trade deals, research agreements, etc. He/She is helping you progress. The problem is that they will likely achieve victory before you. Fortunately, you can block most of the victory conditions:

1.)Culture: you can obtain things that will delay influential status over you long enough for you to reach your victory condition first.
2.)Dom: you can make your capital impregnable.
3.) Diplo: as long as you can make sure they don't have ALL of the CSs plus FP and either their world religion/ideology, Diplo is blocked.

Leaving just:

4.) Space: this is the hardest victory condition to block an AI out of. Aluminum-pillaging implies war and you're gaining too much from your friendship and also would consider DoWing a suicide mission as they are too far ahead. Bribing others to DoW them may not work if they're too far ahead, rifles attacking tanks. Nuking may be an option, but if they're too much of a runaway, they may complete the spaceship before you finish Manhattan.

Would this work? After rocketry, spam rocket artillery and gift it to them. After each one is gifted, it returns your aluminum so as long as you have 1 aluminum copy, you could make infinite rocket artillery gifts. Would the AI be smart enough to disband them, or could you block space victory this way.

I tried experimenting with this a few times, but can't create the scenario to try it out.

Wow! I think that is genius! Is there a way you can tell if you have them over resourced? I might just need to try this with the current CDG...

Nothing is truly impregnable if you have enough nukes.

beetle said:

Wow! I think that is genius! Is there a way you can tell if you have them over resourced?

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Trade screen plus looking at their city-state allies. The trade screen will tell you how many copies they have available from their own improvements, if it is 0 (absent) they don't have any more aluminum from their own lands. BUT, you also have to look at all their CS allies to see if they are giving them any aluminum as it doesn't show up on the trade screen.

The X-factor may be if they are trading for aluminum with another AI, but I don't think the AI is programmed to troubleshoot in this manner. Although, as everyone's probably noticed, they'll sporadically throw strategic resources into trade deals, so this may be happening as a fortunate accident for them.

The surefire way to tell would be to target an aluminum-based unit of theirs to bring up the combat modifications table and see if the resource penalty is applied, and by how much. But I don't think the standard interface or the version of EUI that I'm currently using allows you to target a friendly unit. Anyone know how to bring up the combat modifications table on a friendly unit?

Callonia said:

Nothing is truly impregnable if you have enough nukes.

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True. Point is that a spaceship victory is considerably more difficult to block than a domination victory.

I think this strategy is utterly viable. I was able to verify that the AI kept accepting longswords from me despite being -8 in iron. Sorry I didn't take the game into the aluminum era - I was just sand boxing to see if the AI would disband the unit and they didn't. So, even if the AI trades for aluminum somewhat sporadically, you should still be able to swamp them with rocket arty. Put them -20 or so and you'll be all set. Course, with 20 rocket arty, I think you could just invade, but for the sake of the thought experiment I think it will work.

Primacide said:

Course, with 20 rocket arty, I think you could just invade, but for the sake of the thought experiment I think it will work.

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Yes, but not quickly enough. I've been playing exclusively deity for about 2 dozen games now, and I can prevent early elimination 23/24 times, and can prevent being beaten by the other victory conditions 100% of the time. I can get myself on track for a victory condition usually between turn 220-270, averaging around 245. The only thing that I can't stop is a spaceship by a runaway. Direct conflict would get the job done, but not quickly enough.

As I said in the other thread, for this reason, I sometimes turn off spaceship victory, which also removes my backup victory condition, but there's been a few times that it was worth it. But like most of us, I prefer to play with the standard setup (except all games are without ruins.)

ShakaKhan said:

But like most of us, I prefer to play with the standard setup (except all games are without ruins.)

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What? Why?

that's hilarious and i'm glad it works

Here's another idea... If you have open borders, could you just put civilian units on each of the 6 faces of their capital. Would this prevent them from moving SS parts into the capital?

kamex said:

Here's another idea... If you have open borders, could you just put civilian units on each of the 6 faces of their capital. Would this prevent them from moving SS parts into the capital?

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Interesting. Doesn't help if they build the SS part IN their capital, but again the AI doesn't troubleshoot these situations so if you were to do this and a component was already in route, I don't think they'd disband it and build it again in the capital.

However, I think that if the AI doesn't ask to renew an OB deal between your turns, it defeats the plan. If they do, you're fine. If not, I THINK that since you have to renew the deal on the next turn, meaning that while each of YOUR turns will have OB activated they are inactive on the one AI turn between your two turns, the units will be booted out. Not sure about this.

ShakaKhan said:

Interesting. Doesn't help if they build the SS part IN their capital, but again the AI doesn't troubleshoot these situations so if you were to do this and a component was already in route, I don't think they'd disband it and build it again in the capital.

However, I think that if the AI doesn't ask to renew an OB deal between your turns, it defeats the plan. If they do, you're fine. If not, I THINK that since you have to renew the deal on the next turn, meaning that while each of YOUR turns will have OB activated they are inactive on the one AI turn between your two turns, the units will be booted out. Not sure about this.

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Yeah that's what I was thinking. I don't think they would disband but losing open borders for one turn messes it up. lol

You aluminum gifting strategy is genius though. Never would have thought of that. Its cheesy, exploitative, and immersion break as hell though. haha

sixty4half said:

What? Why?

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Tangential to the OP, but I feel that huts/ruins are cheating. I know the forum doesn't recognize them as such because they're a default setting, but that's how it feels to me. This goes back to when CIV4 just came out, and I reviewed my personal HoF and noticed that my six fastest wins/most dominating games were the 6 games that I popped BW from a hut. Playing without them makes the game harder by stifling early progress. I really don't want to come off as condescending or holier-than-thou, but sometimes I watch LP's where players are playing "deity" and then they get free masonry, writing, and calendar, as well as 1/3 of a religion and an extra population point in their capital and it doesn't seem like deity to me - deity often means you have to go wonderless or with very few, and that's like 3 Great Libraries, stonehenge and hanging gardens just handed to you. From my perspecitve, things like reloading when wonder-sniped or even just mis-clicking being considered cheating while the obscene advantages that huts can provide are not doesn't make sense. But again, that's the forums collaborative decision so I'll just play my way while they play theirs and just not submit anything to the forum's HoF.

Gives you a newly found appreciation for Attila since his animal husbandry is the only free tech you'll ever get before spies. Also, I was surprised when I tried Pocatello and found that Shoshone are still a very effective civ even without ruins, the primary component of their advantages.

kamex said:

Never would have thought of that. Its cheesy, exploitative, and immersion break as hell though. haha

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LOL. Definitely exploitive, but just want to find a way to address AI spaceships. Every other VC you can delay, and it's so disappointing to spend hours on a game, survive the deity maelstrom, get yourself into a winning position and lose by just a few turns because you can't stop the spaceship.

It occurs to me that a similar (but less effective) method is to be the source of the AIs extra aluminum. I realize that the OP included the condition that you stay friends with the runaway, but I frequently will give Shaka tons of iron and horses when we are neighbors. That way, when he dows me, his units are all fighting with a strategic penalty. Yarrr!

You could get the space building ai "hooked" on your aluminum for a few turns (long enough to produce units) and then Dow. It's not a great long term solution, but I assume it will buy you five or six turns.

There have been SV game I think I may have won because I was buying all the AI aluminum I could. But that is hard to know!

Just surrounding the cap will not work since the AI could airlift SS parts just like any civilian unit -- but again the AI sometimes has trouble with pathing.

But what if he sees that he has 40+ rocket artillery now and decides that your cities will make an good addition to his empire and dows? Strategy resource penalty doesn't hurt 3 range units too much. That's what I would do.

Callonia said:

That's what I would do.

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But you're not limited to programming. The situations where this comes up frequently involves an AI that won't backstab, I think Sejong is the civ in question about 1/2 to 2/3 of the time. Also, while this loophole could work indefinitely (if it works at all), I'm often not looking for a 100 turn delay or even a 50 turn delay, it's usually 20 or less turns that I'd need, sometimes 1.

Callonia said:

Nothing is truly impregnable if you have enough nukes.

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This pretty much, Fallout > Alpha Centauri in this context