How to sabotage enemy culture victory?

[henrebotha]

I just finished the following game:

Louis of France
Monarch, Epic
Standard Continents (possibly low sea level and dry climate)

I started on a continent with Suryavarman and Willem. I got both the War Chariots quest (which I completed) and the event that gives mounted units Flanking I. I then used my newfound promotion-happy Chariots to take down first Sury (who was pretty much helpless) and then Willem. I made a huge mistake at this point; Willem had about four or five techs (including Metal Casting) that I didn't have, and he was willing to offer them for peace, but I kind of forgot to take advantage of that and just wiped him out.

Having the continent to myself, I then proceeded to build infrastructure like a Frenchman possessed, convinced I was far behind economically. Some time later, I met Elizabeth (in Free Religion), and was suprised to see that while I was somewhat behind (not having Astronomy yet, for instance), my point score was actually just about even with hers, probably thanks to all that juicy land. Shortly thereafter, I met Justinian (Judaism), Hatshepsut (Judaism), and the thoroughly unpopular Charlemagne (Buddhism).

Elizabeth founded a single city on my land, and observing her as the tech leader, I proceeded to pour half my economy into espionage focused solely on her and send spy after spy to rob her blind of tech.

I felt that I didn't have the means to mobilise a massive army and move it overseas, nor could I manage a culture or diplomatic victory, so space race it was. My tech rate was good, even great, and I was putting out 300 EPs per turn, so I used clever teching and tech stealing to secure the techs I needed. Liz was also going for space race, though, so the pressure was on. I had some spies standing by at all times to sabotage her progress.

At this point, a message appeared at the top of my screen: "Memphis has achieved legendary culture!" I checked the victory screen, and it turned out Hatty had two cities at legendary culture, and a third at 70k!

I panicked. Inciting war was not an option (Liz, Hatty and Justin were BFFs, and Charlie hated me far too much to be bribed), so all I thought to do was to load a group of spies onto a galleon and send them over immediately.

Four turns later, before my galleon could even make it to the far shore, Hatshepsut won a cultural victory.

Now, I know what my two biggest mistakes were: I should have extorted Willem's techs before finishing him off, and I should have paid attention to the victory screen.

My question is: had I noticed Hatshepsut's culture levels sooner, what could I have done? Exactly _how_ much time would I have needed to prevent her victory?

 

[Zexx]

However long it would have taken you to burn down one of her culture cities. Nukes + Amphibious assaults do wonders for culture rushers.

 

[henrebotha]

Nukes weren't an option - someone built the UN and the first resolution was nuclear non-proliferation.

 

[Infantry#14]

if you can control the UN, propose the nuke ban resolution again and defy it.

once you build the 1st nuke, no one will vote yes on nuke ban again

 

[LegioCorvus]

All you can really do is go for culture yourself (you'd have to know way ahead of time) or destroy/capture one of her cities. All the other AIs may have grouped against you, but you'd still have a chance at victory.

It happens, though. I absentmindedly ignored a vote for Diplomatic Victory with the Apostolic Palace one game, only to lose to the game next round in the early middle ages. You should have seen my face.

 

[Mutineer]

all you need to do is check victory conditions time form time.
If you see some ai have 3 cultural cities in less then 100 turns or so, defiantly time to do something about it. Most cordinal solution is to take/raise one of there 3 cities, you will know there names.
But you can do a lot to slow them down.
1) Bribe some one to declare war on them, or otherwize involve them to war.
2) Bribe/use spyes to force then to switch civics. No free speach - no +100% culture.
3) Use spyes to destroy there cottagess in weekest cultural city,
4) use spyes to sabotage there cultural buildings, like Cathedrals.

If all that fals you can allways revert to option 0 - take/raise one of there top 3.

 

[henrebotha]

Thanks guys, all of the above is very useful. I guess in my game it would have had to be espionage... Like I said, I was churning out EPs at an unholy rate, so if I'd had the sense to unload a galleon or three of spies in Egypt and redirect my efforts that way, I could have severely crippled the effort - particularly if I'd had the added tech boost from extorting Willem before I cut his throat. The AI circle-jerk was all based on stuff I couldn't affect with my spies (like open borders, past events have proven your good nature, etc), so I highly doubt instigating a war could be done in this particular game.

I'm just so bummed - I figure if it weren't for Hatty, I might have beaten Liz to the space punch.

 

[Zink]

1) Bribe some one to declare war on them, or otherwize involve them to war.

This i find pretty dangerous, it backfired once too often so i dont do that anymore. What can happen: whoever is going culture ends up becoming a vassel and keeps the top3 cities. Since those 3 are most often the core cities that havent been reached/touched in war you infact made life even more difficult since you now face also the master when needing to raze it yourself.

 

[UncleJJ]

There are two basic responses that can slow down a cultural victory, war and espionage.

If you declare war and you can take one of the cities and that should stop that method of victory. Even if you can't hold the city capturing it will have destroyed a lot of the cultural buildings (temples, cathedrals etc). Some people capture the city and raze it.

With several carriers you don't have to go that far, you can simply destroy every tile improvement in the BFC of one or more of the 3 cities with airstrikes (preferrably the 3rd one). That should slow down a cultural attempt particularly if it was based on towns and a high culture slider.

With spies and loads of EPs you can blow up resource tiles, destroy cultural buildings (cathedrals are good targets), switch civics and religions or simply cause multiple revolts in the city. All of these will slow down the cultural victory to some degree

EDIT: to answer some of your questions in the OP

You can see the progress of another nation (the most threatening) on the victories screen (use F8)

But if you are seriously using espionage it is useful to build up enough EPs against any of the opponents that are threatening any type of victory to see inside their cities. This is the "Investigate city" passive effect. Then you know exactly what you are up against.

An espionage economy should have no trouble doing that, but you said in the OP that you had 300 EPs / turn. If that's right it is not impressive even if it's only the passive sources. At the end of a game when I have jails and IAs in every city I'm usually producing 1500 EPs from buildings and running a few spy specialists. If I turn up the EP slider, sacrificing research from commerce, then I can usually get 3500 or even 4500 EPs. Of course this depends how many cities you have and I'm thinking in the region of 20.