Only one win strategy.

[theboss987]

Hey all,
Just started playing civilizations recently, and it seemed as if the only way to win was to hybrid tech/military to victory. The difficulty also doesn't get "smarter"; it just hands tools to an idiot. Anyone have anything to say about strategy and difficulty?
Happy holidays!

 

[FinsT]

Happy to you too! /waves

As for ways to victory - YMMV; in fact different people report very differently about which victories are the most easy to achieve for them. And then there are some odd folks who even prefer to disable every victory type except time (by number of turns and total score). Well, may be not "folks" but just one guy, at least - me. %)

So i guess it's not any universal thing at all. But it's good news, i hope - because it gives hope you can master all victory types, or at least most of 'em.

Good luck!

 

[joshua43214]

Vanilla is actually much more flexible than BNW for win strategies.

That said, tech is the core of all victory conditions in all versions of civ.

 

[ixias]

In Vanilla, I'd say Science is the way to go. Military is kind of fun, but I really didn't start doing that till G&K. Diplo is essentially who has the most money and Culture is wonder spam, next turn, repeat.

In order of most fun in Vanilla:
Science
Domination
Diplomacy
Culture

In order of most fun in BNW
Culture
Domination
Diplomacy
Science

Science is necessary for all victory conditions, but the spaceship victory is kind of meh. In BNW, you have a good chance of triggering the World Leader vote, which you may not want.

 

[milk steak]

Domination is actually easier in vanilla with the lessened warmonger effects -- You get hardly any negative diplo modifiers if you can bait the AI to attack you. On top of that, true ICS is a valid strategy in vanilla making a wide domination game completely viable and even optimal.

e: But I agree that science is the backbone to any VC.

 

[Buccaneer]

As well as the needed change they made for Domination having to hold all capitals.

 

[SirPepsi]

If you're playing Vanilla, you'll have to try the others soon enough...that or be forever repulsed from civ, lol. The original release was just awful.

 

[Resident Mario]

Everyone is always going on something awful about how vanilla is atrocious and having been active (and really put in most of my Civ V hours) back when there was nothing but vanilla it's always struck me as a bit spoiled. No one ever really complained then that vanilla sucks, at least not anymore than people trash the game's weaknesses today; I think you people are suffering from the newer better faster stronger syndrome.

If nothing else Vanilla players made use of far more than today's bland Tradition+Rationalism+Order social queue, and none of the expansions have even begun addressing the game's principal weakness, the stupidity of the combat (and often diplo) AI.

 

[SirPepsi]

No, no - you misunderstand. My concerns with the original CiV were that so many of the beautiful CiIV features were removed and that the new ones were practically broken. When I got CiV near release day, I played for 20 hours or so before I quit. I didn't play CiV again until two month before the BNW release.

1) Vanilla's CSs were stupidly robotic - there was no depth.
2) Vanilla's AI...
3) Vanilla's few civs available
4) Less land to expand
5) Vanilla's Broken Culture VC

 

[Buccaneer]

No, no - you misunderstand. My concerns with the original CiV were that so many of the beautiful CiIV features were removed and that the new ones were practically broken. When I got CiV near release day, I played for 20 hours or so before I quit. I didn't play CiV again until two month before the BNW release.

1) Vanilla's CSs were stupidly robotic - there was no depth.
2) Vanilla's AI...
3) Vanilla's few civs available
4) Less land to expand
5) Vanilla's Broken Culture VC

I don't think I would agree with anything you said. The initial release (before the patches came) had a lot of things that were unbalanced and unfinished but the game was fully playable. Every new feature they implemented, however awkwardly, were superior than Civ4 right of the bat. A lot of people saw that and we were hoping that they would actually realize the potential of those by fixing and improving them. They did in a way that far exceeded expectations.

 

[michaeljhuman]

The only hard one, on Prince, is culture. That took me time to master. I think I have still managed to lose by misplaying. It's probably the one requiring the most thought for me.

Even on King, tech seems easy, but I have a few thousand hours of experience in the game, so not sure how easy for newer players. I suggest getting 5 cities if possible, then doing the best you can to be friendly with people. Winning with Freedom ideology is the only hard part, and you can usually just choose order, and be done with it.

Military victories never seem hard to be on King and below. Tech sort of seems to come naturally when you have so many cities. Happiness seems to be the main challenge.

Diplomacy seems no harder in BNW. Diplomacy is boring, IMO, and easy, and I rarely play it.

I suggest getting G&K at least - vanilla seemed lame when I reverted to it BNW is optional, but fun.