Planning your goals for the next game...

[Archon_Wing]

How do you do it?

Personally, I don't pursue a victory condition, but rather how inclined to war I will be and then eventually pick a win condition that goes along with it

So basically.

1.) Peaceful, only war when "needed". (Culture, Diplomatic). In some cases I won't even attack if they forward settled my capital, usually out of laziness though. Usually I will double the size of my empire by flipping.

2.) Opportunistic, war when beneficial (science)

3.) Everyone dies, No diplomacy, or just backstabbing! (Domination, maybe religious/science/"diplomatic"). But this is really boring.

Obviously if someone gets annoying enough it often just devolves into 2 or 3.

I personally see science as a violent victory condition, and can't separate it from domination, but also see many good players that disagree, so *shrugs*

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

LEEERROOOOOYYYY JEEEEEENNNKKIIIIIIIIINNNSSSSS!!!!!!!!

Winging it also works.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I play with the following “house rules”

All Victories except Domination and Score turned off

No chopping

No unit upgrading

No modes

Legendary starts

Abundant Resources

No Barbarians

This is designed so the AI can at least pose somewhat of a challenge

 

[bengalryan9]

Usually I roll random everything, so it really depends which leader I end up getting assigned. Once I know who I've got, then I'll typically decide which path I want to pursue, though sometimes I will head into a game with the mindset that "oh, I haven't gone for X victory in a while, maybe I'll shoot for that".

FWIW my experience is that the more you plan on pursuing a certain victory condition, the more likely the RNG is to to throw a roadblock at you. If I plan on going for religion I can expect to see Peter and Saladin, while if I'm going for science you just know Korea will be on the opposite side of the world from me teching like crazy. The few times I plan on early war I always seems to get a neighbor that makes it more difficult than it should be (typically with the added bonus of having no early strategic resources, too!). The RNG hates me, lol.

 

[Buktu]

I mostly play random. So while I load up a new game I look where the random civs has its strengths and then try to play around those if the map lets me.

 

[Dedrytus]

I have problems with plans Last game: Eleanor, cultural victory in mind. How it was: three! early war chariots from meteorites, four neighbours conqered before they were able to build walls, two capitals joined my civ before I invented catapults. Result: quit and start new game.

 

[Alaindor]

I will usually have a general idea based in the Civ I choose to play and leveraging its strengths and uniques. But I will adapt to RNG, terrain and neighbours.

My previous game was a peaceful Portugal game, I was aiming for SV (because it was a long time since last SV) and I stuck to my plans since the RNG was nice to me, friends with all but Cleo and I was litterally drowning in gold. And we all know war is bad for commerce.

This time I wanted a more aggressive game so I chose Spain. I'm aiming for Dom because I never succeeded yet, but depending on how things go I might veer to RV or why not to another victory condition (probably not diplo since I'm on the verge of attacking my neighbours though...)

 

[WillowBrook]

I'm still working on achievements. So I pick 2 or 3 I'm aiming for and set up the game for those. Sometimes I pick another interesting challenge as well. For example, in my current game, I want to have every city with a stock exchange full of products at the end of the game.

 

[ShunNakamura]

I'm still working on achievements. So I pick 2 or 3 I'm aiming for and set up the game for those. Sometimes I pick another interesting challenge as well. For example, in my current game, I want to have every city with a stock exchange full of products at the end of the game.

This is me as well. Though I also tend to have a certian setup in mind. For example when clearing the playing as Brazil achievement I really want to play around with Sacred Paths. This isn't working out very well. That Pantheon may as well not exist. I'll probably just have to give up on it. Kinda like I gave up on ever getting feed the world for my Khmer playthrough. Really wish there was a difficulty that was fun at mid-late game without completely ruining your ability to have options in the early game. But if I play a low enough difficulty to actually get the interesting combos to play around with then the mid to late game is just an end turn fest.

 

[Archon_Wing]

FWIW my experience is that the more you plan on pursuing a certain victory condition, the more likely the RNG is to to throw a roadblock at you. If I plan on going for religion I can expect to see Peter and Saladin, while if I'm going for science you just know Korea will be on the opposite side of the world from me teching like crazy. The few times I plan on early war I always seems to get a neighbor that makes it more difficult than it should be (typically with the added bonus of having no early strategic resources, too!). The RNG hates me, lol.

Ugh, sometimes I drop games because of issues related to this. It's like yes I could go slaughter the roadblock that resides across halfway the world, betray all my friends, or maybe I could just start a new game and not have to deal with it. Domination is boring, and I prefer my wars to at least be organic and not just commit genocide because of an arbitrary win condition. I should probably use the ban feature but that just feels like cheaping out.

I usually try to play those into a winning position and just toss it.

But the worst I think are those annoying maps loaded with mountain passes that make movement of any sort tedious, so there goes like 2-3 victory conditions out the window.

 

[bengalryan9]

Ugh, sometimes I drop games because of issues related to this. It's like yes I could go slaughter the roadblock that resides across halfway the world, betray all my friends, or maybe I could just start a new game and not have to deal with it. Domination is boring, and I prefer my wars to at least be organic and not just commit genocide because of an arbitrary win condition. I should probably use the ban feature but that just feels like cheaping out.

I usually try to play those into a winning position and just toss it.

But the worst I think are those annoying maps loaded with mountain passes that make movement of any sort tedious, so there goes like 2-3 victory conditions out the window.

I typically just switch towards a different victory condition in this case. I'm the same as you in that I will rarely make the effort to go to war because I also find that to be pretty dull and unrewarding, especially if it involves shipping units all the way to another continent on the other side of the world.

It would be nice if spies were a little more effective at slowing down an opponent in this case. Yes you can get yourself tech boosts, and yes you can hurt their production, but in my experience you can't really do much to bring them back to the back if they have a large tech lead.

 

[PiR]

I usually target a few Steam achievements. Then I roleplay and try to be OK on all levels, not min maxing. At some point I look where I stand towards all victories and choose one. Mostly peaceful, but very vengeful, very little forgiveness!

 

[Archon_Wing]

I typically just switch towards a different victory condition in this case. I'm the same as you in that I will rarely make the effort to go to war because I also find that to be pretty dull and unrewarding, especially if it involves shipping units all the way to another continent on the other side of the world.

It would be nice if spies were a little more effective at slowing down an opponent in this case. Yes you can get yourself tech boosts, and yes you can hurt their production, but in my experience you can't really do much to bring them back to the back if they have a large tech lead.

Not being able to spy on allies really sucks. And yea it's just often better to be better at science yourself.