Thought I was cruising towards victory...

[choraltrickster]

but was blindsided by a "defeated" announcement that The Netherlands had won with a cultural victory (turn 350). I was playing Immortal/Standard/Standard/Pangaea-plus and having one of my best games ever. I had reduced my three closest neighbours to 1/0/1 non-cap-city, had a huge (happy) empire, and was at around 2000pts with the next AI at about 1500 (with all relevant remaining AIs having parity with eachother--or so I thought). I had filled Liberty/Commerce/Patronage, was making gold hand-over-fist, no happiness issues, and was well on my way to a Diplomatic victory. I had secured my single border with citadels and a solid military of veteran units. I was looking forward to one of my highest scoring victories! I swear there had been no imminent cultural victory notifications, but maybe I missed them (travelling and playing on my low-res laptop). I was the last Civ for them to have cultural influence over, which had never happened to me as I usually am one of the first to be culture dominated by the culture AIs (though I usually pull off the DiV/SV). 6 Civs were under 80 tourism while The Netherlands won with a tourism score of nearly 600. Totally shocked.

Lesson learned: check on your (opponents') cultural influence by player.

... and I was looking forward to notching my first Immortal Victory as Rome. Alas...

 

[bison21]

Ah yes, I have been a victim of this, too. The biggest clue is that when you are by far the best player, yet another (non-defeated) AI doesn't seem to mind at all. Means that they don't feel threatened

 

[phillipwyllie]

AI civs do musicain bomb, usually they do it too early. Perhaps the Netherlands never got round to it because of all the wars

 

[76ers]

Been on the wrong end of this one. My first deity domination game as the Zulu. Just as I moved nukes into range to retake Athens from China. Which had grabbed Athens from me when I was taking Beijing. They were able to grab it by sea. As the map just worked against me for any type of naval warfare. They were 10 turns from a culture victory but they completed the international games which turned it to 1 turn and they pulled the win on turn 300. Brutal loss but there were some lessons to be learned from it.

Before that I had almost been on the wrong end of it in an immortal game. I was Syria playing continents. My continent was the Huns, Rome, Zulu and Polynesia. Had everyone's Capital but Polynesia. Which I realized Honolulu just wasn't happening without Artillery. So I switched up to science, did end up taking Honolulu still once I had artillery, and just played the science game. I had been friendly with Austria which had runaway on the other continent. Like you I didn't even really bother looking at their culture. When I launched into space I thought to look. So I clicked on the 1 more turn button go into culture and see they would have won on the next turn. Lucky timing. That was the game that I bribed Honolulu into going to war with Attila after I took his court and made peace. Recalled Attila back to life and since we were friends the rest of the game I gave him back his capital when I launched.