[GS] Analysis of GS victory conditions

[Lily_Lancer]

How to achieve different victory conditions?

Domination: Domination is a matter of science. Your science output decides how much strength your troop have against your enemy.

In GS everything related to military is on the bottom line, so just go straight towards the modern tank tech line and beeline modern tank armies. You can start you conquer at archer or horseman, and continuously conquer and finally gets modern tank armies.

Suggested Civ:
Korea, Korea gives you much better campuses and a very useful mid-game UU.
Indonesia, Indonesia gives you large early game advantage and also a very useful mid-game UU if you're
playing Continent or sea map.

Science: Science Victory is a matter of culture. Your culture output decides how soon you'll be on the one-tech-per-turn highway of bumping science.

For science victory, early science is not that useful as in Domination victory, unless you wish to start your conquest a little bit. Conquest some wonders may help. The real thing you need is late game government( which gives you many policy card slots, and allows you to build Royal Society), Cold War( double envoy), Scott(+40% science) Maracana (explosive culture and amenity output), Globalization (greatly increases your science output). These all lie on culture phase.
For science, go the research lab line, build power plants and research labs . If you really miss some wonder like Forbidden Palace, buy a few bombers to capture it.

Also, don't forget to pre-plan places to chop the 3rd and the 4th 1,800 and 2,100 prod cost project. If you don't have such places but an AI has, go conquer that city.



Suggested Civ:
China: Oh Great Wall culture.
Greece: Oh Acropolis, Culture and envoy, best for SV.

Culture Victory: Culture victory is a matter of Faith. Yes you have to make enough culture for Cold War and maybe the future Civic for free Rock Band promotions, but what really matters is the number of rock bands you have.

Wonders are best place for Rock Bands, so don't build too much wonders. Leave some for your enemies so that your Rock Bands can perform on them.

If you rely on your local tourism, you'll find that they aren't really as useful as rock bands since GS nerfed them.

Suggested Civ:
Mali: Discount on Rock Bands, hurray!
Russia: The Russians have a lot of faith, also if you get those early GPs, the AIs won't get, making their culture easier to be dominated.

Religious Victory: Religious Victory is a matter of Diplomacy. You faith output is important, however Yerevan seems more important and so as your diplomatic status. If AI declare Holy War on you, then you face challenges for your victory. The thing you can do is to have apostles fighting here and there, but still maintain a peaceful relationship to your opponents. The +10 strength congress resolution really helps. Also, religious combats adapt the strength bonus of diplomatic visibility. （In fact these are two really powerful sources in religious combats if you can get them)

Another way is through Domination, inquisition(usually the founding inquisition that inequists all cities with a holy site plays a big part) and gifting cities.


Diplomatic Victory: Diplomatic Victory is a matter of Domination. Unless on very rare situations you may get a lot of points from emergencies, you can't really expect you win lotteries every game. In 99% situations you need the first post-modern Congress to get +2 victory point. You really wish this to pass, you really wish this to pass on the first post-modern Congress . (Since this one actually matters for 5 points, if not +2 then you get -3)

However the first few votes are really cheap.

If there're multiple AIs who use their first few votes (for example, assume they all only use 60 diplo favors against you so they can vote you -4 each, if there're 7 AIs they sum up to be -28), If you want +29 you need 4060 diplo favors) 4,060 is definitely a number I cannot afford. Even with Future Civic you're only running +50 per turn.

So at least in most situations, you don't wish there will be too many opponents. If there is only 1 it is the best that you can always overwhelm him.

If there're two or three maybe you can still afford to beat them, but at really heavy costs. Even if there are only 3 opponents, they sum together may result in as much as 20 votes and you need more than 2,000 diplo favors to counter.

So Diplomatic Victory is actually much cruel than Domination. In Domination Victory you only need to capture the capital. You can ignore other cities and go directly with you 107-strength Modern Tank Armies (or 130-strength GDRs). However in Diplomatic Victory you have to eliminate your opponents from the map. They have to not stand the test of time, instead of only cede a capital to you.


Think carefully what is actually the victory type you wish to pursue.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Conclusion: Hope that helps the elimination threads:

If a Civ is good at science , then it is actually good at Domination Victory
If a Civ is good at culture , then it is actually good at Science Victory
If a Civ is good at faith , then it is actually good at Culture Victory
If a Civ is good at diplomatic and have reasonable faith output , then it is actually good at Religious Victory
If a Civ is good at domination , then it is actually good at Diplomatic Victory

 

[Ownsya]

Interesting and insightful suggestions. I look forward to trying out some of these suggestions and also to see what other players think about these. Thanks for sharing

 

[GrumboMumbo]

I find this write up very interesting and helpful. Do you think the design was intended this way, or just an accidental byproduct of the way these things fall into place?

 

[darkace77450]

I would argue that strong culture is better for diplomacy than a strong military (assuming you're not just burning everything to the ground to win a diplomatic victory by virtue of being the last non-crippled Civ standing). Getting through the civics tree quicker means more envoys, stronger influence accumulation, faster governor upgrades, better policy cards, and quicker access to spies if you feel so inclined to use them in city-states.

 

[bbbt]

(assuming you're not just burning everything to the ground to win a diplomatic victory by virtue of being the last non-crippled Civ standing).

I think that's more or less what they are arguing - that, barring a pre-vote victory with some lucky emergencies, - everyone will vote against you to give you the -3 DV points in the first vote, so you have to eliminate enough Civs that you can win that vote.

 

[leandrombraz]

I think that victories in Civ VI aren't unidimensional and that Civ VI have a good variety of unique Civs that allow for extremely different approaches. You're limiting yourself if you analyse each Civ strength on a victory based on a notion that one victory is a matter of playing it as another victory and nothing else, as if you're limited to a single strategy. It's an interesting perspective on what is strong in a victory but you risk ignoring other factors that can be just as strong with the right abilities and strategies, allowing you to take different approaches and be just as successful.

Domination: Science is important for domination and Civs like Korea are strong on it but that doesn't mean that a Civ without a scientific advantage is doomed or that they can't even surpass a scientific Civ with the right strategy. Non-scientific Civs can compensate just by being strong on another area. The Zulu is a good example, with early boosted corps Corps and Armies that are cheaper to produce and that you can even get some units upgraded to corps/armies for free can easily compensate for any lack of science, Speeding up your conquest which in return, increase your science since more cities = more everything. Another example are Civs with strong economy, either faith or gold. A combination of Theocracy+Grand Masters' chapel in a Civ with strong faith output can be used to overwhelm the enemy, open several fronts at the same time and easily turn your units into corps and armies to fight head to head with any Civ that might have a technological advantage at first.

Scientific: This is the one that I agree the most but I want to point out that culture is important for any victory, any victory can benefit from late game government (religious to a lesser extent) and certain policies, which put cultural Civs in a strong position. What make it strong specifically for scientific, to the point of being more important than science, is globalization. If the International Space Agency police was nerfed again (lets face it, that thing is OP), it would be more important to have a balanced science and culture output than to prioritize culture, since you wouldn't be getting that huge boost of science once you adopt the ISA policy. You would want to get to the end of the Civic trees but your science wouldn't depend on it so heavily, so you would also need to invest on science just as much instead of waiting for culture to do the trick. Yes, I'm asking for a nerf.
It's also important to note that even though cultural Civs are good for science, that doesn't mean a Civ like Korea is weak. You still need to invest in science and having a cheaper, more powerful campus is a huge advantage. Same for production Civs like Germany, which is also good for scientific, unless you're planning to rely heavily on chop.
Scientific is one of the two victories that benefit the most from powerful jack of all trades Civs like Australia, the other being Diplomatic, since you can easily get a strong culture, science and production without sacrificing too much one for the other.

Cultural: Faith is important for cultural but not to the point of saying that cultural is a matter of faith, nor it put faith focused Civs above cultural/touristic Civs. Rock Bands are powerful but overrated. There, I said it. I'll stand corrected if this is wrong but according to the Civ wikia page, each performance applies a one-time tourism pressure burst towards the nation within whose border they took place. Meanwhile, your good, old tourism per turn goes to every Civ. For the sake of simplicity, I'll ignore modifiers like open borders. That mean that if you're generating 1000 tourism per turn and playing against 11 Civs, one turn of that sweet tourism is as powerful as 11 Rock bands generating the same 1000. Local tourism was nerfed and got competition, but wasn't defeated.
Since you won't be using faith for anything else but Rock bands and maybe naturalists, you don't need to focus on faith nor have a faith related advantage. You want faith but you don't need a lot like in a religious game. You can focus on building up your tourism, build a few holy sites and save your faith for that late push. Faith focused Civs are good for Cultural but culture/tourism still rules. With that said, Mali and Russia got both faith and tourism, so I double on the recommendation.

Religious: Diplomacy is important for religious but you will never, ever, choose a Civ based on that, nor it will be the core to your strategy, so it's hard to say that Religious is a matter of diplomacy. At this point, this start to be more about fitting the pattern of victory X is a matter of Y than a matter of actually showing what is good in a victory. Yerevan is powerful and you want it but it's one City-State. One. It doesn't take a lot to suzerain it. You also can't guarantee that it will be in your game, so unless you plan to go hard on that restart button, you can't plan your victory around it. Celebrate if you have Yerevan but don't count on it. Being sure that you got peace to spread Boat Mormonism also doesn't take a lot and it isn't a decisive factor on the Civ you will choose or the strategy you will use, it's just something basic that you need to do in a religious victory. It doesn't define religious victory in any way.
Religious victory is a matter of faith, period. You want a strong faith output to pop out a stream of apostles and convert the world before it can tell what happened. Faith based Civs are good for religious, it's that simple.

Diplomatic: I already voiced how much I disagree with this and it's where it gets really evident that by now the pattern is serving itself: Diplomatic is a matter of Domination not because it is but because it need to be, to close the pattern. Domination already took Science, scientific took cultural, cultural took faith, religious took diplomacy, so what is left? Domination! Therefore Diplomatic takes domination or the pattern is ruined. It's ruined.

Here is what you need to know about diplomatic, to understand why it isn't a matter of domination, even though you can go down the domination path if you don't want to deal with the congress, which I see as giving up on the actual challenge of playing diplomatic, at which point you should be asking yourself why you're playing diplo and not domination:

• The AI is predictable in the Congress. That mean that you will often win resolutions without spending a single favor (personally, I like to invest 30 favors to be sure);
• Resolutions repeat often and the AI have a tendency to vote on the same option, another situation where you can get diplo points without spending a single favor;
• The AI rarely, if ever, invest all its favors. It's common for the AI to give only one vote. That mean most resolutions that you can't guess can be won voting 1 for each Civ that is in the game, including yourself (If you're playing with 12 Civs, you should invest 12 votes);
• Even when the AI invest more favors than usual, it's usually only a Civ or two. In normal resolutions, you won't find yourself in a situation where every AI invested 60 favors (4 votes);
• Most important of all, you don't need to win the Diplomatic Vote, which would be the only reason to eliminate Civs. This is where the AI will go for the jugular and invest all its favor to take you down.

Let's go deeper on the last point. The Diplomatic vote shows up once the world enters the modern era. That change the dynamic of the congress. Just like a normal resolution, the Diplo Vote give you one Diplo point if you vote on the right option, reason why you can get a total of 5 points, 3 from winning resolutions and 2 rewarded by the Diplo vote if you win it. Since you won't win the Diplo vote because the AI will go all in against you, you can join the chorus and vote against yourself. The fact that the AI is going all in on the Diplo vote means that the other two resolutions are even easier to win, and by that point you're already sitting on a pile of favors. Winning that 3 resolutions points is virtually guaranteed. That mean that you can win 3 points, then lose 3 points on the diplo vote, coming out of the congress with the same amount of points that you came in. Now, here is the kicker, where the whole diplomacy is domination thing crumbles. The game add the 3 points you won first, then it subtract the 3 you lost. So if you start this congress with 17 points, you gonna get +3 and win the game before the 3 you lost can be subtract. To put it simple, you got 3 guaranteed points in the first post-modern congress, which mean all you need is 17 points to win as soon as it comes up, doesn't matter how much Civs you have in your game.

So this:

You really wish this to pass, you really wish this to pass on the first post-modern Congress .

is false. If you "need the first post-modern Congress to get +2 victory point", you already got it without passing anything. YOU DON'T NEED TO WIN THE DIPLO VOTE TO WIN A DIPLO VICTORY. You just need to vote against yourself, win two easy resolutions and take home the prize.

On top of it, you don't need a lot of points from emergencies, if any, unless you fail miserably in the congress, so above all it's a matter of doing well in the congress, which can be done without eliminating other Civs, mostly if you don't play on Huge (12 Civs). Even then, you're likely to get at least one emergency before the modern era. You can increase the intensity of disasters to improve your odds and some smart diplomatic play (don't declare friendships) will improve your chances of getting a military aid. You're not winning on the lottery, it's not that hard or rare and it can be manipulated to some extent. You shouldn't rely on luck, so the congress is your best bet but emergencies aren't as unreliable as OP try to make it look.

Diplomatic is a matter of favors. That mean that the best Civs for Diplomacy are Civs that get more favors, either directly or through City-States and alliances. Diplomacy is also a victory that benefit from having a balanced empire. You want culture, you want science, you want gold, you want production, you want a bit of faith. It's by far the most balanced victory in this sense, everything matters to some extent.

You should consider taking out other Civs if things aren't going your way. It will make things easier since it's one less Civ voting, but it's not the strategy to go for from the get go, it's a plan B like in any other victory that you're trying to achieve peacefully: You can give up at any time and go full Gandhi on everyone. Keep in mind that you can get a penalty as high as -10 favors for grievances, so be careful not to shoot yourself on the foot, mostly in early game. Be sure that you can either control your grievances or have enough favors to counter the penalty. If you take a Civ down but lose more favor than it's worth in the process, you might find yourself in a worse situation. This is another flaw in the Diplo domination strategy, if grievances gets out of control when you still don't have a strong favors income, you might start losing Diplo points because you can't outvote the AI that you didn't eliminate.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

I think that victories in Civ VI aren't unidimensional and that Civ VI have a good variety of unique Civs that allow for extremely different approaches. You're limiting yourself if you analyse each Civ strength on a victory based on a notion that one victory is a matter of playing it as another victory and nothing else, as if you're limited to a single strategy. It's an interesting perspective on what is strong in a victory but you risk ignoring other factors that can be just as strong with the right abilities and strategies, allowing you to take different approaches and be just as successful.

Domination: Science is important for domination and Civs like Korea are strong on it but that doesn't mean that a Civ without a scientific advantage is doomed or that they can't even surpass a scientific Civ with the right strategy. Non-scientific Civs can compensate just by being strong on another area. The Zulu is a good example, with early boosted corps Corps and Armies that are cheaper to produce and that you can even get some units upgraded to corps/armies for free can easily compensate for any lack of science, Speeding up your conquest which in return, increase your science since more cities = more everything. Another example are Civs with strong economy, either faith or gold. A combination of Theocracy+Grand Masters' chapel in a Civ with strong faith output can be used to overwhelm the enemy, open several fronts at the same time and easily turn your units into corps and armies to fight head to head with any Civ that might have a technological advantage at first.

Scientific: This is the one that I agree the most but I want to point out that culture is important for any victory, any victory can benefit from late game government (religious to a lesser extent) and certain policies, which put cultural Civs in a strong position. What make it strong specifically for scientific, to the point of being more important than science, is globalization. If the International Space Agency police was nerfed again (lets face it, that thing is OP), it would be more important to have a balanced science and culture output than to prioritize culture, since you wouldn't be getting that huge boost of science once you adopt the ISA policy. You would want to get to the end of the Civic trees but your science wouldn't depend on it so heavily, so you would also need to invest on science just as much instead of waiting for culture to do the trick. Yes, I'm asking for a nerf.
It's also important to note that even though cultural Civs are good for science, that doesn't mean a Civ like Korea is weak. You still need to invest in science and having a cheaper, more powerful campus is a huge advantage. Same for production Civs like Germany, which is also good for scientific, unless you're planning to rely heavily on chop.
Scientific is one of the two victories that benefit the most from powerful jack of all trades Civs like Australia, the other being Diplomatic, since you can easily get a strong culture, science and production without sacrificing too much one for the other.

Cultural: Faith is important for cultural but not to the point of saying that cultural is a matter of faith, nor it put faith focused Civs above cultural/touristic Civs. Rock Bands are powerful but overrated. There, I said it. I'll stand corrected if this is wrong but according to the Civ wikia page, each performance applies a one-time tourism pressure burst towards the nation within whose border they took place. Meanwhile, your good, old tourism per turn goes to every Civ. For the sake of simplicity, I'll ignore modifiers like open borders. That mean that if you're generating 1000 tourism per turn and playing against 11 Civs, one turn of that sweet tourism is as powerful as 11 Rock bands generating the same 1000. Local tourism was nerfed and got competition, but wasn't defeated.
Since you won't be using faith for anything else but Rock bands and maybe naturalists, you don't need to focus on faith nor have a faith related advantage. You want faith but you don't need a lot like in a religious game. You can focus on building up your tourism, build a few holy sites and save your faith for that late push. Faith focused Civs are good for Cultural but culture/tourism still rules. With that said, Mali and Russia got both faith and tourism, so I double on the recommendation.

Religious: Diplomacy is important for religious but you will never, ever, choose a Civ based on that, nor it will be the core to your strategy, so it's hard to say that Religious is a matter of diplomacy. At this point, this start to be more about fitting the pattern of victory X is a matter of Y than a matter of actually showing what is good in a victory. Yerevan is powerful and you want it but it's one City-State. One. It doesn't take a lot to suzerain it. You also can't guarantee that it will be in your game, so unless you plan to go hard on that restart button, you can't plan your victory around it. Celebrate if you have Yerevan but don't count on it. Being sure that you got peace to spread Boat Mormonism also doesn't take a lot and it isn't a decisive factor on the Civ you will choose or the strategy you will use, it's just something basic that you need to do in a religious victory. It doesn't define religious victory in any way.
Religious victory is a matter of faith, period. You want a strong faith output to pop out a stream of apostles and convert the world before it can tell what happened. Faith based Civs are good for religious, it's that simple.

Diplomatic: I already voiced how much I disagree with this and it's where it gets really evident that by now the pattern is serving itself: Diplomatic is a matter of Domination not because it is but because it need to be, to close the pattern. Domination already took Science, scientific took cultural, cultural took faith, religious took diplomacy, so what is left? Domination! Therefore Diplomatic takes domination or the pattern is ruined. It's ruined.

Here is what you need to know about diplomatic, to understand why it isn't a matter of domination, even though you can go down the domination path if you don't want to deal with the congress, which I see as giving up on the actual challenge of playing diplomatic, at which point you should be asking yourself why you're playing diplo and not domination:

• The AI is predictable in the Congress. That mean that you will often win resolutions without spending a single favor (personally, I like to invest 30 favors to be sure);
• Resolutions repeat often and the AI have a tendency to vote on the same option, another situation where you can get diplo points without spending a single favor;
• The AI rarely, if ever, invest all its favors. It's common for the AI to give only one vote. That mean most resolutions that you can't guess can be won voting 1 for each Civ that is in the game, including yourself (If you're playing with 12 Civs, you should invest 12 votes);
• Even when the AI invest more favors than usual, it's usually only a Civ or two. In normal resolutions, you won't find yourself in a situation where every AI invested 60 favors (4 votes);
• Most important of all, you don't need to win the Diplomatic Vote, which would be the only reason to eliminate Civs. This is where the AI will go for the jugular and invest all its favor to take you down.

Let's go deeper on the last point. The Diplomatic vote shows up once the world enters the modern era. That change the dynamic of the congress. Just like a normal resolution, the Diplo Vote give you one Diplo point if you vote on the right option, reason why you can get a total of 5 points, 3 from winning resolutions and 2 rewarded by the Diplo vote if you win it. Since you won't win the Diplo vote because the AI will go all in against you, you can join the chorus and vote against yourself. The fact that the AI is going all in on the Diplo vote means that the other two resolutions are even easier to win, and by that point you're already sitting on a pile of favors. Winning that 3 resolutions points is virtually guaranteed. That mean that you can win 3 points, then lose 3 points on the diplo vote, coming out of the congress with the same amount of points that you came in. Now, here is the kicker, where the whole diplomacy is domination thing crumbles. The game add the 3 points you won first, then it subtract the 3 you lost. So if you start this congress with 17 points, you gonna get +3 and win the game before the 3 you lost can be subtract. To put it simple, you got 3 guaranteed points in the first post-modern congress, which mean all you need is 17 points to win as soon as it comes up, doesn't matter how much Civs you have in your game.

So this:


is false. If you "need the first post-modern Congress to get +2 victory point", you already got it without passing anything. YOU DON'T NEED TO WIN THE DIPLO VOTE TO WIN A DIPLO VICTORY. You just need to vote against yourself, win two easy resolutions and take home the prize.

On top of it, you don't need a lot of points from emergencies, if any, unless you fail miserably in the congress, so above all it's a matter of doing well in the congress, which can be done without eliminating other Civs, mostly if you don't play on Huge (12 Civs). Even then, you're likely to get at least one emergency before the modern era. You can increase the intensity of disasters to improve your odds and some smart diplomatic play (don't declare friendships) will improve your chances of getting a military aid. You're not winning on the lottery, it's not that hard or rare and it can be manipulated to some extent. You shouldn't rely on luck, so the congress is your best bet but emergencies aren't as unreliable as OP try to make it look.

Diplomatic is a matter of favors. That mean that the best Civs for Diplomacy are Civs that get more favors, either directly or through City-States and alliances. Diplomacy is also a victory that benefit from having a balanced empire. You want culture, you want science, you want gold, you want production, you want a bit of faith. It's by far the most balanced victory in this sense, everything matters to some extent.

You should consider taking out other Civs if things aren't going your way. It will make things easier since it's one less Civ voting, but it's not the strategy to go for from the get go, it's a plan B like in any other victory that you're trying to achieve peacefully: You can give up at any time and go full Gandhi on everyone. Keep in mind that you can get a penalty as high as -10 favors for grievances, so be careful not to shoot yourself on the foot, mostly in early game. Be sure that you can either control your grievances or have enough favors to counter the penalty. If you take a Civ down but lose more favor than it's worth in the process, you might find yourself in a worse situation. This is another flaw in the Diplo domination strategy, if grievances gets out of control when you still don't have a strong favors income, you might start losing Diplo points because you can't outvote the AI that you didn't eliminate.

By your words I understand the reason why you consider T219 as "fast victory time", and cannot understand why a typical victory time shall be T170, if not earlier.

You really shall enlarge your sight of view, try to look at things differently.

Your views on Diplo Victory is like

"Hey, I just went to Las Vegas and won $1,000,000 there. If you want to make money (win diplo V), don't find any jobs, don't start your own business,(don't rely on Modern Congress vote) just go to Las Vegas(expect there will be multiple aid emergencies) and if you're lucky enough (in most situations, on standard size map with standard disaster frequency the number is 0 instead of 2) you'll win $1,000,000."

 

[iammaxhailme]

I think culture in general is just very powerful, mostly for governments. I don't think science victories need it nearly as much as religious or diplomatic victories. By the time you're so late in the game, the Estatio de Maracana is barely worth the investment unless you are having serious amenities problems as you clearly already have good culture to get that far in the civics tree.

Science victory is, well, about the science.

 

[lotrmith]

Call me crazy but I consider Science the key to a Science victory , culture to culture, and faith to religion.

 

[Victoria]

I don't think science victories need it nearly as

Culture begets science. Of course you need science but lily is talking only about low turns to win.

Call me crazy but I consider Science the key to a Science victory

you crazy, culture is the key to unlocking disgusting amounts of science. Someone not using culture in this way will show 500-1000 science per turn while those that do will show 2000-2500
Culture is the key to unlocking moar science.

There are many science threads that discuss this in more detail. Beelining rocketry to launch the moon landing as soon as possible. The moon landing gives you a huge amount of culture if done right which the pushes you up to those high end culture thing that provide high science. The royal society allows you to complete projects with workers rather than production but naturally if you can chop in a space project it is even faster than workers.

This thread by lily seems primarily at trying to highlight how a different thing is required for these victory types which provides a thread of symmetry, sort of a written piece of art. It stretches some boundaries a bit and linguistically is a bit rough but still, I like it for what seems to be its intent to me. It also is quite vocal for lily which is great.

 

[kb27787]

Well I do agree somewhat... Thing is some victory conditions can be done 2 drastically different ways.

Plenty of cultural victories are done with minimal input from rock bands (if you can get your tourism up to 4 digits) and relic-based ones are faster than rock band ones... Kongo faster than Mali by far.

You can win low-tech domination with just knight corps as Macedon and I've won plenty without a single campus or even the UB. Domination with them is a matter of gold/faith rather than science. Just buy troops and fling them at the enemy, pillaging for gold and faith to get even more troops. You don't fear any war weariness anyway.

Religious and diplomatic victories just rely on luck more than anything. Getting a religion safely on deity requires some luck in itself and currently the AI votes rather unpredictably... The fact that the proposals are random doesn't help.

 

[Victoria]

relic-based ones are faster than rock band ones...

With relics you relying on losing arguments with apostles that may not yet exist.
If you really push culture hard by using choral music as well as theatres you can get a very early rock band victory. The reliance is totally on getting to Cold War. When testing rock bands I got there with Kupe at around T120 with about 15k faith. A CV is easier to get the lower the turn counter.
Relics can get you a low cv but has a lot of reliance on other things. I know you are a fan of relics and we have banged heads before. Rock bands are the OP flavour for CV’s at the moment.

Using these low turn strategies seems counter intuitive and is to a degree. That because Firaxis provides a lever in another are (like culture for SV) to speed it up and the fast victory people learn how to push it to the limit.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Plenty of cultural victories are done with minimal input from rock bands (if you can get your tourism up to 4 digits) and relic-based ones are faster than rock band ones... Kongo faster than Mali by far.

In a current game I do get my tourism above 1,000 before T100,

however on that game there is a Rome running 800+ culture per turn, and finally I still win by rock bands.

How much tourism can a band generate?More than 20 actually. Every time a high level rock band plays it generates as much as 12,500 or even 17,500 tourism, also with the promotion that tourism spread to all Civs within 10 tiles.
A rock band on average can generate 20 tourists, if you have 10 then 200. (Only 5k faith required) If you have 1000 tourism, how many turns it take to generate 200 tourists? 45!

 

[kb27787]

In a current game I do get my tourism above 1,000 before T100,

however on that game there is a Rome running 800+ culture per turn, and finally I still win by rock bands.

How much tourism can a band generate?More than 20 actually. Every time a high level rock band plays it generates as much as 12,500 or even 17,500 tourism, also with the promotion that tourism spread to all Civs within 10 tiles.
A rock band on average can generate 20 tourists, if you have 10 then 200. (Only 5k faith required) If you have 1000 tourism, how many turns it take to generate 200 tourists? 45!

I must be one extremely unlucky person then if on average you get 20 tourists per band (1600*20 = 32000 tourism total) given that you have a 26-50 pct chance of dying with only 1000-2000 generated on your first concert..

1000 base tourism translates to roughly 2000 adjusted tourism (route, borders, social media) assuming 7 civs, it is 14k tourism passive per turn, or the equivalent of one five star concert per turn.

And for 200 tourists, it is not 45 turns, but 1600*200/14000 = 23 turns with passive pressure.

I have serious doubts that you do not already win with 1k tourism at t100 outright without any concerts, unless you are talking about online speed? The most runaway Rome I know is never going to have 800cpt at t100, deity or not. And if the game goes to that point, why on earth do you not have 2k tourism or more? (easily done all with self founded cities)

 

[leandrombraz]

By your words I understand the reason why you consider T219 as "fast victory time"

Please, quote where did I say that. Try to read what I actually wrote, like:

My point is that there's plenty of points available before the diplo vote becomes a thing, so that's where the diplo victory needs to be fought.

or

Anyway, my point wasn't to show how early I won, I'm not trying to brag about how quick I can win, my point was to show that there's a lot of room to win before you get to that post-modern congress phase and that any Diplo strategy should focus on pre-modern.

I'm not trying to break your precious records, dude. Don't worry. I was making a point, not trying to show how fast I can win since I don't care about it. I couldn't care less about your precious ten turns that you theoretically would win earlier. You can win on turn 100 and me on 400 for all I care, as long as we both are having fun. I would rather lose a game here and there than win ridiculously fast, to be honest. It's mind blowing that you keep going back to that. I don't value the same things you do, how quick you win is important for you, not for me. Don't read what I write as if I care about the things you do. Stick to what I'm actually saying. The thing to focus here isn't how fast but if Diplomatic is a matter of Domination.

and cannot understand why a typical victory time shall be T170, if not earlier.

YOUR typical victory time doesn't mean anything, absolutely anything on the grand scheme of things. YOUR typical victory is yours only. It isn't typical for most of the player base. It isn't typical for anyone but a really small fraction of the community. It's far of the experience of the players base and everything I posted so far wasn't in the context of quick victories, it was in the general context of how the whole Civ players base play, from settle to deity, from casual to hardcore, not just you. Can you understand context? Can you understand that I'm not talking about quick victories, that it wasn't directed to that, any of it?

You really shall enlarge your sight of view, try to look at things differently.

I not only do that frequently, I'm also willing to recognize when I'm wrong. Since I wrote this, I already read the guide on Rock Bands, which I should have done before I wrote anything and I saw that my view on the power level of a Rock Band is off, way off. I stand corrected, as I said I would.

Your views on Diplo Victory is like

"Hey, I just went to Las Vegas and won $1,000,000 there. If you want to make money (win diplo V), don't find any jobs, don't start your own business,(don't rely on Modern Congress vote) just go to Las Vegas(expect there will be multiple aid emergencies) and if you're lucky enough (in most situations, on standard size map with standard disaster frequency the number is 0 instead of 2) you'll win $1,000,000."

And here is the problem. You can't deal with uncertainty. I assume you're not a Xcom player, it would drive you mad. You understand well that if you chop woods, you get X production, things that are fully on your control. Probability, mitigating risks and working with a chance of failure? You can't take that, you can't take the congress, so you can't look at it in any other way than just avoid it entirely through domination.
The congress isn't Las Vegas, I'm not rolling the dice blindly, the changes aren't small and more often than not it's guaranteed. Did you even try figure out the congress, like, even once? I mean, and I quote:

I'm not really familiar with DV

It shows, it really shows. Just like my commentary on Rock Bands left completely exposed the fact that I didn't pay enough attention on the mechanic before I wrote it. You're not familiar with the congress. If you was, you would know that your Las Vegas nonsense is BS. It isn't that random, it's predictable and it isn't that much of a gamble. I didn't just get luck, I knew what I was voting for and how much I had to invest to improve my odds or outright guarantee the outcome.

This is the part that honestly, annoy me. I can take the elitist "look how fast I win" tone but do I hate when it seems like people didn't even read what I wrote and answer to things that I'm not defending, that's not what I'm saying. Maybe my English is way worse than I think, idk. Where did I say that you should expect to have multiple emergencies? Where did I say that you shouldn't rely on a Modern Congress? I don't know, maybe I formulate my text in a way that is incomprehensible, because I'm sure I focused on normal resolutions in the congress, not on winning multiple emergencies. I'm sure I explained how you get 3 virtually guaranteed points in the modern congress and that what I'm questioning specifically is the need to win the diplo vote. I worked with the exactly same scenario you presented, where you need +2 points from the modern congress, I explained that you don't need to win the diplo vote to guarantee that and, contrary to my view on Rock Bands, I'm not wrong on this, I know the mechanic. You insist on something that doesn't exist, it's like you're talking about Civ VII, you had early access or something. You didn't actually try to use the congress, you're talking based on theory that is wrong and I can tell it, I presented why.

Please, answer me only this, directly. Take the scenario you presented and I will quote (I like quotes):

In 99% situations you need the first post-modern Congress to get +2 victory point.

So we're in the modern congress, 2 points left, by your estimative that's 99% of the situations (source: you know, that place). The AI will pile up on the Diplo vote against you, you know that. You vote against yourself, that's 1 point. You have a considerable amount of favors by now and the AI is going all in on the Diplo vote, which mean you got a lot of firepower and no resistance on both normal resolutions. It's basically like a pre-modern congress but easier by this point. Depending on the resolution you might not even need the favors, so you're virtually guaranteed to win it. Since you only need to win one (you need 2 points, you already got one), you could even go all in in one of the resolutions. So you get your second point. Now the game add the points before it subtracts the 3 points that you gonna lose on the Diplo vote, so that's it, you won.

Now please, explain me exactly why you need to "pass on the modern congress", which equates to winning the diplo vote? Why do you need to exterminate the whole world just to win a vote that you don't need to win, since you can get these points just by voting on the winner options (against yourself on the diplo vote + normal resolutions)? If you get to the first modern congress with 2 points left, you won, you don't need to pass on anything, you won. Please, show what I'm missing, I would love to know. We're working with a scenario you presented, I'm giving a solution. What's wrong with my solution?

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Since you only need to win one (you need 2 points, you already got one), you could even go all in in one of the resolutions. So you get your second point. Now the game add the points before it subtracts the 3 points that you gonna lose on the Diplo vote, so that's it, you won.

Now please, explain me exactly why you need to "pass on the modern congress", which equates to winning the diplo vote? Why do you need to exterminate the whole world just to win a vote that you don't need to win, since you can get these points just by voting on the winner options (against yourself on the diplo vote + normal resolutions)? If you get to the first modern congress with 2 points left, you won, you don't need to pass on anything, you won. Please, show what I'm missing, I would love to know. We're working with a scenario you presented, I'm giving a solution. What's wrong with my solution?

If you don't have any aid requests you need are 4 points to victory, if I'm calculating it correctly. On your T219 game there are 2 aid requests and you get 20 points, so without those aid requests you shall be 16 points before the modern Congress, right?

Let me tell you what things will be like if there're no aid requests for you. You shall guess the 1st one and the second resolution correctly, but even if you guess them correctly you first move up to 19 then move down to 16.

Yes you can win the world fair and move on to 17, and still win 30 turns later. But that's 30 turns. 30-turn is not a small number, isn't it?


So you definitely need the +2 to pass, making you gain 5 points from the modern congress.

1: Eliminating all but one is not difficult.
2: This +2 giantly makes you more robust to your Diplo victory, if you get this +2 you can even make some incorrect guesses on previous congresses.

For example, can you ensure that you always guess the right luxury to be banned?

If you get the +2 then you don't even need to worry about this. You have 2 more chances to make incorrect guesses!

I must be one extremely unlucky person then if on average you get 20 tourists per band (1600*20 = 32000 tourism total) given that you have a 26-50 pct chance of dying with only 1000-2000 generated on your first concert..

1000 base tourism translates to roughly 2000 adjusted tourism (route, borders, social media) assuming 7 civs, it is 14k tourism passive per turn, or the equivalent of one five star concert per turn.

And for 200 tourists, it is not 45 turns, but 1600*200/14000 = 23 turns with passive pressure.

I have serious doubts that you do not already win with 1k tourism at t100 outright without any concerts, unless you are talking about online speed? The most runaway Rome I know is never going to have 800cpt at t100, deity or not. And if the game goes to that point, why on earth do you not have 2k tourism or more? (easily done all with self founded cities)

Yes you need the card to freely choose promotions to achieve avg. 20. First choose wonder +1 level, then choose influence other Civs within 10 tiles.

With these promotions even a single act may generate as much as 20 tourists, at least in my game. And you can perform multiple times.

Remember always perform on wonder. Don't perform on other places, that yields little and may cause your band to disband.

A band without freely choose promotions may not be that powerful, but still generates a lot of tourists compared with local tourism if you always play on the correct location instead of playing everywhere.

 

[Victoria]

I must be one extremely unlucky person then if on average you get 20 tourists per band

Me too

Just like my commentary on Rock Bands left completely exposed the fact that I didn't pay enough attention on the mechanic before I wrote it

Lily clearly does not understand the CV mechanic well enough because he misses some key words from his diagnosis and uses the words of a gambler.

How much tourism can a band generate?More than 20 actually

I guess we are talking foreign tourists here. Sure it can but see the next comment

A rock band on average can generate 20 tourists,

My tests show on average a rock band generates 2.5 tourists, 5 tourists against the leader, 10 tourists with Turn It Up To 11 promotion and the leader IF being generous. You use the word CAN, Lily can lose a game, lily can win the lottery tomorrow. When people use the word can they are over exaggerating. I have to deal with this terrible word every day in my job. I can get to be prime minister ... the word can means nothing. Using the word can with the word average is just appalling.the word can is the word gamblers use at vegas.

Every time a high level rock band plays it generates as much as 12,500 or even 17,500 tourism

"as much as"... it generates as much as a million tourism but the word tourism is wrong anyway. As wrong as a lot of this rock band assumption.

hey, I just went to Las Vegas and won $1,000,000 there. If you want to make money (win diplo V), don't find any jobs

You use this to mock @leandrombraz and yet you are quoting vegas type figures for rock bands which is very hypocritical. You may have had a lucky game with Rome but do not assume for a moment yourn figures are fair or correct.

A band without freely choose promotions

Ahh so you have magically promoted yourself to a future civic where you can choose rock band promotions. You really have wasted a lot of time taking this strategy, just push faith and get to cold war. Pillage a lot of faith 20-30 rock bands. Rock bands do not care about open borders, trade routes or different government... nor religion. CV's are best attacked as early as possible.

Technical Explanation
We will use a standard speed, standard size situation but tourism does translate to some degree OK to other speeds and sizes with smaller and slower being advantageous.
Terms
Tourism. This is what your civilization creates at the top of the screen,
Domestic Tourists. For every 100 culture a civ accumulates they get 1 domestic tourist
Foreign Tourists. This is gained by applying your tourism and some modifiers to an individual civ to gain foreign tourist points, in this case 1600 foreign tourists from a civ = 1 foreign tourist point
Foreign tourist points. You need more foreign tourist points than any civ has domestic tourists.

For this example you need to get a CV by getting more foreign tourists than Greece who currently has 50 domestic tourists, everyone else have roughly 10 domestic tourists so they do not count. So you need 51 foreign tourist points to win.

If you are producing 1600 tourism and had no other modifiers each civ would be providing you with 1 foreign tourist point per turn. There are 7 other civs if none have died so you would be getting closer to your target by 7 foreign tourist points each turn but you got a foreign tourist point from Greece which reduced their domestic tourists by 1. So you got 7 foreign tourists but your target is not 49 not 50. Therefore you really got the power of 8 domestic tourists.
Translated your 1600 tourism (what your civ produces) produces on average 8 foreign tourist ponts per turn or 12,800 foreign tourists.

A rock band only plays at one civ and normally only affects one civ so really when it says a rock band produced 1600 tourism it really only produced 1600 foreign tourists which is 1/8 the power of tourism. That is why the amount of 'rock tourism' a rock band creates seems so high, because it is a much weaker figure than tourism. Normally at this stage of the game you may only be creating 200 tourism and a rock band that fails at a wonder may produce 1600 'rock tourism' which is roughly equavalent to a turn of tourism. Using a rock band later when you are producing 800 tourism is weaker and earlier when you are producing 100 tourism is stronger. Also other civs have less domestic tourism earlier in the game therefore making your target easier to meet.

If the rock band played at the civ with the highest domestic tourists this also reduces their domestic tourists making your CV target smaller. So a Rock band producing 1600 tourists here also reduces the taregt by 1 foreign tourist and so is now the power of 3200 'Rock tourists'. This is now 2/8 of tourism or 1/4 of tourism.Much better. much more powerful. People misunderstand some of the math behind CV, you can kill a civ early, the benefit from their cities is greater than the tourism you lose.

Using the Turn it up to 11 promotion means you affect all civs within 10 tiles which is normally 2-4 so let us say 3 and assume 1 of those is Greece. You are playing to 3 civs +1 for taking greece's domestic tourists = 4. so you are producing 4/8 of tourism or 1/2. Only twice as much as you were getting by playing at a Greece venue without this promotion.

We also have to assume in any culture game at this stage of the game we have not reached a tier 3 government and have open boders and a trade route with every civ. This means you gain +50% foreign tourists and is a fair assumption in my view. Even if you did have a tier 3 goivernment you would not want to use it because you would get -20% tourism from all civs.

So our 1600 tourism is more realistically 2400 tourism. While our rock bands gain nothing from open border trade router or different governments. Therefore any tourism argument we use should multiply the tourism value by 50% for modifiers but not alter rock bands.
REalistically at this stage of the game with 200 tourism you are generating 2400 foreign tourists per turn which is the equivalent to a rock band generating 2400 'tourism' from a concert.

Now funnily enough from my tests (I am not a statistician) my rock bands average around 4800 tourism before dying which is equivalent to 400 tourism or 2.5 tourists, 5 tourists with Greece, 10 tourists with Turn It Up To 11 promotion. This is 2 turns of a CV at this stage of the game. 10 rock bands therefore generate 20 turns of tourism and that is a significant amount of of extra power in a few turns. As Rock band power does not escalate with game turns so using them earlier is more powerful and later is weaker because of domestic tourism escalation.

Note: a lot of the assumptions above are that you can play at greek venuses and they have many wonders. You do run out of wonders and the best rock band in the world has a 4.63% chance of failure but normally a 16% chance. Rock bands are best used when getting close to victory of if you have enough faith to spam at least 10. It does not matter how much culture a civ is generating, it matters how close to their domestic tourists you are.

Final thought.
Any domination victory is also a culture victory because you have more foreign tourists than any other civ has domestic tourists.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Lily clearly does not understand the CV mechanic well enough because he misses some key words from his diagnosis and uses the words of a gambler.


I guess we are talking foreign tourists here. Sure it can but see the next comment

My tests show on average a rock band generates 2.5 tourists, 5 tourists against the leader, 10 tourists with Turn It Up To 11 promotion and the leader IF being generous. You use the word CAN, Lily can lose a game, lily can win the lottery tomorrow. When people use the word can they are over exaggerating. I have to deal with this terrible word every day in my job. I can get to be prime minister ... the word can means nothing. Using the word can with the word average is just appalling.the word can is the word gamblers use at vegas.

"as much as"... it generates as much as a million tourism but the word tourism is wrong anyway. As wrong as a lot of this rock band assumption.

You use this to mock @leandrombraz and yet you are quoting vegas type figures for rock bands which is very hypocritica. You may have had a lucky game with Rome but do not assume for a moment
Ahh so you have magically promoted yourself to a future civic where you can chose rock band promotions. You really have wasted a lot of time traking this strategy, just push faith and get to cold war. Pillage a lot of faith 20-30 rock bands

Technical Explanation
We will use a standard speed, standard size situation but tourism does translate to some degree OK to other speeds and sizes with smaller and slower being advantageous.
Terms
Tourism. This is what your civilization creates at the top of the screen,
Domestic Tourists. For every 100 culture a civ accumulates they get 1 domestic tourist
Foreign Tourists. This is gained by applying your tourism and some modifiers to an individual civ to gain foreign tourist points, in this case 1600 foreign tourists from a civ = 1 foreign tourist point
Foreign tourist points. You need more foreign tourist points than any civ has domestic tourists.

For this example you need to get a CV by getting more foreign tourists than Greece who currently has 50 domestic tourists, everyone else have roughly 10 domestic tourists so they do not count. So you need 51 foreign tourist points to win.

If you are producing 1600 tourism and had no other modifiers each civ would be providing you with 1 foreign tourist point per turn. There are 7 other civs if none have died so you would be getting closer to your target by 7 foreign tourist points each turn but you got a foreign tourist point from Greece which reduced their domestic tourists by 1. So you got 7 foreign tourists but your target is not 49 not 50. Therefore your really got the power of 8 domestic tourists.
Translated your 1600 tourism (what your civ produces) produces on average 8 foreign tourist ponts per turn or 12,800 foreign tourists.

A rock band only plays at one civ and normally only affects one civ so really when it says a rock band produced 1600 tourism it really only produced 1600 foreign tourists which is 1/8 the power of tourism. That is why the amount of 'rock tourism' a rock band creates seems so high, because it is a much weaker figure than tourism. Normally at this stage of the game you may only be creating 200 tourism and a rock band that fails at a wonder may produce 1600 'rock tourism' which is roughly equavalent to a turn of tourism. Using a rock band later when you are producing 800 tourism is weaker and earlier when you are producing 100 tourism is stronger. Also other civs have less domestic tourism earlier in the game therefore making your target easier to meet.

If the rock band played at the civ with the highest domestic tourists this also reduces their domestic tourists making your CV target smaller. So a Rock band producing 1600 tourists here also reduces the taregt by 1 foreign tourist and so is now the power of 3200 'Rock tourists'. This is now 2/8 of tourism or 1/4 of tourism.Much better. much more powerful.

Using the Turn it up to 11 promotion means you affect all civs within 10 tiles which is normally 2-4 so let us say 3 and assume 1 of those is Greece. You are playing to 3 civs +1 for taking greece's domestic tourists = 4. so you are producing 4/8 of tourism or 1/2. Only twice as much as you were getting by playing at a Greece venue without this promotion.

We also have to assume in any culture game at this stage of the game we have not reached a tier 3 government and have open boders and a trade route with every civ. This means you gain +50% foreign tourists and is a fair assumption in my view. Even if you did have a tier 3 goivernment you would not want to use it because you would get -20% tourism from all civs.

So our 1600 tourism is more realistically 2400 tourism. While our rock bands gain nothing from open border trade router or different governments. Therefore any tourism argument we use should multiply the tourism value by 50% for modifiers but not alter rock bands.
REalistically at this stage of the game with 200 tourism you are generating 2400 foreign tourists per turn which is the equivalent to a rock band generating 2400 'tourism' from a concert.

Now funnily enough from my tests (I am not a statistician) my rock bands average around 4800 tourism before dying which is equivalent to 400 tourism or 2.5 tourists, 5 tourists with Greece, 10 tourists with Turn It Up To 11 promotion. This is 2 turns of a CV at this stage of the game. 10 rock bands therefore generate 20 turns of tourism and that is a significant amount of of extra power in a few turns.

Note: a lot of the assumptions above are that you can play at greek venuses and they have many wonders. You do run out of wonders and the best rock band in the world has a 4.63% chance of failure but normally a 16% chance. Rock bands are best used when getting close to victory of if you have enough faith to spam at least 10. It does not matter how much culture a civ is generating, it matters how close to their domestic tourists you are.

I don't remember promotion names.

But I think they generate much more than 2.5 or 10.

Do you always play on wonders? Or do you play elsewhere?


Which promotion do you choose? Do you prior the wonder +1 level promotion? Do you choose the influence Civs within 10 tile promotion thereafter?


Run out of wonders? How many concerts have you played? That band certainly have generated too much tourism.

Do you gift cities to play music?

My experience is that they generate a lot on wonders, but much fewer even with +2 level promotions on other places, so I personally always play on wonders.

You start at 26% chance to disband, quickly drop down to 16% and 9% when you level up. So I can expect a band play 6 times as average? (In fact more than 6)

The tourism may range from 1,000 to 17,500 (Don't know if there are higher numbers), can I take 5,000 as a conservative estimate? With the promotion of influence other Civs the actual number shall double.In fact more than 5,000.

So under the most conservative assumption we get 5000*6/1600=19 tourists. Yes with the freely promotion chosen card.

 

[Victoria]

Do you always play on wonders?

Yes, the guide in my signature recommends this.

Which promotion do you choose? Do you prior the wonder +1 level promotion? Do you choose the influence Civs within 10 tile promotion thereafter

Yes and yes

Run out of wonders? How many concerts have you played?

You only play at the civ with the highest domestic tourists, playing anywhere else halves your power. They may not have many wonders and sometimes now they place units on their wonders that do not move

You start at 26% chance to disband, q

No, you start at a 44.9% chance of failure unless you waited for the Hallyu civic to choose, which is waiting too long. You said you play at wonders only so you have a 44.9% chance unless you chose album cover art which provides you with a 34.5% chance of loss because they changed this in the l;ast patch from +2 levels to +1. The range used for these decisions is 3 x 6 sided dice.