Apollo OCC domination - No war, only coups.

[ggmoyang]

Standard size Protean map/Apollo/Quick speed

Establish Network, move your spy and repeat to build up intrigue fast.

First set of coup is starting: (Magan and Karabrost intrigue level is above 4 too, started coup shortly.)

Spoiler :

I gave the city to other faction, since I want keep my OCC.
Also, this will lower the next target's health. (hopefully)

Spoiler :

The next set of coup.
Unfortunately Brazilia recovered its capital. If there was real OCC option, captured city will be auto razed so this wouldn't happend.
Which means I would've won sub T100 if this went extremely lucky.

Spoiler :

Anyways, Brazilia is the last one holding capital.
KP lost its capital to Brazila when my coup was 1 turn left.
Polystralia recovered capital so I had to coup it again.

Spoiler :

Coup attempt... fails.

Spoiler :

After several coup failures, Polystralia flips Citadela, giving me the win.

Spoiler :

 

[alpaca]

Congratulations, you successfully broke the game

Do you get any diplo penalties (aside from the target) for doing the coup?

 

[mnf]

Talking about coups, you can't coup a puppet it seems. My spy was sent home when he was about 6 turns from a coup and the city fell to another faction.

 

[ggmoyang]

alpaca: No. I got DoF offer from KP and Polystrailia after 4 and 6 successful coups.
mnf: City captures reset intrigue to 0 and expels all agent. (unless if you captured the city, then agent remains.)

 

[ThERat]

It's nice to see how firaxis has continued the practice it started with CiV, that is to outsource QC to the fanbase.

Not really funny actually.

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[TheMeInTeam]

It's nice to see how firaxis has continued the practice it started with CiV, that is to outsource QC to the fanbase.

Not really funny actually.

Do you really think the fanbase wouldn't have pointed this out, considering that if you put a large #bodies on a beta, they'll observe the same kind of stuff?

But when fixing stuff, what gets prioritized? There's only so much that can be done with release deadlines ahead of when a title is actually finished. Years ago in Civ V, I was somewhat horrified, but then I broadened my horizons and realized just how prevalent this issue is in some game genres.

At least BE doesn't meet the criteria for a non-conforming good (as far as I know), for example. That low bar is enough to trounce an impressive % of its competition ^_^.

 

[Cymsdale]

Congratulations, you successfully broke the game

Do you get any diplo penalties (aside from the target) for doing the coup?

When I couped Polystralia's capital, they sent a message to me saying how much my spying annoyed them, but I chose the apology option, so they were cool with it after that.

 

[flying_dug0ng]

Even as ARC I usually only have enough intrigue to coup once in a blue moon (Apollo difficulty, too). I assume you also grabbed that Might virtue?

Quite amazed all capitols consistently had 4+ intrigue for you.

 

[Ryoga]

Even as ARC I usually only have enough intrigue to coup once in a blue moon (Apollo difficulty, too). I assume you also grabbed that Might virtue?

Quite amazed all capitols consistently had 4+ intrigue for you.

Ditto, how do you even do that? Even when I played as Arc and took the mighty virtue that increases intrigue no AI capital ever reached the 4th level.

 

[ggmoyang]

I explained that in OP. Establish network -> call back the agent and send again -> you can establish network again. It's +13 intrigue (17 with might virtue) every 2 turns with special agent. (not sure how much point is need for a intrigue level, but whatever)

Quick speed helps this, since counter-agent reduces intrigue by 1/2/4 per turn(with level 1/2/3), they don't have enough time to reduce that.
(Also the cycle will need 5 turns in standard speed IIRC. So if they park a special agent you can't build up intrigue alone.)

I grabbed +1 covert agent in knowledge first. I thought having more agent is better since coup have only 55% success rate with special agent and no defending agent. As long as intrigue level doesn't go down I can try again.

 

[flying_dug0ng]

Ah, quick speed explains it. I only played on that once, since then I've been on epic.

 

[MadDjinn]

I explained that in OP. Establish network -> call back the agent and send again -> you can establish network again. It's +13 intrigue (17 with might virtue) every 2 turns with special agent. (not sure how much point is need for a intrigue level, but whatever)

Quick speed helps this, since counter-agent reduces intrigue by 1/2/4 per turn(with level 1/2/3), they don't have enough time to reduce that.
(Also the cycle will need 5 turns IIRC.)

I grabbed +1 covert agent in knowledge first. I thought having more agent is better since coup have only 55% success rate with special agent and no defending agent. As long as intrigue level doesn't go down I can try again.

Yeah figures. I saw this in my arc LP and mentioned the boosted intrigue from establishing a network. Even on standard speed, I got almost 1 full intrigue level per establish.

 

[kingsbury]

I just tried coups focusing on nothing but covert ops and managed to only get one capital to flip around turn 150. Didn't try the establish surveillance trick though, I will probably load up a game and try that.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Is there a way to game the AI into screwing its health down, or is spamming covert missions to establish networks the way to go?

There's so many ways to break the game lol. Do you just want to coup to victory, or diplomatically rob the AI of allllll the energy?

 

[kingsbury]

Just tried the establish surveillance trick and got about the same results as doing normal covert ops on standard speed. The only difference was that I took the +1 agent virtue instead of the 40% more intrigue virtue.

This really needs to be fixed, I didn't complete the game because I quit out of boredom, but you can essentially just sit back and steal enemy capitals while completely ignoring all other aspects of the game.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

The real issue is that this is the only way to raise intrigue above lvl 2

 

[teqofc]

Nice job, ggmoyang That really looks like a fun way to win. I have to try that next.

 

[baldfalk]

Man, I'd JUST "accidentally" (wasn't expecting it to work) captured Elodie's capital in my last game and naturally soda came out my nose.

I was planning to subsequently do a game like this, but I guess you beat me to it!

And yeah, the fact that apologizing and promising it won't happen again (After all, no more capital to steal) makes everything kosher is hilarious.

 

[ggmoyang]

I looked up CivBEBuildings.xml, and Surveillance Web had this line:
<IntrigueCapChange>-40</IntrigueCapChange>
And Human hive had same line with -80. So 20 intrigue per level.

This means ARC needs 8 Establish Network to reach 100, and 6 with might virtue.

 

[sprang]

In some earlier Civ games, you couldn't flip or bribe enemy capitals. That ought to be the rule here.

Another problem is that vision of all capitals from the start of the game makes it too easy to do this. Note that all other cities have to be discovered for trade or espionage.

And, of course, taking a capital should result in the computer selecting another new capital instantly, which would also prevent this kind of abuse. Something like, "we have seized control of the government and buildings, but [Leader Name] has escaped and established a new capital in [next large city]"

From a realism standpoint, the city defenses/strength should all be greatly reduced too. Even if our coup plotters have control of the military installations, there is going to be sabotage and counter-revolution that will reduce the overall defensibility of the city.