Comprehensive Guide to Variants
- Thread starter Arathorn
- Start date
MRick
Warlord
I will try a new variant soon :
Cultural Domination :
- Cultural victory is disabled
- Space Ship victory is disabled
- Diplomatic victory is disabled
- You cannot take a City by force
- You cannot raze a City
So the only victory available is domination (or conquest but I think it is impossible with this variant without triggering domination first).
And the only way to take a city is by flipping it ! ;-)
So you have to grab 66% of territory, only with your culture !
It is allowed to be at war and to kill some units even in a city, so that it is less resistant to flipping.
I plan to start to try this variant this Weekend, probably on Regent or Warlord. Maybe it is feasable on Monarch but I doubt it is possible on higher difficulty.
Someone else has suggested this variant somewhere on this forum, but I can't find where.
Cultural Domination :
- Cultural victory is disabled
- Space Ship victory is disabled
- Diplomatic victory is disabled
- You cannot take a City by force
- You cannot raze a City
So the only victory available is domination (or conquest but I think it is impossible with this variant without triggering domination first).
And the only way to take a city is by flipping it ! ;-)
So you have to grab 66% of territory, only with your culture !
It is allowed to be at war and to kill some units even in a city, so that it is less resistant to flipping.
I plan to start to try this variant this Weekend, probably on Regent or Warlord. Maybe it is feasable on Monarch but I doubt it is possible on higher difficulty.
Someone else has suggested this variant somewhere on this forum, but I can't find where.
sabrewolf
Demidemigod
i think theseus used this method in the multiplayer AU game over at apolyton.
the basic rules were that AI cities were not allowed to be attacked - ever. so after he had eliminated the human oponent, he started REXing like hell, placing cities inbetween AI cities, rushing temples and libraries (notably with the roman civ) but especially playing the AIs against each other and taking every free spot he had the chance to take (especially good, when cities were razed instead of captured).
iirc he one a domination victory quite early on!
the basic rules were that AI cities were not allowed to be attacked - ever. so after he had eliminated the human oponent, he started REXing like hell, placing cities inbetween AI cities, rushing temples and libraries (notably with the roman civ) but especially playing the AIs against each other and taking every free spot he had the chance to take (especially good, when cities were razed instead of captured).
iirc he one a domination victory quite early on!
Tomoyo
Fate
Oh, and to the unsuspecting poster/lurker, please examine GA's link very carefully. There's an "s" on "SG" for a reason. 
Nate1976
Just Plain Wierd
Aw.. I see.
These are really good ideas. I'm gonna try the religious variant next game.
These are really good ideas. I'm gonna try the religious variant next game.
Xerol
Emperor
I think Cultural Domination should be done with all victory conditions on - this could be called "Strict Cultural Domination" and if you modify default rules then "Loose". These are the other rules I followed for my "Strict" games:
I think this is what you're talking about: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=117392
And this is extremely difficult (at least for me) on anything above warlord that's not a Pangaea with Babylon as my civ. (I very nearly achieved it on Regent as Babylon on a Tiny Pangaea but I drew Persia as a neighbor and they got Space first. I was about 15 tiles from the domination limit and had crammed every tile I could get, and even moved the palace(1000 shield build took forever) near the border to help get a flip or two to push me over, but no such luck.)
I think this is what you're talking about: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=117392
And this is extremely difficult (at least for me) on anything above warlord that's not a Pangaea with Babylon as my civ. (I very nearly achieved it on Regent as Babylon on a Tiny Pangaea but I drew Persia as a neighbor and they got Space first. I was about 15 tiles from the domination limit and had crammed every tile I could get, and even moved the palace(1000 shield build took forever) near the border to help get a flip or two to push me over, but no such luck.)
Tubby Rower
Chronic Slacker
guspasho
Prince
- Joined
- Apr 5, 2005
- Messages
- 366
I wanted to suggest a few variants and ask a few questions as well.
Pacifist. It's probably been thought of before, but what the hey. Obviously, you may never declare war. You may only attack units that are at war with you and inside your borders. You may never attack a peaceful opponent's units inside your borders, but you may eject them. You may never attack their cities. You must accept terms of peace with a rival that declared war on you. Maybe not if he demands a tech or three... You may also never join any alliances or embargos, but mutual defense treaties might be okay. You may not build armies.
I guess it's not much of a variant, the restrictions are probably few if you're used to playing "builder" style. And you won't win any conquest/domination games either.
My second suggested variant is a form of 5CC, where you may never build more than five cities, but a scenario is created so everyone starts with 5 settlers and may never build more. Hopefully this can be done and still allow random map generation. Can it? The idea would be to avoid those annoying border disputes, culture flips, and most of all the pesky AI that tries to send a settler/spearman across your territory. You would also see more use of colonies, which doesn't get used enough.
Questions: when playing One-City Challenge, how do you get those mid-to-late-game resources like rubber or coal that you need to upgrade your riflemen or roads? There appears to be fewer of those on the map than the number of civs, and in the game I'm playing no one has more than one source of coal. Also, when you don't have to worry about corruption/waste, what's going to be the best government? Democracy still?
Pacifist. It's probably been thought of before, but what the hey. Obviously, you may never declare war. You may only attack units that are at war with you and inside your borders. You may never attack a peaceful opponent's units inside your borders, but you may eject them. You may never attack their cities. You must accept terms of peace with a rival that declared war on you. Maybe not if he demands a tech or three... You may also never join any alliances or embargos, but mutual defense treaties might be okay. You may not build armies.
I guess it's not much of a variant, the restrictions are probably few if you're used to playing "builder" style. And you won't win any conquest/domination games either.
My second suggested variant is a form of 5CC, where you may never build more than five cities, but a scenario is created so everyone starts with 5 settlers and may never build more. Hopefully this can be done and still allow random map generation. Can it? The idea would be to avoid those annoying border disputes, culture flips, and most of all the pesky AI that tries to send a settler/spearman across your territory. You would also see more use of colonies, which doesn't get used enough.
Questions: when playing One-City Challenge, how do you get those mid-to-late-game resources like rubber or coal that you need to upgrade your riflemen or roads? There appears to be fewer of those on the map than the number of civs, and in the game I'm playing no one has more than one source of coal. Also, when you don't have to worry about corruption/waste, what's going to be the best government? Democracy still?
i just got finished with such a game. it was emperor level with 5 opponents on a small 60 percent pangea map. i turned off all victory conditions except for domination. i forbid myself to attack or bombard enemy cities or to pillage. i was however allowed to declare war and fight units outside of cities. i was not allowed to settle inside of enemy territory even if at war. i played ptw because my conquest disk is ... gone 
i won somewhere around 1100 ad or so. i had about 16 favorable culture flips and i think one unfavorable. most of my 200-odd cities had temples libraries and cathedrals mostly pop-rushed under communism, yet i ended the game with only about 43k culture. needless to say most of the buildings were built within a few dozen turns of the end of the game though i led in culture from the start. even at the end of the game i dont believe i had all my numerous border cities defended. there were just so many of them
it was rather curious what the map looked like when i won. my biggest rival persia had his core badly carved out by my culture zones. as my culture zone would expand into his wide spaces between his cities i could squeeze a settler in and build another city to rush more culture. his core was chopped to bits
as for enemy cities that were not part of their cores it was typical for their entire cultural areas to be in the neighborhood of 3 tiles at the end of the game.
this type of game takes a long time to play.
and and otherwise good game can be destroyed very quickly by an unexpected early attack.
i won somewhere around 1100 ad or so. i had about 16 favorable culture flips and i think one unfavorable. most of my 200-odd cities had temples libraries and cathedrals mostly pop-rushed under communism, yet i ended the game with only about 43k culture. needless to say most of the buildings were built within a few dozen turns of the end of the game though i led in culture from the start. even at the end of the game i dont believe i had all my numerous border cities defended. there were just so many of them
it was rather curious what the map looked like when i won. my biggest rival persia had his core badly carved out by my culture zones. as my culture zone would expand into his wide spaces between his cities i could squeeze a settler in and build another city to rush more culture. his core was chopped to bits
as for enemy cities that were not part of their cores it was typical for their entire cultural areas to be in the neighborhood of 3 tiles at the end of the game.
this type of game takes a long time to play.
and and otherwise good game can be destroyed very quickly by an unexpected early attack.
Xerol
Emperor
Yeah, now try it on continents. My best Continents success so far is on Warlord, on a 60% Small Map as Persia. However, I play by even more restricted military - you can't attack anything, ever. I guess the loosest part of the rules is that you can bombard units in your territory. Doing it on Emperor is impressive, though.
scoutsout
Minstrel Boy
I don't know if this qualifies as a "variant" or not, but we're doing something in gmaharriet01 that's amusing:
"One For the Lurkers"
We've got a slot reserved in the SG roster for a "lurker" to pick it up and play a set. It doesn't really add any difficulty to the game, and it's downright sociable at emperor level.
I suspect the canonical roster will get longish in this particular game, as we're going for a 100k culture win as the Mongols...
"One For the Lurkers"
We've got a slot reserved in the SG roster for a "lurker" to pick it up and play a set. It doesn't really add any difficulty to the game, and it's downright sociable at emperor level.
I suspect the canonical roster will get longish in this particular game, as we're going for a 100k culture win as the Mongols...
Here is an idea that occurred to me, at the moment it is just a concept so I would welcome any suggestions.
One of the criticisms of Multi-player in epic games is that players often go for Rapid Expansion (REX) strategies and if this isn't sucessful drop out. Whilst you can get other players to take over their place it means the new player could be faced with a no-win situation just hoping to improve the points score of the civ they took over. But how about if this was built into the game?
The concept is that at certain points in the game the players swap civs. Think of it as new dynasties taking over. Score being calculated by points added to the civ taken over. For example in a game with 4 human and 4 AI players players could change civs at the begining of each new era (additional/different critera could be used to trigger the swap). At this point they keep the points they scored with that civ, it is possible you could take over a civ and have a lower points total at the next change losing you points. If the player's current civ is eliminated then so are they. Obviously scores would have to be kept seperately for each player and posted at the end of each era on the forum.
One issue I can forsee is if a player drops out, should they inherit the out going players score? Or perhaps recieve an average of the current points totals. Another is one of trust as it would either have to have no passwords or as the game progressed passwords would have to be exchanged.
Is there anyway to reset passwords?
This variant could appeal to players who enjoy varying situations, rather than following the same strategy repeatedly.
I have set-up a PBEM game along these lines and put a link here for anyone that is interested. The game would be used to fine-tune this variant.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5237862#post5237862
One of the criticisms of Multi-player in epic games is that players often go for Rapid Expansion (REX) strategies and if this isn't sucessful drop out. Whilst you can get other players to take over their place it means the new player could be faced with a no-win situation just hoping to improve the points score of the civ they took over. But how about if this was built into the game?
The concept is that at certain points in the game the players swap civs. Think of it as new dynasties taking over. Score being calculated by points added to the civ taken over. For example in a game with 4 human and 4 AI players players could change civs at the begining of each new era (additional/different critera could be used to trigger the swap). At this point they keep the points they scored with that civ, it is possible you could take over a civ and have a lower points total at the next change losing you points. If the player's current civ is eliminated then so are they. Obviously scores would have to be kept seperately for each player and posted at the end of each era on the forum.
One issue I can forsee is if a player drops out, should they inherit the out going players score? Or perhaps recieve an average of the current points totals. Another is one of trust as it would either have to have no passwords or as the game progressed passwords would have to be exchanged.
Is there anyway to reset passwords?
This variant could appeal to players who enjoy varying situations, rather than following the same strategy repeatedly.
I have set-up a PBEM game along these lines and put a link here for anyone that is interested. The game would be used to fine-tune this variant.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5237862#post5237862
I was looking at the Wonder characteristics and it occured to me that a possible variant could focus on this.
Turn off all victory conditions except Conquest and Space, and enable the end game on Wonder feature.
You must build or capture all the wonders with your civillisation's traits. If a wonder is destroyed you must capture the city it was in or eliminate the civ who destroyed it (if known). If it was in one of your cities you automatically lose.
This variant could result in a real bloodbath when played MP/PBEM!!!
Turn off all victory conditions except Conquest and Space, and enable the end game on Wonder feature.
You must build or capture all the wonders with your civillisation's traits. If a wonder is destroyed you must capture the city it was in or eliminate the civ who destroyed it (if known). If it was in one of your cities you automatically lose.
This variant could result in a real bloodbath when played MP/PBEM!!!
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