cultural winning in civ 5 is plain stupid
- Thread starter Jim Bro
- Start date
Civsassin
Immortal
Won the game at turn 302. You can expand with representation and still win a cultural victory.
JamesCivFan
King
I tried winning with France with 3 cities and no puppets on Emperor, Standard size map, Continents and 9 AI's, and lost on turn 380 by Persia who lunched their spaceship. I had almost completed my fifth SP Tree, and was producing about 330 Culture per turn. So how much culture were you producing with 8+2 cities? 302 seems pretty early.
Strategist83
King
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- Dec 30, 2005
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- 625
Sorry, but I strongly disagree that you can balance the game around how the single player experience plays out. The AI is so poor it totally changes the face of the game - CiV offline is not even half the game it is online (not necessarily more enjoyable due to the excessively slow speed - but certainly much better other than that). Multiplayer is infinitely better balanced. You cannot ROFL-stomp a whole empire within tens of turns with just a handful of units there - everything must be carefully planned out AND you require a much bigger army to stand any chance of success at conquest. This change to what effort succesful warfare requires makes all the difference. The after-action reports of people scoring 37:1 kill-death ratios on their units speak for themselves in pointing out just how grave the AI problem is.
Fact is the AI being so poor completely overshadows all other issues with this game. There are plenty of other issues - the game clearly lacks overall polish - but nothing holds a candle to the AI's shortcomings. It's just not possible to create a meaningful game experience with this bad an AI regardless of how much they try to fine tune buildings/policies/whatever. For which reason, also, the recent patch is in many ways a complete failure even though it has nice content because it fails to address the game's actual problems.
Sullla created this long-winded post about how CiV fails due to the 1upt system and a lot of people agreed. His analysis was incorrect though - 1upt is perfectly fine - it's the fact that it completely stomps the AI that hurts the game so badly. That, and the fact the multiplayer is broken as well so you cannot circumvent the AI problem by going online.
Also Colin, I love how I made you so upset you just had to double-post.
Fact is the AI being so poor completely overshadows all other issues with this game. There are plenty of other issues - the game clearly lacks overall polish - but nothing holds a candle to the AI's shortcomings. It's just not possible to create a meaningful game experience with this bad an AI regardless of how much they try to fine tune buildings/policies/whatever. For which reason, also, the recent patch is in many ways a complete failure even though it has nice content because it fails to address the game's actual problems.
Sullla created this long-winded post about how CiV fails due to the 1upt system and a lot of people agreed. His analysis was incorrect though - 1upt is perfectly fine - it's the fact that it completely stomps the AI that hurts the game so badly. That, and the fact the multiplayer is broken as well so you cannot circumvent the AI problem by going online.
Also Colin, I love how I made you so upset you just had to double-post.
But the whole point is Civ has always been a game designed mainly for SP, not MP. If it was designed for MP, the patches would have been focusing on MP. The developers have clearly illustrated that SP is their priority. Which is why 1UPT is a flaw. It could work if the AI were improved, however.
builer680
eats too much Taco Bell
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- Dec 14, 2010
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- 525
Yes, that's a problem with AI, not a problem with the approach of trying to balance the game for single player. Yes, AI has always been a problem in video games, especially strategy games. It will likely continue to be a problem for a long time... maybe forever. Maybe even after we invent quantum computing.
But there have been a multitude of strategy games that have given an excellent single player experience for many people (just maybe not for you), so we know that it can be done, and balanced reasonably well enough, even with limitations to AI. The key is to camouflage the AI's weaknesses, not make them glaringly obvious as 1upt has.
I understand that you think the only 'true' challenge is to play other people, and in some ways you are correct. But, there is a different experience in SP that many people are looking for, and it isn't all about it being 'easier.'
There are many things that SP offers that you can't always get in MP. SP allows you to go for different types of challenges than MP allows, such as record scores/times. It also better facilitates role playing for many people who enjoy that. Not to mention the frequently horrible quality of people you encounter online, especially cocky kids. Not everyone wants to deal with random internet turds when they sit down to relax to a video game for a bit. Not everyone online is like this, but enough are that it likely deters many from even bothering to play online.
You may not find SP exciting, but some people do. I'd even venture to say that "most" 4x game players in general do. Go look at a site like civplayers.com, then look at Steam's listing for people playing Civ V. I guarantee you will find an enormous disparity. Civplayers.com isn't the only way to play online, but it's one of the larger gathering places. And in this version, due to MP failings all round, it's an absolute wasteland.
That means that SP is worth balancing, and we already know that it can be, your 'strong disagreement' aside. We know this because we've seen games that do a good enough job of it before. Dozens, if not hundreds of games. Civ V just isn't one of them. You need the right design approach. Usually, that means an approach that camouflages AI weaknesses in general, which 1upt spectacularly fails to do. In time, AI can only get better. MOO, MOO 2, Galciv, Galciv II, AI wars (even though it uses enormous handicaps), and other games... heck, even Civ IV compared to Civ I... games like these show that progress is possible, even if we aren't quite at the finish line yet.
Sorry guys plz forget that thread i finally won culturally with 46 cities+2 puppets in 2008 at warlord with spain. But still i could have won first by other means... So basically culture wins are the only way for small empires that can't grow their borders and is just a more difficult way to win for larger empires that's it
Roald Amundsen
Warlord
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2010
- Messages
- 136
Won a Cultural Victory on Immortal with Egypt on Epic speed. I had just three cities, and when there was like 30 turns left to complete the utopia project two AI's started an invasion on me softening me off with 6 nukes! (2 on each city). They quickly conquered two of my cities, and when they advanced towards my capitol (which were building the utopia project, and with NO units, NO defence, NOTHING!) I managed to get peace with them, and voila! Egypt wins a cultural victory a few turns later.
yeah, you're still doing it wrong. 46 cities, and you decided in 1750 to go for a culture win? Of course you could have won sooner a different way. For a while I played OCCs on the immortal difficulty level, and my culture wins (which I of course planned for from the start) came around the same time or earlier that another win would come. The problem is still with your planning, not the VC itself. If you don't believe a small empire should have any viable means to win, that's a different topic.
It is interesting to hear, however, that it's possible to win with culture after building 46 cities (albeit on low difficulty).
KrikkitTwo
Immortal
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- Apr 3, 2004
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- 12,418
Well it does increase the cost of policies by (assuming 50 extra cities, and post-patch)
11x.... but you can get 1+2+3+4+5 * 2 culture in cities from buildings+Liberty alone... +12 *2 for 4 specialists each
so 54 culture per city, total of 2700, cost of 11x policies... so similar to having an OCC with ~250 culture per turn.
You would get faster science (so you would get the cultural wonders sooner)
But you Would have less production/rush gold per city(for buildings)... and would need more happiness buildings per city
You could get more World Wonders
kell_the_kyuss
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2006
- Messages
- 43
I have a great many victories, but not a single one of them is from culture.
sad that some of those had civs were making 1500+ culture a turn.
I liked culture wins in civ 4, you could sit and expand your empire by just culture alone.
progressively build wonders out and expand your empire.
worked great on a pangea map.
sad that some of those had civs were making 1500+ culture a turn.
I liked culture wins in civ 4, you could sit and expand your empire by just culture alone.
progressively build wonders out and expand your empire.
worked great on a pangea map.
Guardian_PL
Emperor
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2006
- Messages
- 1,231
Yeah, cultural flips were great, it was such a great feeling to know that other cities decides to work for you becuase you're so awesome. No war, just art
If you havn't tried yet, I would suggest playing as Polynesia on a coastal map.
Building Maoi monuments all around your coast will increases your culture with no maintenance costs. I have been producing as much as fifteen culture per City from these Maoi alone, you just need to research constuction, have your workers ready and away you go.
