[BERT] Defending Victory Conditions

[vorlon_mi]

In all the single-player games in the Civ franchise, the human player must win before the AI player(s) do. For some victory conditions, that's straightforward: keep control of your own original capital, in Civ 5 and BERT, for example. In Civ 4, one can monitor the Apostolic Palace votes / UN votes, or which AI has built culture-heavy cities and attack them. In Civ 3, the human player can build the UN and never schedule a vote. In both Civ 3 and Civ 4, taking the AI capital would destroy a spaceship and force the AI player to start over.

For BERT, I think that one can see if an AI has built the gate for Emancipation and Promised Land victories. One could fight wars before the gate is built to slow them down before the gate is built, but once the gate *is* built, can it be destroyed?

Can the human player tell which AI city is trying to build the Mind Flower wonder, to try for the Transcendence victory? Would a covert agent reveal this? Could I attack that city to stop it establishing a link?

How does one defend against an AI winning via Contact? The AI could obtain the Signal from Progenitor ruins, and then have to build the Decode Signal project. If I attack that city, either during construction or after completion, would that work? Next, the AI would have to build the Beacon wonder. Can I tell where it is being built? Can it be interrupted or destroyed?

 

[legalizefreedom]

To my knowledge (and if memory serves) all victory wonders operate the same way, including the Beacon. Once construction has started, including after they are completed, they can be attacked directly and destroyed. Obviously if they are under construction, taking the city that is building them will also halt their construction.

It's not always clearly communicated that someone is building a victory wonder, but it is always communicated when it is finished. You can also check progress on the victory quest panel as always. I don't think it ever reveals which city it is being built in, however, so you need to scout that physically. Covert agents will make all this easier if they are present in the city where it is being built.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Thanks! In my game last night, I built the Mind Flower for the first time and had surrounded it with units, in preparation for (at least) one AI to declare on me. One did, and more on that below. I had tried to build some Mind Stems before the Flower was completed, so that it would take less time to activate. What do you/we know about the number of turns to activate the Mind Flower? Is it dependent on difficulty level, map size, or some other game parameter? How do the other buildings reduce the number of turns?

I was a little surprised that the first to declare was the AU, with whom I had been allied for nearly the whole game. Sam never went to war, nor dragged me into a war with him. I never dragged him into a war with me. But once I built the wonder, it was on. As you often write, if I role play this out, he felt betrayed that I had been "just using" him to keep the peace for 200 turns and now I was dooming all of humanity to become aliens. The only other AI to declare on me was a neighbor on my continent who sneaked up on my newest founded city and overran it, 15-20 turns after I completed the Mind Flower.

 

[legalizefreedom]

The Mind Flower also may have needed additional tweaking. The buildings that shorten the time it takes to win Transcendence apparently only work before construction is started, complicating their use. These should probably work at any time during construction as well. I don't know the math behind the number of turns for the timed victories, but it seems to generally always be 30-40.

From a gameplay standpoint, there will usually be two civs that DOW during the victory wonder. They will usually identify themselves when you start it, but may not DOW until it is finished. From a role play / lore perspective, they came up with some fairly weak reasons. You can understand when those of other affinities would DOW since the world is going to hell for them if you do this, but it's a bit more difficult to understand why a civ of your same affinity would DOW. Also that the aliens turn on you seems wrong. A couple of things I would have changed about victories for sure...

 

[vorlon_mi]

The Mind Flower also may have needed additional tweaking. The buildings that shorten the time it takes to win Transcendence apparently only work before construction is started, complicating their use. These should probably work at any time during construction as well. I don't know the math behind the number of turns for the timed victories, but it seems to generally always be 30-40.

Yes, I did experience 34 turns for the Flower to "connect" with the planet.

Making sure that I understand -- I would need to build Mind Stems *before* starting construction of the MF. If I finish a Mind Stem after the MF is completed, and trying to connect, it won't actually help shorten the connection time. During the 30-40 turns that the Mind Flower is connecting, it is not worthwhile to build or purchase any more Mind Stems or Xeno-something buildings. Did I understand correctly?

That's consistent with what happened to me; I probably had 3 Mind Stems completed in other cities before the MF finished, and 34 turns is less than 40. I don't remember how many of the other Xeno buildings I had built, and when they were finished.

 

[legalizefreedom]

That's correct. To my knowledge, nothing speeds up Transcendence after the flower construction has started. Fortunately, this is the only victory with this issue since none of the others attempt a speed-up mechanic. Contact would be the only other one I guess since the Supremacy and Purity victories are completely under the player's control.

Mind Stems are particularly useless after starting construction. Again, I don't know why this would be intended, so I assume it would have been corrected had they finished the game. The other Xeno building is wicked good for culture though, so you may still want to build those.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Contact victory questions -- I built the beacon in my last game, while also settling Earthlings though the gate. It was quicker to settle the Earthlings, in the end.

Couldn't find fragments of the Signal in progenitor ruins, so I built the deep space telescope and the Transcendental Equation. It seemed to take really long time for the DST to find the signal. Is that normal -- 20 or 30 turns? If one builds more than one DST does that help, hurt, or do nothing? Seems like it would involve several random factors to achieving an "early" Contact victory: get a ruin early, beeline to Transc Math, and bulk up your energy production, and hope that the Beacon (once built) connects quickly.

 

[legalizefreedom]

Finding the signal is a bit random. Sometimes you find it without doing much at all and sometimes you need to go through all the options to get it. There was actually grumbling when the game came out that contact was too easy and too fast. I believe they made some changes to it, but it's still hit or miss. You can certainly get lucky with it.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Tonight I succeeded in destroying an AI's Beacon -- somewhere near completion, though I couldn't see a way to tell. Pounded it with air strikes and naval bombardment, but delivered the final blow with a Redeemer.

Annoying thing: a sub has popped up in my waters, bombarding a station that I've been trading with. I can't seem to block it with my units, nor can my Edict or Shroud see it to shoot at it. Why can't I shoot at it? I know where it is, but my Edict can't move onto that hex. It doesn't have the little icon indicating its nationality, either.

I've concluded that it must belong to one of the AI that I'm "Cooperating" with. I've put a Station Sentinel over the station, but that doesn't cause the AI to stop bombarding the station. I'm planning to downgrade the relationship to "Neutral" (realizing the potential consequences of risking DoW), but that should revoke the open borders and force the sub into neutral waters.

 

[legalizefreedom]

You should be able to reveal any hidden units by moving a unit adjacent to them. Once they are spotted, everyone can target.

But you won't have any options if you are cooperating (open borders) with them.

Your best bet is to try to block them out and hope the station survives. You certainly could downgrade, but then what? You find out it is indeed the civ you've been cooperating with... and they will continue to attack the station whether you are cooperating or neutral. Ask yourself if that station trade route is worth war.

 

[vorlon_mi]

You should be able to reveal any hidden units by moving a unit adjacent to them. Once they are spotted, everyone can target.

But you won't have any options if you are cooperating (open borders) with them.

Your best bet is to try to block them out and hope the station survives. You certainly could downgrade, but then what? You find out it is indeed the civ you've been cooperating with... and they will continue to attack the station whether you are cooperating or neutral. Ask yourself if that station trade route is worth war.

Agreed. In this particular case, I was in the end game and I expected multiple DoW as soon as I finished the Emancipation Gate. I got them, and one was from the owner of that sub. I quickly sank it, and the redlined station recovered.

I learned another valuable lesson. The terrain where the Emancipation Gate is located *matters*. Since I was playing NSA, I had quite a number of water tiles that were easy to defend. I built the gate on one of these, assuming that any embarked units that I sent into the gate would "stand up" before being sent off. And then wondered why my victory progress was So. Darn. Slow.
Sure enough, all the units were being sent through as low-strength embarked units, not full strength land units. I started sending naval units (full strength) and affinity-buffed units that could hover over the water and retain full strength. Next time I go Supremacy, I'm putting the gate on an island or larger land mass.

 

[legalizefreedom]

Yes, that is a very good lesson. If you build on the water, plan to send naval or hovering units in for Emancipation.

I just finished an Emancipation on the water myself with Brazil yesterday!

 

[vorlon_mi]

That's correct. To my knowledge, nothing speeds up Transcendence after the flower construction has started. Fortunately, this is the only victory with this issue since none of the others attempt a speed-up mechanic. Contact would be the only other one I guess since the Supremacy and Purity victories are completely under the player's control.

Mind Stems are particularly useless after starting construction. Again, I don't know why this would be intended, so I assume it would have been corrected had they finished the game. The other Xeno building is wicked good for culture though, so you may still want to build those.

Another data point -- 31 turns for the Mind Flower to connect. I had built 5 Mind Stems and 8 Xeno Sanctuaries before construction was completed.

I looked through some of the older forum topics, and someone speculated that each "helper" building reduced the connection time by 1 turn. If the base number is 45 turns, then the math almost works out. Unless that's something they changed between vanilla BE and BERT.

 

[legalizefreedom]

I'm not sure what the base number is or what it depends on, so that's difficult to nail down without playing a bunch of games.

What I looked at previously is how many ticks off each turn. One each turn by default and I don't think I ever got it to tick more than one off a turn.

But you're right. Something could have been updated at some point. Harmony victory is less than one a year for me, so hard to remember, much less not documenting them.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Ryika looked at the code in this thread https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/how-does-transcendence-work.547240/ back in May 2015. I don't know the release timing well enough to know if that is vanilla BE or BERT.

She has a parallel guide for building the gates or MF quicker https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-for-build-the-victory-wonder-quicker.550882/

 

[legalizefreedom]

Rising Tide was released in Oct. 2015, so that was vanilla. I'm not sure they change a whole lot intentionally, but they may have broken something since then.