Does everyone here only play conquest victory?

[austincm]

Hey everyone, I'm a Civ noob and have only beaten a normal, continental, 8 nation chieftain game.

So now that you know where I stand, I would like to express my concern. From reading the articles it seems like the only way people play is a military style. I wanted to get the space race victory but time ran out. I will never play civ to get a conquest victory and I am very adamant about that. Now is winning via, space race, diplomatic feasible? and is it something you can do on the harder to hardest diffuculties?

Also can somebody explain to me the city organization? I don't get it, the one with the rings and what not. You like build one city to the east and west 5 squares away and than build cities to the north east and south east? or what?

 

[vorlon_mi]

First, welcome to CFC!

Regarding city placement ... the conventional wisdom here is to place the cities closer together, so that there will be some overlap in the tiles which they can work. A recommended spacing is CxxC, or city - space - space - city. The idea of placing them approximately in a ring is useful, but not mandatory.
The reasoning goes like this ... for many years/turns, your cities will be small in population. They will only have enough citizens to work the 8 tiles immediately adjacent to the city center. By placing the cities closer together, you can ensure that more tiles are being used to your civ's advantage. Also, closer spacing makes it easier to shuttle troops between your cities when they are linked by roads.

Spaceship victories are definitely possible at Warlord and Regent levels (which I've achieved), and I've read postings from folks who do it at higher difficulty levels. You will need a goodly number of cities (more than 20) and lots of workers to improve the tiles. At the higher difficulty levels, the AI is given some military units to start, and gets more aggressive. If you don't attack them, they *will* attack you, which is less true at Chieftain level.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

You can get any win on any level, really.

City placement depends a lot on what version you are playing - the corruption model in vanilla and play the world is different than in conquests - in the first two, having "rings" of cities is the best way to reduce corruption - in conquests, rings don't matter.

In short (and there are articles on corruption in the war academy), there are two things that influence corruption - distance from the palace (or forbidden palace) and the "rank" of the city (how many cities are closer to the palace (or FP) than that city.

In PTW, if you have a ring of cities x tiles away from the capitol, they will all have the same rank and have the same corruption - the first rank will be fairly low.

In conquests, they added a tie breaker, so you can't have two cities of the same rank, so it's not so important to do ranks of cities.

As to how to get a SS victory - expand, road everything, trade for whatever you can get from the AI, keep expanding until you run out of room, and don't build all the improvements everywhere.

 

[ChaosArbiter]

From reading the articles it seems like the only way people play is a military style.

It's the one that gets the most attention, usually, but it's not the only way people play.

Now is winning via, space race, diplomatic feasible? and is it something you can do on the harder to hardest diffuculties?

Sure it is; you might try looking at some of the Succession Games or other stories for examples; Culture and Space Race might be easier than Diplomacy ... here are a couple hits:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=346942
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=353061

 

[vmxa]

I suspect that once you win by Space, you don't really want to play that far into the game very often. UN is also a modern age win. Domination or conquest can be done in any age.

 

[MysteryX]

Space race might become more achievable if you move up in the difficulty level. At higher difficulty levels, your AI opponents research much faster. That means you can trade technology with them much faster (and they trade technology with each other much faster).

I usually play on Monarch level, and often get through the entire research chain by the time 1900 rolls around. How fast the research goes depends on whether the AI opponents spend a lot of time warring with each other, which slows down their research, and how many AI opponents are either wiped out early or fall hopelessly behind. When many of your AI opponents are staying competitive and avoiding endless wars, the research goes fast (though of course that also means you have more competitors to get that space race victory).

 

[GamezRule]

People here play for every victory, it's just that a military victory feels the best to most people after investing 30-50 hours into one game.

 

[Fiddlin Nero]

I play PTW which has the same corruption scheme as Vanilla. You want to place your ring of core cities 4-6 tiles from your capital. The further away they are the more of them you can build (good) but be careful they are more vulnerable. Spacing is a bit tricky, each tile that shares a side is 1 away, and each tile that shares a corner is 1 1/2 away. I hear that it rounds down, but I'm suspicious of that.

 

[Ataxerxes]

Part of the reason you see military and conquest games so often is that it's much better to have a large empire and a good military. Going to space without building military isn't something I've tried. AI is pretty ruthless at going after weaklings, especially humanoid ones. It demands an arm and a leg for resources, so I'm always killing to get gems or whatnot. After a while, I have a big military and am tempted to use it.

Some people do well with very little war. I can't manage it. Even when I win by space or UN I've been in a war or 3 to get some resource or other.

 

[CommandoBob]

Space ship games are often used as Training games, since that gives a lot of time to explain things. Here are two that I was involved with:

Who-5: Tom Tom Club builds a party lounge training game

D'Artagnan01: Low-level Training Day

I was part of this PTW game:

Nero04: Skipping some levels? It's training day

 

[timerover51]

I generally go for the Space Ship win, but I play a pretty thoroughly modified game with respect to resources and improvements, so I can research faster and avoid running out of time. I also play on huge maps with a limited number of AI opponents, so that I sometime find myself reaching a domination win without really fighting a whole lot, or a victory point win prior to launching the Space Ship. Remember that you can set the victory conditions prior to starting the game, and exclude anything but a Space Ship win.

 

[Takhisis]

If it's the unmodded epic game I usually try to last it out and win by score, I'm playing Monarch-Large after a long spell of not playing at all so I can't do much more than that atm.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Another reason you might read more posts about military victories here is that ... the stories are better. Which would you rather read ... a gripping tale about storming the gates of Babylon, and winning with your last redlined swordsman? Or, a lukewarm story about researching flight, followed by advanced flight, and choosing your production cities for making spaceship parts?
With respect, I disagree with vmxa. I enjoy playing into the late game, where most of the units have multiple movement points and there are railroads to speed up movement even more. Yes, cleaning up pollution is boring. (Shift-P is your friend) Like Ataxerxes, I usually have to go to war at least once or twice to get a strategic resource that I need (oil or aluminum) on the way to a spaceship victory. Although, if I have grabbed enough land thru wars in the ancient or middle ages, including a variety of terrain types, I may not need to launch an offensive war in the industrial age.
Somebody usually tries to attack me before I launch, so there's almost always a defensive war in the latter stages of the game.

 

[Spoonwood]

I agree that usually military games make for more exciting reading. That said, there does exist a certain appeal of reading a space race game when it's close, or it's challenging. Here's one I like. Here's another which does turn into a military game, but not until very late. Here's two I've written.

 

[Allacalander]

I usually wait and see how the game unfolds before I pick a victory track, although it may depend on the civ I'm playing too. Uusally whatever I do I end up, in the end, winning by space race or score. It is very hard (in my experience) to win by any of the other means, though I am giving them a go. Of course, I play with the Huge map, so it is much harder to paint the world, which is vital for conquest, domination or cultural (and to some degree diplomatic.)

I will give one thrilling space race story though. I and two other powers were the only ones working on the space race. Time was running out but I was going to finish the part I was building in time and research what I needed also in time. I had a scientific leader in reserve I was going to use to rush the last part. The other two civs were already building that part.

I get the final science, make the move to build the part and realize I don't have uranium! My trade with the British had expired! And there was only one turn left! Frantic, I contacted them, but of course I had no money and nothing to trade because of an ill-fated game long attempt at a cultural victory. As fast as I could, I sold off every military unit I could (as a democracy they were costly.) I discarded every unnecessary building I could spare and finally pulled together enough coin, made the trade, started the part, rushed the part and won the game.

In scoring, I was fourth place, so I HAD to win by the space race as it was my last option.

 

[ChaosArbiter]

Uusally whatever I do I end up, in the end, winning by space race or score. It is very hard (in my experience) to win by any of the other means, though I am giving them a go. Of course, I play with the Huge map, so it is much harder to paint the world, which is vital for conquest, domination or cultural (and to some degree diplomatic.)

Playing on pangaeas make Conquest/Domination much easier.

 

[Raliuven]

I am not disciplined enough to win by conquest. I always trip the domination limit unless I am being way too careful and undersize my empire.

I almost always start a game with a dominiation VC that is cleverly disguised as agreesive REX. As the game unfolds, if I decide that the world looks nice, I might back off and switch to another VC. Once you own a major part of the world, just about any VC is available.

 

[Takhisis]

Playing on pangaeas make Conquest/Domination much easier.

Of coruse, especially if you have Ansars/Riders/Keshiks/Sipahi/Mounted Warriors/Immortals.

 

[Aabraxan]

. . . . I will never play civ to get a conquest victory and I am very adamant about that. Now is winning via, space race, diplomatic feasible? and is it something you can do on the harder to hardest diffuculties?

Welcome to CFC!

As the responses indicate, lots of players go for cultural or space race victories. Well, not me, but lots of other players. . .

 

[Skullsplitter]

I'm like Raliuven-- I mean to go for something else, but by the time you punish all the civs who won't trade "fairly", its hard to avoid a domination win. Maybe if I could get past the visceral aversion to razing cities, but I can't...