End Game Tactics

[TheStealthRhino]

I have been playing CIV for about 6 months now and am consistenly frustrated when I am in mid to late game situations.

I play on Noble/Prince, Continents, Large, for most games, and can implement many successful strategies, including CofL Slingshot, early GE for Pyramids, Axe Rush, and first to Liberalism.

My general strategy is to expand early to significant resources, food and copper/iron, and eliminate one opponent, while keeping ties to other civs reasonable through trade, religion, and borders.

From 4000 BC - 1AD, I feel that I play the game very well, as is evident from my tech lead, total population, and power/approval ranking.

My city management is generally pretty good, I specialize a city for science, another for culture, and a production city for military units and unit rushing.

Here's my question:

When I get to a certain date or era, whether 1AD, 1000AD, or 1500AD, how can I decide which victory condition to target?

I have NEVER had a score over 6000, and my highest ranking has been NERO, 4th from the bottom.

FOR SHAME!

Space Race is straight forward, but boring and longwinded.
Domination makes sense and is how I try to win most of my games.
Cultural is the most appealing, but I've never obtained more then 1 legendary city.
Diplomacy leaves too much up to the AI, and I often try to stray away form building The United Nations.

I would appreciate any posts regarding END GAME TACTICS you use, and what specific in game specifics led you to try for the specific victory condition.

Thanks to all!

 

[DaveMcW]

Play your normal strategy on a Duel map for a great score.

If you want to win Cultural, spam 3 cities with cottages, let them grow into towns, then crank up the culture slider.

 

[Silence101]

I play Prince usually too. I'm not sure if I have a lot to offer here, but I usually do have my anticipated victory condition picked out earlier than you do I think. Because the victory condition that you're going for governs so many of your actions, I wonder if it might improve your game to know what condition you're going for a bit sooner maybe?

Space Race is straight forward, but boring and longwinded.
Domination makes sense and is how I try to win most of my games.
Cultural is the most appealing, but I've never obtained more then 1 legendary city.
Diplomacy leaves too much up to the AI, and I often try to stray away form building The United Nations.

I would think especially with a cultural victory, you really have to start the game with that condition in mind... I haven't had to many myself, so maybe someone else can provide more insight.

I agree about diplomatic victories, though diplomacy isn't one of my strong points, but I rarely go for them.

 

[Bhruic]

Yeah, if you don't focus your game, you're going to find some victory conditions out of feasible reach. If you are going to go for a Cultural victory, for example, you can't just have one "culture city". You need to know very early on that you are going for Cultural victory, and plan your 3 cities appropriately. The same goes for a Domination victory, you need to have a plan in place to allow you to conquer the necessary territory. This needs to be done very early on (the planning, not necessarily the implementation). If you get to 1000AD and think "Hey, maybe I should go for a Domination victory", it very well could be too late.

Assuming that I don't go into a game with a specific victory condition in mind (I do that roughly 50% of the time), I generally have decided what I'm going to go for by the time I've scouted my territory. Basically, if I'm isolated or not, how many opponents are near me, and what their personalities are. If you leave it much later than that, you'll find yourself stuck going with Space Race victories, which yes, are fairly boring (unless it's a very close race).

Bh

 

[Sisiutil]

Play your normal strategy on a Duel map for a great score.

If you want to win Cultural, spam 3 cities with cottages, let them grow into towns, then crank up the culture slider.

I find a totally different route is best: farm those sites and then run Caste System and Artist specialists out your yin-yang. You'll generate tons of culture points, and probably more than a few Great Artists for culture bombs along the way. And you can thereby keep up on research with the other civs so you hopefully won't look like an artsy-fartsy little wimp and get invaded.

Also, building the Sistine Chapel for its specialist culture bonus, and getting to Music first for the free GA, are also very helpful to a cultural win.

To go back to the OP's original question, yes, often you need to determine your victory condition from the get-go, but just as often the map generator and/or the other civs may no cooperate. Be prepared to adjust, but once you make up your mind, focus like a laser beam on pursuing that victory condition. The game will throw plenty of distractions your way; learn to recognize and disregard them.

Remember that the earlier the finish with the biggest population = the highest score. This also argues in favour of focus, so you get done sooner.

 

[TheStealthRhino]

Ah Sisiutil, my favorite CIV IV forum poster, your words are heard with great admiration.

I'm a huge ALC fan!

Thanks for posting, and keep up the good, nay, GREAT, work!

 

[manu-fan]

You say that you are ahead by 1 AD and you normally conquer a neighbor. Why stop there? Use your production and tech advantage to conquer the next neighbor. Playing on continents, you won't win a Domination victory without overseas warring. However, take over your whole entire continent first. Then, attack the other with transports loaded with tanks protected by destroyers and battleships. As soon as you take one city, move your bombers in there and have fun with Tanks and Bombers against the opponents weaker armies.

Harder to really get ahead so much on Prince, but on Noble it can be a cakewalk and get a really large score.

I've just figured out the easiest map to try, you may want to give it a try to build up your morale. It's the Inland Sea. I'm wiping through it on Noble right now.

Cheers.

 

[IDave]

I mostly play noble (have only played 1 prince game so far and sometimes play warlord for a laugh.) I also play continents map mostly. I find that the best way to get a decent score is to stay relatively peaceful early on and rapidly tech to rifling (it's easier if u r playing non-bts u will only need mil trad.) then cavalry every1 to death on your continent. If u have a good economy they should still have longbows defending and u don't even need seige weapons.

You will probably even get tanks while u r still wiping every1 out. So use them too. Then rapidly tech to get off a spaceship and u can easy reach Alpha centauri by 1850ish and with a whole continent of cities u can easily get a 40k+ score, plus it's a bit more fun than a plain old space race.

 

[vormuir]

I've had these same issues.

I would recommend trying for the Culture win. The key point here is that you have to plan ahead. FAR ahead. Start aiming for the Culture win before 1 AD.

As Sisiutl pointed out, there are multiple ways to gain the win; you can do it by cottage-spamming, or by farming and running specialists. But note that you can't do both...

Some general thoughts on Culture wins:

1) You need a medium-sized empire. A big one is nice but not necessary. But you need at least 9 cities. (Because you'll want cathedrals in your three Legendary cities, and each cathedral requires 3 temples.)

2) Once you have a reasonably sized empire with decent resources, turn turtle. Keep a large enough army to deter aggressors, but otherwise don't worry about war anymore. Focus on culture techs, and trade them for the military techs you need.

3) You want as many religions as possible, as early as possible. This means lots of Open Borders agreements, and it also prioritizes Optics and Astronomy.

4) You probably want to found a religion, so it helps to take one of the Civs that starts with Mysticism -- Spain, Arabs, etc. If you can pull it off, founding Buddhism is good, because Meditation also lets you build monasteries, and you'll want to do that early.

5) Think hard about what Wonders to build and what Civics you want. For instance, the Sistine Chapel is normally considered a so-so wonder, but if you're going for a Cultural win it's huge. In a Culture endgame, the Eiffel Tower is better than the Pentagon.

Caste System suddenly looks as good as Slavery. Mercantilism is a lot more attractive. Free Speech becomes huge, and you should switch to it as soon as you can.

Look how they combine: Mercantilism + Sistine Chapel = 1 free Artist generating 5 culture points/round. Add Free Speech and he's doubled to 10 points/round. This will add up fast.


6) A Culture game will also play with your expectations about teching. By now you probably have a favored tech path. Rethink it. Culture means that stuff you may usually ignore, like Music and Drama, is now a top priority.

I don't go for Culture wins much any more -- I think they get kind of slow in the end, when you're just waiting for those last border pops -- but the first time I got a good one, it was very cool. Definitely worth doing.

Good luck!


Waldo

 

[DaveMcW]

As Sisiutl pointed out, there are multiple ways to gain the win; you can do it by cottage-spamming, or by farming and running specialists. But note that you can't do both...

Of course you can. Culture bomb the cottage cities.

 

[LuckyAC]

To have anything near optimal cultural victories, you need cottages. To just win on Prince, though, you can do whatever you want.

 

[MrFelony]

check out this Hall of Fame post on pre 1000AD deity wins http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=232250. he had 2 legendary cities that were cottaged, but the 3rd was his GP farm.

 

[TheStealthRhino]

I started a game with Ghandi last night and founded 2 religions in my first two cities; Hinduism and Confucianism with CofL Slingshot.

I found that switching back and forth between religions [no anarchy] to get culture for both cities to pop borders 3 times, 10, 100, 1000, which was nice.

Are there specific parameters for religions to spread to neighboring cities?
Sometimes you'll have your state religion spread to a neighbor that has no borders touching yours or no open border agreement. Is there something I'm missing, or does it just occur randomly [I highly doubt a structured game like this allows for random occurances]

 

[MrCynical]

Are there specific parameters for religions to spread to neighboring cities?
Sometimes you'll have your state religion spread to a neighbor that has no borders touching yours or no open border agreement. Is there something I'm missing, or does it just occur randomly [I highly doubt a structured game like this allows for random occurances]

A religion has a chance each turn to spread to any city which has a trade connection to a city that already has that religion. A religion may therefore spread to a civ without touching borders by means of rivers, or along coastline (after the invention of sailing). As to spreading to a civ you don't have open borders with, I'm not 100% certain, but I think the presence of the connection is sufficient, whereas open borders are only essential for trade routes. In any case, a religion could spread first to a third civ which has open borders with both of you.

Religions spread twice as fast if the shrine for them has been built.

 

[sveint]

Score means nothing, just play to have fun

 

[Sisiutil]

Score means nothing, just play to have fun

And that is some of the best advice ever posted to this forum.

 

[Indiansmoke]

Despite the advice and posts of many experts in these forums, I have never been able to produce that many GA's to fuel my cultural victories. My culture wins come from cathedrals, a few key wonders and the culture slider. I play Monarch normal speed & size BTW.

The reason propably is that you have to play the game before going for a cultural victory. If you are left behind in tech chances are you will be invaded and lose.

I have even seen articles in the strategy section, where people claim that they tech until liberialism and it's max culture after that!! Never been able to do it and I am not convinced it can be done either. The earliest to stop teching for me was radio, having taken Industrialism etc.

 

[LiberiGlacialis]

If that's what it takes to do it, then do it that way. Me, I tend to Space vic, though I have gotten close to BOTH Culture and Domination. That way (Tech up to Radio or so before Turtle/Culture crank) sounds like a more solid victory path then Lib/Turtle/Maxed Culture Slider, as you'll at least have a more solid tech base to defend yourself.

BUt, hey, as sveint said, play to have fun!

 

[TheStealthRhino]

Well Gentlemen [and ladies if anyone is of the female persuasion... although I think not], I have won my Ghandi game started a couple of days ago.

I won in 1900, having only built 6 cities on a tightly packed continent.

It was a really interesting game, and if people are interested, I'll go into greater detail with another post; for now, I'll just make a couple of comments about how I played and what transpired.

I founded Hinduism, Confuscianism via CoL slingshot, Christianity with Artist lightbulb, and Islam via some savvy tech trading to beat my enemies to the punch.

Only once did anyone declare war on me, and that was the southern most member of my continent, and his attack was weak at best with 4 axemen and 5 chariots.

All of my neighbors were Confuscian, which was my religion for 95% of the game [I only used Hinduism for early border pops for newly founded cities early on]. I took 5 cities via culture! I was so happy whenever it would announce, "There has been an Indian revolt in York/Temekka/Newcastle..."

I produced 1 scientist and 31 Great Artists throughout my game. I used the +4000 culture bomb on each of my 3 legendary cities atleast once, and if a city was straggling a little, like in 1500, when I had my capitol around 22000, and my second city at 20000, and third at 15500, I would drop that sum . .. .. .. .. . in city three and try and even everything out.

By the time I had teched to Nationhood and eventually Liberalism, everyone on my continent was Confuscian; I gifted technologies [nothing big] and resources [only +1 ], and sent a lot of missionaries around the continent to keep people on my side. Defensive pacts were made with Russia, dominant on continent #2 to try and fend off as much trouble as possible.

In the end, my cities had 6, 8, and 7 great artists settled, and these cities, respectively, were producing 400-500 culture per turn.

In the end, I have to say, this was the most rewarding game I have ever played. Besides having my highest score, and earliest date of victory, border popping to take cities just feels so good.

Image a night out, you see a pretty girl, and instead of summoning all the courage you have to go over and talk to her, spit your best game, and try to take her home, she instead slaps her boyfriend, pours her drink on his head, and comes over to you and asks you if she can join your empire.

Amazing!