How to stop another Civ's culture vic?

[jayeffaar]

Hi. I'm currently playing my first Emperor-level game and having a blast, after only playing King for a while. Finally, this game is giving me a bit of challenge!

I was going for a culture victory but in the late 1900s, Ceasar got to 20 culture points first and started building the United Nations. This, of course, meant war.

Now, I'm unsure about a couple of points. Once he had enough great people, wonders and flipped cities to start working on the UN wonder, can I block his victory by stealing some of his GPs? The who's winning screen shows his culture bar has dropped down below 20, but since he was there a few turns ago, can he still win by building the UN at this point?

The other thing I've been doing to him with my spies, is sabotage the building of the UN. What exactly does that do to it? Completely destroy it? Remove a percentage of the hammers already used to build it? I'm trying to gauge how often I have to go back in there and re-sabotage it.

 

[bonafide11]

I am not sure, but I assume if you steal some of his GP after he already reaches 20 GP/wonders/flipped cities, he can still continue building the UN. At least that's the case with the World Bank, you can still build it after you've spent some of the gold.

 

[Double Barrel]

Can you build a nuke before he finishes the UN? And are you willing to use it? If you nuke that city, not only will that civ lose the UN production and a lot of resources for that city, but you'll probably take out quite a few of his GPs, too.

Otherwise, rush spies to his city to continually stall his build, steal GPs, and disrupt his resources until you can catch up.

 

[Justicex]

Not sure how effective it would be, but how about marching on him? Taking over his cities would slow down his production and cause other headaches......

 

[jayeffaar]

That's essentially what I ended up doing. For a while, I was focusing on the Romans' main culture-generating city but then ended up with a defensive unit in there with a defense value of 120, or 106 after my spies took down their fortifications. I had nothing to match that, so I started taking the neighboring cities instead, each of which gave me 2 to 4 GPs. I quickly ended up with enough GPs to start building the UN and won.

After I brought their culture level down below 20, I never heard from my advisors about them building the UN, but I don't know it if had anything to do with it. It looks like they may have stupidly stopped building it and switched to military units instead, so they could fight me off.

At the same time, Egypt was getting close to an economic victory, but I quickly found out that sending spy after spy into their closest city to steal gold was a very good idea. Less money for them and tons of money to spend on the Roman war frontlines for me.

Towards the end of the game, England built the Manhattan Project while they were at war with me but stupidly again, didn't use their nuke and let me run away with the win. Sending a few fighters here and there to take pot shots at my cities while I was rushing Modern Infantry all over the place didn't work as well as nuking my one city with all the mines around it would have.

The AI needs a few upgrades. If you're about to win a culture victory and someone attacks you, you don't stop building the UN if you have several other cities to make soldiers for you. If another player is about to win and you have the nuke, there's no reason at all not to use it.

 

[Justicex]

The AI needs a few upgrades. If you're about to win a culture victory and someone attacks you, you don't stop building the UN if you have several other cities to make soldiers for you. If another player is about to win and you have the nuke, there's no reason at all not to use it.

While I agree the AI needs a few tweaks, I don't think that this would be a reason why. This would be an opinion-based manouever. The AI might feel that the other cities in question might be building units too slow, especially considering that they are already under attack. In my opinion (and the AI's appparently) using the nuke is an extreme last resort. Also, they might not have completed the Manhattan Project or finished building a nuke.

Either way, grats on da wins!

 

[vomitbrown]

Can you build a nuke before he finishes the UN? And are you willing to use it? If you nuke that city, not only will that civ lose the UN production and a lot of resources for that city, but you'll probably take out quite a few of his GPs, too.

Otherwise, rush spies to his city to continually stall his build, steal GPs, and disrupt his resources until you can catch up.

I managed to steal away a Cultural Victory from Emperor-Level CPU opponents this way. The french had one more GP to go before being able to begin construction of the UN building. I switched all my cities to science production and shortly there after nuked Paris. It stop their cultural development. The computer never recovered.

 

[Ki Yote]

I had to nuke the Egyptians the other day. They were 1 culture away from being able to build the UN so I sent a ship with a couple of armies about 1 turn away from Thebes and proceeded to nuke the city. Sent my cruiser in the same turn and took over the city. I then had to rush a wall to keep it from culture flipping back, but it ended up putting them back to only 1/2 the graph for a culture visit. Ended up winning via economy that game.

 

[Hertsh]

Yes, I just nuked the roman capital today when I was shooting for an economic victory with Japan. They were 3 GPs/Wonders from cultural victory but the round after I nuked Rome and claimed it, they dropped down to 10 left and I had plenty of time to win economically (actually the economy was booming towards the end so I would have won without the nuke as well, but it would have been less fun).