Most difficult victory setup?

[Haggbart]

There are so few votes for domination here, and that's silly.

If you can beatstick everyone to death despite them all hating you, you can take your pick of victory conditions after doing it. Therefore, domination is the "hardest". If you can do that one, you can do any of the others eventually, even if suboptimally.

Sure, but on deity I've been swarmed by over 30 apostles at once (35 IIRC) but never 30 military units - even counting the obsolete ones. I'll actually maintain that on deity at least, religious victory is harder than domination.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Sure, but on deity I've been swarmed by over 30 apostles at once (35 IIRC) but never 30 military units - even counting the obsolete ones. I'll actually maintain that on deity at least, religious victory is harder than domination.

It's objectively incorrect to maintain that absent extra conditions like "using Kongo so impossible trololol".

Nobody can swarm you with 30 apostles when they have one city with pillaged tiles. Even the deity AI will start to shift to making military units if it has no military units.

If it's the reverse, that *preventing* AI religious victory is harder than *preventing* domination, I would agree. However, for the player if you can win domination and you have a religion at all, you can win religious, too.

 

[elitetroops]

However, for the player if you can win domination and you have a religion at all, you can win religious, too.

IF you have a religion you can win religious, but it's not necessarily easier. Domination only requires that you capture the capitals. There might very well be a situation when it is easier to capture an AI capital than to convert a majority of their cities. In fact, I think in any game if you have come so far in conquest that only one civ remains, it will be easier to take the last capital than to switch gears and start spamming religious units. You already have the army. It will also be easier to get to the point in the game where you have killed all but one civ if you completely ignore religion and just build units. Especially on deity, grabbing a religion is a huge investment and aiming for it is likely to slow down early conquest a lot.

Overall your argument seems to assume that domination equals Civ IV style conquest where you kill every AI. When you consider the fact that domination only requires capturing capitals, I'm not at all convinced that religious victory would be easier than domination on deity.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

IF you have a religion you can win religious, but it's not necessarily easier. Domination only requires that you capture the capitals. There might very well be a situation when it is easier to capture an AI capital than to convert a majority of their cities. In fact, I think in any game if you have come so far in conquest that only one civ remains, it will be easier to take the last capital than to switch gears and start spamming religious units. You already have the army. It will also be easier to get to the point in the game where you have killed all but one civ if you completely ignore religion and just build units. Especially on deity, grabbing a religion is a huge investment and aiming for it is likely to slow down early conquest a lot.

Overall your argument seems to assume that domination equals Civ IV style conquest where you kill every AI. When you consider the fact that domination only requires capturing capitals, I'm not at all convinced that religious victory would be easier than domination on deity.

You have to cut through troops to hold capitals though, and talking about the last capital only is somewhat disingenuous. You have to take all the capitals, which means prior to the final one you have to reach, take, and *hold* the capitals. You're not doing this while killing hundreds of units across the game without a military that's up to scratch to beat the AI convincingly in wars. If you have that military, it's a matter of time.

I don't equate difficulty with tedium, which is roughly the only "difficult" thing about switching to religious when you've reached a point in the game where you're holding all but one enemy capital.

The opportunity cost of founding a religion is not enough to change this equation.

 

[Haggbart]

It's objectively incorrect to maintain that absent extra conditions like "using Kongo so impossible trololol".

Nobody can swarm you with 30 apostles when they have one city with pillaged tiles. Even the deity AI will start to shift to making military units if it has no military units.

If it's the reverse, that *preventing* AI religious victory is harder than *preventing* domination, I would agree. However, for the player if you can win domination and you have a religion at all, you can win religious, too.

You're 100% wrong. Because of the simple reason that would require you to actually have a religion, and when you play for domination at deity why (not to mention how) on earth would you get a religion? And please don't bring Arabia into this to maintain your point.

 

[elitetroops]

You have to cut through troops to hold capitals though, and talking about the last capital only is somewhat disingenuous. You have to take all the capitals, which means prior to the final one you have to reach, take, and *hold* the capitals. You're not doing this while killing hundreds of units across the game without a military that's up to scratch to beat the AI convincingly in wars. If you have that military, it's a matter of time.

I don't equate difficulty with tedium, which is roughly the only "difficult" thing about switching to religious when you've reached a point in the game where you're holding all but one enemy capital.

The opportunity cost of founding a religion is not enough to change this equation.

Your argument was that if you can kill all but one civilization, then you can win any victory condition, therefore domination is the hardest.

I'm saying that killing all but one civilization is a lot harder if you also want to found a religion on deity, and if you can kill all but one civilizations you always have the army to take the last capital, therefore your argument does not hold.

Overall I think any discussion about which victory condition is the hardest is kind of pointless, since all of them are pretty easy. The only victory condition that you potentially can fail to achieve despite somewhat decent playing is religious, because those religions can go very early on deity. That's why I'd call it the hardest.

If the discussion was about which victory condition is the hardest to achieve at a competitive date (what date this would be for each victory condition is hard to tell yet), then it's a completely different matter.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You're 100% wrong. Because of the simple reason that would require you to actually have a religion, and when you play for domination at deity why (not to mention how) on earth would you get a religion? And please don't bring Arabia into this to maintain your point.

Do you really feel that founding a religion on deity is *difficult*? That's not the word I'd choose for the process. Optimizing your odds as any given non-Arabia civ is not a high-end task.

So to make a case you would need to support the notion that founding said religion is sufficiently costly that the later conquests are not only harder, but harder by enough that having to conquer fewer civs total can't overtake the added challenge. I don't consider this a plausible scenario, but could be convinced otherwise if you can show me that one would reasonably anticipate a crippling disadvantage when founding a religion.

 

[Haggbart]

Do you really feel that founding a religion on deity is *difficult*? That's not the word I'd choose for the process. Optimizing your odds as any given non-Arabia civ is not a high-end task.

So to make a case you would need to support the notion that founding said religion is sufficiently costly that the later conquests are not only harder, but harder by enough that having to conquer fewer civs total can't overtake the added challenge. I don't consider this a plausible scenario, but could be convinced otherwise if you can show me that one would reasonably anticipate a crippling disadvantage when founding a religion.

I'm not saying it's a "crippling disadvantage", I'm saying it's a lot easier not to. No it's not *difficult* but it comes at a high cost if you want to win domination. By the time you have your prophet you'll ideally be taking out your first AI instead. I've actually done both (domination at deity, religion at emporor), have you? Please try your theory out, let us know how it went.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm not saying it's a "crippling disadvantage", I'm saying it's a lot easier not to. No it's not *difficult* but it comes at a high cost if you want to win domination. By the time you have your prophet you'll ideally be taking out your first AI instead. I've actually done both (domination at deity, religion at emporor), have you?

I haven't done much of anything below deity, aside from a co-op MP game at emperor that the other two players quit. My play time so far has been pretty limited though, due to technical issues, so pushing up to speed on deity has been the priority.

I agree that researching and investing a district towards religion early is pretty nasty, but I'm not sure it's enough to offset potentially not having to snag those last few capitals. Even on deity, the AI isn't founding a lot of cities right now (in my current game I have over double the next highest civ, and triple on a few), so it's not like taking a capital is some kind of laser-surgery cut through a 12-15 city empire. If you take 2 cities, including a capital, there's a good chance you've more than cut that nation's production and tech in half...you might have literally taken half their cities on the default map size...

Given that, there should at least be some AI that don't resist your religion too well. For the religion victory to be harder, you'd have to struggle 1) have lost so much in getting religion that you struggle to beat AI nations or 2) somehow struggle despite the means to beat down the AIs who are actually converting anything. Maybe you guys are right, and founding the religion is costly enough to meet these standards relative to skipping it or playing a nation like Arabia or Russia.

 

[Haggbart]

I haven't done much of anything below deity, aside from a co-op MP game at emperor that the other two players quit. My play time so far has been pretty limited though, due to technical issues, so pushing up to speed on deity has been the priority.

I agree that researching and investing a district towards religion early is pretty nasty, but I'm not sure it's enough to offset potentially not having to snag those last few capitals. Even on deity, the AI isn't founding a lot of cities right now (in my current game I have over double the next highest civ, and triple on a few), so it's not like taking a capital is some kind of laser-surgery cut through a 12-15 city empire. If you take 2 cities, including a capital, there's a good chance you've more than cut that nation's production and tech in half...you might have literally taken half their cities on the default map size...

Given that, there should at least be some AI that don't resist your religion too well. For the religion victory to be harder, you'd have to struggle 1) have lost so much in getting religion that you struggle to beat AI nations or 2) somehow struggle despite the means to beat down the AIs who are actually converting anything. Maybe you guys are right, and founding the religion is costly enough to meet these standards relative to skipping it or playing a nation like Arabia or Russia.

Even on emporor I had to build two holy site districts and chose the extra GPP pantheon and IIRC use the +2 GP cards for some turns. So it was quite a sacrifice considering how important the early game is.

And even if you can get a religion and somehow get a military and science edge to do a relatively early war, remember you won't be at war with everyone at the same time, so you'll need to keep religious units to stop the other AI from constantly converting your cities (and even wiping out your religion) while you're doing the conquest.

But sure, it's probably a fun challenge if anyone doesn't find deity hard enough as it is.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Even on emporor I had to build two holy site districts and chose the extra GPP pantheon and IIRC use the +2 GP cards for some turns. So it was quite a sacrifice considering how important the early game is.

And even if you can get a religion and somehow get a military and science edge to do a relatively early war, remember you won't be at war with everyone at the same time, so you'll need to keep religious units to stop the other AI from constantly converting your cities (and even wiping out your religion) while you're doing the conquest.

But sure, it's probably a fun challenge if anyone doesn't find deity hard enough as it is.

I guess I don't respect it as much due to RNG. In my most recent deity game the final religion was founded well after turn 100, closer to t150 if I'm not mistaken. Even a cursory effort at religion will get one in that scenario, while in others you can gun religion as a non-religious civ and fail I guess.

You don't need much science edge for early wars, few archers + blocking will suffice. Doing that costing you a religion = difficulty when sometimes you can do it and still get religion (so not difficulty) is just the kind of RNG nuisance framework I don't care to consider.

 

[elitetroops]

I've seen all religions gone by T53 on normal speed/standard sized map. With 2 GPP/turn from holy site+shrine (3 GPP/turn with divine spark), it's quite an investment to earn 120 GPP by T53. If you run into higher than average barb activity, it is very possible that you can't get there in time no matter what you do.

I looked at saves from all my previous deity games, the latest I saw a Great Prophet recruited was T62. Your T100-T150 example would be an extreme outlier.

 

[3EchoSix]

I think religion needs some tuning. So my vote for the most difficult set up is a huge map religious victory on immortal/deity.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I've seen all religions gone by T53 on normal speed/standard sized map. With 2 GPP/turn from holy site+shrine (3 GPP/turn with divine spark), it's quite an investment to earn 120 GPP by T53. If you run into higher than average barb activity, it is very possible that you can't get there in time no matter what you do.

I looked at saves from all my previous deity games, the latest I saw a Great Prophet recruited was T62. Your T100-T150 example would be an extreme outlier.

Quite possibly the presence of Kongo in one of the AI slots + my own early game conduct (no attempt at religion myself, severely hampering nations that otherwise would have had it much sooner) played a large part in that happening. I'm not sure it would be an outlier in such circumstances even if it's an outlier on average.

 

[stormtrooper412]

I found that playing on Islands map seems a bit more difficult because no early aggressive expansion