Most difficult victory setup?

[topresch]

I read the thread about Science Victory more often than not being a production victory as well as others on the OP'ed Civs and thought: What would be the most challenging setup for victory?

Obviously Deity difficulty, but would it be Science with Spain? Religion with Kongo (well, that is impossible perhaps)?

Thoughts?

 

[Haggbart]

Deity, religious victory huge map with any civ that doesn't have any bonuses to faith or religion maybe?

 

[Onii-chan]

Religious victory as Kongo is literally impossible regardless of setup so that'd be the obvious one

But either way religious victory is still the only type that can be a bit challenging on Deity since you can't outsmart the AI in it as much as the other types, and their massive faith generation bonuses will be difficult to keep up with if you're not playing a religious civ yourself. So yeah Deity + religious victory only + huge map + manually selecting all religious civs to be included amongst the AI whilst simultaneously playing as a civ which doesn't get any bonuses that helps with that at all yourself should be the most difficult (well discounting Kongo)

Though of course you could just ignore religion altogether and just go straight-up military like normal as that'll eventually become a religious victory as well when you're the only civ left in the game (just spread it around to >50% of your cities) but otherwise

 

[Sascha77]

Religious victory as Kongo is literally impossible regardless of setup so that'd be the obvious one

Hmm.. I haven't played as Kongo yet, but couldn't you simply conquer a holy city, then spread that religion around using the stolen holy city/site? Or doesn't the game recognize you as the "owner" of that religion, even if you took its holy city away from the original founder?

 

[Onii-chan]

Hmm.. I haven't played as Kongo yet, but couldn't you simply conquer a holy city, then spread that religion around using the stolen holy city/site? Or doesn't the game recognize you as the "owner" of that religion, even if you took its holy city away from the original founder?

Yeah it won't recognize you as the owner. You must found your own religion to be eligible

 

[ElGuapoCiv]

Yeah it won't recognize you as the owner. You must found your own religion to be eligible

But in that case you can deny a religious victory, correct? If you can't achieve it yourself, then you must at least contain it and what better way than to destroy the founder of the biggest religion?

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Another difficult victory to achieve is science in general. Usually your culture output will be enough to trigger that condition before science. Adding to that, the milestones in science (moon landing...) give you a huge culture boost further detracting from a science victory.

 

[Onii-chan]

Another difficult victory to achieve is science in general. Usually your culture output will be enough to trigger that condition before science. Adding to that, the milestones in science (moon landing...) give you a huge culture boost further detracting from a science victory.

That depends entirely on what you're going for. If you're not actually focusing on any victory condition in particular then yes cultural should be what you just happen to end up with first. But if you actually aim for a science victory then of course you should get it way before a cultural one. It's all about the tech order, production output, policy choices, and especially great people

 

[ElGuapoCiv]

That depends entirely on what you're going for. If you're not actually focusing on any victory condition in particular then yes cultural should be what you just happen to end up with first. But if you actually aim for a science victory then of course you should get it way before a cultural one. It's all about the tech order, production output, policy choices, and especially great people

I tried to go science three times in a row now and was always beaten by culture triggering first. I tried everything to avoid it, no theatre districts etc.
Now I just started to turn off the culture victory and what happened? Religion triggered because I was slaugthering a.i. missionaries in my kill zone

 

[elitetroops]

I tried to go science three times in a row now and was always beaten by culture triggering first. I tried everything to avoid it, no theatre districts etc.
Now I just started to turn off the culture victory and what happened? Religion triggered because I was slaugthering a.i. missionaries in my kill zone

You win a cultural victory with tourism, not culture. My guess is that you are probably wonderspamming, since wonders can give a lot of tourism in the late game. Other potentially big sources of tourism are archeological artifacts, natural parks and seaside resorts. Easily avoidable by just not building seaside resorts or natural parks and not digging up too many artifacts.

Try focusing on the essentials. That's Campuses, Commercial Hubs/Harbors and Industrial Zones. A couple of Theatre Districts can be good to have and maybe some Entertainment Complexes, depending on the size of your empire. A vast majority of the wonders will only slow down a science victory, since there are better things to invest your production into.

 

[Haggbart]

I tried to go science three times in a row now and was always beaten by culture triggering first. I tried everything to avoid it, no theatre districts etc.
Now I just started to turn off the culture victory and what happened? Religion triggered because I was slaugthering a.i. missionaries in my kill zone

Having won several quite fast science victories (and not being remotely close to trigger tourism victory in those instances), I find it VERY hard to believe you've done EVERYTHING to avoid winning on culture.

 

[ElGuapoCiv]

You win a cultural victory with tourism, not culture. My guess is that you are probably wonderspamming, since wonders can give a lot of tourism in the late game. Other potentially big sources of tourism are archeological artifacts, natural parks and seaside resorts. Easily avoidable by just not building seaside resorts or natural parks and not digging up too many artifacts.

Try focusing on the essentials. That's Campuses, Commercial Hubs/Harbors and Industrial Zones. A couple of Theatre Districts can be good to have and maybe some Entertainment Complexes, depending on the size of your empire. A vast majority of the wonders will only slow down a science victory, since there are better things to invest your production into.

Right, I basically viewed culture and tourism as one entity. I tried to avoid everything with the culture icon and didn't think about tourism seperately. Still find it hard to resist wonder whoring even though they were nerfed significantly. Alright: I'll try to win science with culture victory activated. To be fair though, the a.i. is incredibly poor at gaining tourists. It seems to focus mostly on religion.

@Haggbart
Everything to my best knowledge

 

[Haggbart]

Right, I basically viewed culture and tourism as one entity. I tried to avoid everything with the culture icon and didn't think about tourism seperately. Still find it hard to resist wonder whoring even though they were nerfed significantly. Alright: I'll try to win science with culture victory activated. To be fair though, the a.i. is incredibly poor at gaining tourists. It seems to focus mostly on religion.

@Haggbart
Everything to my best knowledge

One thing you should be aware of is culture has a place in the tourism victory as a DEFENCE. So the AI output of tourism is only relevant in trying to get the cultural/tourism victory, not in stopping you from it. But I agree that it generally focuses a lot on religion compared to tech/culture/tourism. Which difficulty level are you playing btw? Maybe up it a level for the AI to be more competitive in culture output?

You don't need to avoid building wonders completely, getting Pyramids, Ruhr Valley, Colosseum, Forbidden Palace etc will help you with the science victory, but a lot of the wonders can easily be skipped (especially those contributing mostly to tourism and religion).

 

[manu-fan]

If you're going for Religion. Just do Domination and leave the last capital, and spam it with Missionaries and Apostles.

 

[Siptah]

Turning off barbarians makes it harder on deity. Turning off goody huts obviously, too.
A score victory with Kongo when only religious and score are allowed in Pangea seems hard.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

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.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Kongo, only Religion victory is available

just kidding, right now the game is too broken that any setup would be considered hard

 

[CaiusDrewart]

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.

Yes. All this only applies if you make deliberately restraining from warring, because warring makes all victory types about equally easy.

If you're willing to play peacefully, I'd say the hardest is a Religious victory on Deity with a non-religious, non-overpowered Civ (pick America or something), with Spain, India, Russia, and Arabia in the game, and no Yerevan in the game.

 

[stormtrooper412]

any setup in which you can't really go ICS is actually bad

 

[Onii-chan]

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.

Well obviously military conquest will ultimately make you get ahead in pretty much every single way since you get more land and thus more output of all resource yields, plus you get rid of most of the competition

What people actually mean when they say that they're going for a non-domination victory is that they're playing overall peacefully

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Well obviously military conquest will ultimately make you get ahead in pretty much every single way since you get more land and thus more output of all resource yields, plus you get rid of most of the competition

What people actually mean when they say that they're going for a non-domination victory is that they're playing overall peacefully

Some people might mean that, but it's certainly not a conditional provided in the OP. "Science with Spain" is necessarily easier than "you're the only civ left on the planet as Spain", where stopping just short of the latter would make the former trivial.

In a challenge environment with special rules, you are looking to optimize within your fabricated constraints. Absent a game that blocks you declaring war, domination will consistently be the hardest victory to attain and attempts to evaluate the hardest setup with vanilla rules (that is still possible) should look to find the most challenging military setups conceivable.