Science victory the new cultural victory?

Bagi

Warlord
Joined
Jan 13, 2013
Messages
153
Anyone else feel science victories have become slow and boring? It has always been most comparable to cultural victories, but with the changes to cultural play I find science really boring in comparison:

1)Both types can now go tall or wide
2)Culture victory has the archeology aspect that rewards exploration
3)Culture victory feels more diverse with the stronger focus on GP generation as well as the archeology minigame
4)Theming bonuses and trading great works can be fun to fiddle with while you wait for your next tech/wonder
5)Once ideologies kick in, you can use trade routes and diplomats to enforce your culture on others, often resulting to city-flipping and switching ideologies

Meanwhile the only thing science really has going for it is a stronger domination game through more advanced units. Most AIs seem to favor culture anyway, which usually results in them funding arts at the world congress, making differences in science smaller and the impending victory that much slower.

This doesn't mean science feels less important, I still rush the NC and any possible science building techs along the way. I just no longer make it my end goal to win a science victory.
 
I find that Science Victories are much faster than the new Cultural Victory. I can control when my science peaks (after my labs are built) and bulb several GS, build Hubble for two more free GS, and micromanage the final push to Alpha Centauri. With the new Ideology trees, I can even rush SS components with GE or with :c5gold:. The new Tourism aspect is a much slower route to victory IMHO and is less in my control (unless I raise a big army and take out any cultural civs).

I do quite enjoy the new mechanics though. All the BNW mechanics you mentioned are top notch additions to the game. I can have fun with them regardless of what victory I decide to pursue in a game.
 
I find that Science Victories are much faster than the new Cultural Victory. I can control when my science peaks (after my labs are built) and bulb several GS, build Hubble for two more free GS, and micromanage the final push to Alpha Centauri. With the new Ideology trees, I can even rush SS components with GE or with :c5gold:. The new Tourism aspect is a much slower route to victory IMHO and is less in my control (unless I raise a big army and take out any cultural civs).

I do quite enjoy the new mechanics though. All the BNW mechanics you mentioned are top notch additions to the game. I can have fun with them regardless of what victory I decide to pursue in a game.

This.
 
I won a science victory recently and I was bored out of my mind during the last two ages. I thought the new culture victory was much more interesting because I had to break down the hard to crack nations to win. Science I just had to sit there and wait.

Science isn't different than it was before, but I think it stands out more because culture got more interesting.

Science is like a race victory, where you end up lapping your opponents 10 times, but you still have 300 laps to go. Also, every time you lap them, you hit them in the knees with a crowbar, so you know they are never going to catch up.
 
Oddly I'vebeen finding that wwhen I go science i end up contending for a cultural victory just because when Iget ahead i get first shot at all of the tourism wonders and buildi ngs
 
In my own experience it's cultural victory that seems overly fast. Maybe I'm making things too easy for myself by playing Brazil on Prince (though Prince is what I always play on) but the couple of time I've played so far my eventual victory became obvious before I even got to pick an Ideology.
 
Tourism victory is either easy or hard, depending on religion you take. If you're for instance Byzantium and you manage to snatch +2 tourism per religion-built building and get for instance Pagoda, Mosques, Cathedral beliefs (unlikely to take all three, but possible - AI often takes irrational, useless beliefs instead of the right ones) and you manage to get your religion as World Religion, your ideology as World Ideology, it'll be very fast.
 
Science has always been boring.

The fact you have to focus on it 2000 BC to 1500 AD in difficulties 5+ is just obnoxious.

Every Deity LP has been "eh we better get our science going!"

Spies and the 25% boost to discovered techs is a step in the right direction, but I think Spies, or a new Espionage unit, a Saboteur, should actually do beaker damage and scales based on the targets science ranking.

The science leader should of course be able to defend themselves, but they should have to have their spies at home and build Constabulatories.
 
I have ended up with cultural victories so far even though I've been aiming for other things. Playing with Great Works and Artifacts is oddly compelling.
 
I find that Science Victories are much faster than the new Cultural Victory. I can control when my science peaks (after my labs are built) and bulb several GS, build Hubble for two more free GS, and micromanage the final push to Alpha Centauri. With the new Ideology trees, I can even rush SS components with GE or with :c5gold:. The new Tourism aspect is a much slower route to victory IMHO and is less in my control (unless I raise a big army and take out any cultural civs).

I do quite enjoy the new mechanics though. All the BNW mechanics you mentioned are top notch additions to the game. I can have fun with them regardless of what victory I decide to pursue in a game.

Take a look at my It's Over 9,000 thread. Great Musicians are the new bomb!
 
Oddly I'vebeen finding that wwhen I go science i end up contending for a cultural victory just because when Iget ahead i get first shot at all of the tourism wonders and buildi ngs

This is a real problem for me and I noticed it too. It really blurs the line between science and culture. So much of culture depends upon researching and building the wonders >_<
 
The fact you have to focus on it 2000 BC to 1500 AD in difficulties 5+ is just obnoxious.

I disagree with this on my first BNW playthrough on emp I was going for a Shoshone cultural vic right from the get-go and not until ~turn 300 did it become apparent I wasn't going to catch Portugal's culture with my tourism in time, switched everything to Science and still managed to squeak out a victory. Its possible you just have to commit 100% to the switch over and perhaps throw in a late game war to slow down the AI's victory conditions.
 
For me the excitement of the science victory is seeing if I can get it finished before I win the diplomatic victory.
 
I've only tried the BNW demo so my experience is mainly from G&K, but I also feel that unless you are actually in a very close race with another civ (usually Korea it seems like to me, though I can't wait to see Assyria in the full BNW version), Science can be a fairly passive victory. Or like jessie23 said, it becomes a matter of whether you get science or diplomatic first.

I really like the idea of espionage being able to sabotage your opponent's research although what I would really like to see is a way to stop a runaway science leader by destroying their spaceship if you capture their capitol. You can stop Culture civs by stealing great works (or just declaring war in general), Military civs by capturing their capitol (can't win if they don't control their own capitol), or Diplomatic civs by allying (or in desperate cases conquering city states). But there is not really a way to effectively set back a science directed civ if they are on the cusp of winning, in my opinion. I guess I just like to have a last ditch option to stop the AI winning especially on higher difficulties.
 
But there is not really a way to effectively set back a science directed civ if they are on the cusp of winning, in my opinion. I guess I just like to have a last ditch option to stop the AI winning especially on higher difficulties.

I think the only real way I've had success with is by just rapidly pressing the red button and multi-nuking their capital into a smoldering ruin. If you're not at that point and they're putting a ship together, yeah.. pretty much game over.
 
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