Space 100 Yard Dash?

A

Al Fredo

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 11, 2002
Messages
70
In my last game (Noble,standard) I was crushing people. I had a big tech lead. I was 1st in almost every statistic. By the time the modern era rolled aroung, I had about 1/3 more points than #2. Like, I had 4000, and #2 and 3000. Pulling away.

Next thing I know...someone builds Apollo. And SS stasis. How? I'm am killing it right now, and someone is ahead of me? I switch to 100% science, emphasize production everywhere. Crank out Labs in top cities. Start cranking out parts. Other civs create Apollo. Civs that near 1/2 of my points. getting nervous. Try to rush Space elevator with Great Scientist...only gets me 40% complete. Ah! I reach future tech. (this is how far ahead in tech I was). I finally complete the last part with my pathetic rival, 1500 points behind...only TWO PARTS AWAY FROM WINNING! Holy crap! Anyone else experience this? BTW, if I wanted to attack the rival civ capital to stop the SS (still not clear if this actually happens in CIV4 - anyone?) - I felt that there would not be enough time...by a long shot.

Anyone feel the space race happens too fast? Man, if I had to win by another method, I don't know if I could beat it. Spaceship launched in 1969.

Should I have been ultra agressive for the SS win much earlier? Was I goofing around? Thoughts?
 
Computer is buling very fast at the end. Ihave just won a noble
space victory but befor ethat I lost 3 times. Sending spies would be a good idea to slow down their progress. But at the end they are so fast.
 
That's the exact reason that I disabled the Space Race victory. :p To me it sucks that the endgame usually devolves into a ridiculous "dash" for spaceship parts. Even more sucky is the fact that you can do almost nothing to stop the dash from happening, short of winning some other way first.

Every other form of victory (except for culture, but no one's "dashing" to that) is competitive in two ways: either you outdo your opponent at something, or you undermine your opponent's efforts to outdo you. The fun comes from competing in both ways at once (fighting a war for territory and supremacy, making powerful allies for the diplomatic win, etc.)

But in the space race, the only way to compete is to build your own. There isn't enough time to build an army to invade them, and even if you did you're just taking yourself out of the race while everyone else keeps advancing towards the finish line. I find that disabling the space race victory makes winning the game alot more "honest" in that you can't just suck for 6000 years and then win by building some parts faster than everyone else. :D
 
Perhaps it would be possible through editing to make the Space victory like it was in Civ 2, where you had to wait for the ship to get to AC? That would make taking the capital a realistic possibility.
 
Is anyone certain that taking an enemy capital still destroys their spaceship in civ IV? Anyone seen this happen ingame? Anyway, I played a game on noble which ended in a space race. Most AI civs were a few techs ahead of me and ahead on a few hundred points, but I went straight for rocketry and focused completely on the spaceship. Even before I got rocketry, I made sure everything had factories and power just to get ready for it, and fi it wasnt building infrastructure it was on research. Colonised an island to get aluminium, got rocketry and built apollo straight away, then went for computers to get labs up asap. Had a great engy build the space elevator, and had a few great people in the bag to start a golden age just as I needed the boost, and managed to win by ignoring techs like flight and mass media and going straight for the prize. before the AI civs caught on it was all over :D
 
Hehehe. In my last game at monarch I was one of those not-so-great civs and won the space race while egypt (twice size as me) lost :) Thats the good thing about having labs in every city ;)

But I miss the old "dash for capital city" when someone got his space ship first. That gives warmongers a chance against tech civs. I hope someone mods its soon.
 
Gazaridis said:
Is anyone certain that taking an enemy capital still destroys their spaceship in civ IV? Anyone seen this happen ingame? Anyway, I played a game on noble which ended in a space race. Most AI civs were a few techs ahead of me and ahead on a few hundred points, but I went straight for rocketry and focused completely on the spaceship. Even before I got rocketry, I made sure everything had factories and power just to get ready for it, and fi it wasnt building infrastructure it was on research. Colonised an island to get aluminium, got rocketry and built apollo straight away, then went for computers to get labs up asap. Had a great engy build the space elevator, and had a few great people in the bag to start a golden age just as I needed the boost, and managed to win by ignoring techs like flight and mass media and going straight for the prize. before the AI civs caught on it was all over :D
Click to expand...

I think I've heard that it doesn't (best it can do is hurt their ability to produce...)
 
My first game was 18 civs, huge, epic speed, and I was a solid 2nd behind Mali - but fairly weak militarily and a little behind on tech. When I finally got the apollo program, I thought I should start building it - then that same turn I see Mansa build 3 spaceship parts - so I went for the UN.

Built the UN, got voted in as Sec. Gen, but couldn't get voted in with a diplo victory. Let me tell you, it's near impossible to get *anything* to pass with 15 civs still in the late 1900s. Just like the real UN! ;) When I was elected to the UN the second time (after tons of gifting and hoping for a miracle with the votes!), Mansa had completed his ship.

It's easily been since Civ 2 since I've had that "oh sh!!" feeling in a game, so I gladly welcome the end of game rush as it's very unpredictable. If I don't want it in a specific game, I'll just turn it off then. WTG Firaxis, a job well done!

-m.
 
I had China doing something like this to me once, so I built 3 spies, plopped one in each city of his building space parts and spent every turn sabotaging the construction until I was complete ;)
 
Yeah I turn it off too. I don't really like going for that victory, but if it's on then you usually have to just to keep others from doing it, unless you're already close to another victory like domination or diplomatic etc.
 
Just becasue there small does not make them inferfior at reaserch. Infact they could even do better then you when your twice the size as you have seen here.
 
I've been tempted to mod the build costs for spaceship parts way up.
 
I like the space race because it makes the endgame very exciting. I think that I am doing great going for a victory of my choice when I suddenly see some other civs building spaceship parts. (Even if it isn't a space victory, I still have to hurry to get it done long before 2050.) The game that ended yesterday was particularly fun because while I was taking my time setting up for space victory, Mali completed 8 parts before my Apollo program finished, but I was able to beat them anyway. (Labs in every major city, great engineer + lots of cash to get Space Elevator, then switching civics for max research to get last few techs and timing all cities to complete the parts in a way that would minimize total time, including the research time.)

In many strategy games I find the endgame just boring cleanup, but this space threat from unexpected direction makes endgame here the most exciting part.
 
It's the scoring, you get more score for lot of pop and land than you do for tech. It may have appeared to you you were ahead but obviously they ahd higher tech.
 
I was playing on prince when one of the computer opponents built the apollo project in 1907 and the game was over before 1940. I just played another game on Prince and I had a 800 point lead in Civ score and still lost the space race and I had research at 100% the entire time except for 20 or 30 turns where I checked to see if it would shorten the amount of time it took to research something and there was no change. I think I am going to do what my friend suggested and turn off space race victory.
 
I think the AI is planning for the Space Ship all along. So yes, while you are goofing around the tech tree, the AI is beelining for the Space ship parts. If they are industrious they will get the Appolo Program and the space elevator for pretty cheap, and then you have to hurry a lot if you don't want to be beaten !
it's pretty cool, though, because the game suddenly gets really tense ! I remember watching every turn to see if an AI had built the motor, since it's one of the last techs you know you're in trouble if an AI has one.
 
My last game, I had this happen. I warred with Montezuma for the better part of the game so was quite behind in tech and infrastructure until about the mid 1900's. Once I had conquered my continent, and was happily building up, I suddenly started getting messages "Mansa has completed SS part" every couple of turns. Ooooh **** ! I didn't even know what techs were needed for the spaceship stuff (only my 2nd game) and upon looking it up, was still a coupel techs away from even building Apollo. I had a lot of cities, and several very productive ones turning ~70-100 hammers/turn so I started cranking. I quickly realized though that I was not quite going to catch up no matter how fast I built. Mind you, during the time I was catching up, Catherine started cranking SS parts as well. Not good.

I bribed Napolean into declaring on Mansa. Never saw another SS part from Mansa again as he became busy building troops to fend off Napolean (though my troops in the area reported no actual fighting.)

So now I've got the spaceship in the bag, right? Well, I would have except that with 10 turns left in the game, and 2 left on the cockpit, my nuclear plant blew up - 77 turns to cockpit now!

The quickest I could get it done in any other city was 12 turns. I ended up winning by score.

The last 50-60 turns of the game though I wa on the edge of my seat. I have never gotten this kind of suspense from a game before.
 
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