State of the Union

[Braum]

I'm not sure I have any ideas. I was definitely playing Babylon wrong. Tradition works much better with them, or focus heavily on culture policy and religion. I guess run away civs on another continent are just unstoppable at higher difficulties. I always stay in the game and try to maintain happiness and build up a military to attack them, but it just gets worse every turn. I never actually have a chance to attack. The ideological pressure, the city state stealing, the wonder hogging, world congress stuff, my minister of agriculture, barbarian unrest. All this destroys your science and culture making the gap even larger.
I just need to learn to quit and start over.

 

[IcyAngel]

I'm not sure I have any ideas. I was definitely playing Babylon wrong. Tradition works much better with them, or focus heavily on culture policy and religion. I guess run away civs on another continent are just unstoppable at higher difficulties. I always stay in the game and try to maintain happiness and build up a military to attack them, but it just gets worse every turn. I never actually have a chance to attack. The ideological pressure, the city state stealing, the wonder hogging, world congress stuff, my minister of agriculture, barbarian unrest. All this destroys your science and culture making the gap even larger.
I just need to learn to quit and start over.

It depends. It's often possible to win a tourism victory against them, because you will get a giganormous modifier for number of cities; science too, because they'll often puppet or annex every single city instead of razing, meaning they have many weak cities acting as liabilities slowing down their tech and social policy acquisition.

It often comes down to luck (them not going after you, say); more often then not you cannot do anything about it, unfortunately.

Edit: To be clear, by "runaway" I meant a civ that eats other civs and becomes very big. It's rare in my experience for an AI to become a runaway while playing tall sim-city like.

 

[Txurce]

It depends. It's often possible to win a tourism victory against them, because you will get a giganormous modifier for number of cities; science too, because they'll often puppet or annex every single city instead of razing, meaning they have many weak cities acting as liabilities slowing down their tech and social policy acquisition.

It often comes down to luck (them not going after you, say); more often then not you cannot do anything about it, unfortunately.

This doesn't seem to apply to the current patch, because every game has a runaway AI on the other continent, and that civ wins a CV by t315 or so. How bad is it? Travel bans never even come into play! It's so out of whack right now -- runaway civs and resultant CVs -- that the game has become unplayable for me.

 

[IcyAngel]

This doesn't seem to apply to the current patch, because every game has a runaway AI on the other continent, and that civ wins a CV by t315 or so. How bad is it? Travel bans never even come into play! It's so out of whack right now -- runaway civs and resultant CVs -- that the game has become unplayable for me.

I mean, don't you ever become a runaway too? Sometimes the AI is powerless against you. It's the name of the game.

Does it happen more often than before? I don't know. I'm wary of confirmation biases. We'd need actual statistics.

 

[Txurce]

I mean, don't you ever become a runaway too? Sometimes the AI is powerless against you. It's the name of the game.

Does it happen more often than before? I don't know. I'm wary of confirmation biases. We'd need actual statistics.

My statistic is five games in a row, all CV's, between t300 and 317.

 

[CrazyG]

I mean, don't you ever become a runaway too? Sometimes the AI is powerless against you. It's the name of the game.

Does it happen more often than before? I don't know. I'm wary of confirmation biases. We'd need actual statistics.

I have not won by anything but culture since this last update, excluding the game culture was turned off (and I would have lost by culture that game)

 

[ElliotS]

I have not won by anything but culture since this last update, excluding the game culture was turned off (and I would have lost by culture that game)

My statistic is five games in a row, all CV's, between t300 and 317.

Culture victory does need a nerf. It's such an easy win-con. I think it should require a WC world ideology to win. That means that culture victories need to do some more work and are delayed a bit more. I'd also be open to it being tied to world religion if we don't want 2

I'm about to win an Aztec deity game. I would have lost to Culture, but I broke Egypt's neck. (I would have lost to him if China didn't resist his Tourism for the short time between him getting influential with me and me getting into a position to murder him.)

Funny enough because I'm finishing off china now, I'm going to win a cultural victory as soon as I genocide them. (Influential over my vassals and Austria, the last civ.)

Txurce, you CAN be the snowball that AIs fear.You keep acting like it's impossible to beat the AI on immortal, yet people are beating Deity. Maybe you should look at your play rather than game balance for the answers you seek.

 

[Taikavarpu]

Culture victory does need a nerf. It's such an easy win-con. I think it should require a WC world ideology to win. That means that culture victories need to do some more work and are delayed a bit more. I'd also be open to it being tied to world religion if we don't want 2

It seems to me that historic events give a crazy amount of tourism, while great works are practically useless. I have won multiple accidental tourism victories without creating a single great work.

 

[Txurce]

Txurce, you CAN be the snowball that AIs fear.You keep acting like it's impossible to beat the AI on immortal, yet people are beating Deity. Maybe you should look at your play rather than game balance for the answers you seek.

Elliot, to repeat some points you may not have retained:

Before this patch, I consistently beat the AI on Immortal using non-science civs with SV's, using Tradition and Authority. I haven't tried a game with either of those branches using this patch, because I've been playing Progress -- first with Carthage, and mostly with Indonesia. I haven't been able to win a SV with Indonesia using Progress with this patch. And I've reached the point where I think I would win it, except for the CV issue you agree needs nerfing.

But I could be wrong, and Deity players like you may have no problem pulling it off.

 

[Starrynite120]

Elliot, to repeat some points you may not have retained:

Before this patch, I consistently beat the AI on Immortal using non-science civs with SV's, using Tradition and Authority. I haven't tried a game with either of those branches using this patch, because I've been playing Progress -- first with Carthage, and mostly with Indonesia. I haven't been able to win a SV with Indonesia using Progress with this patch. And I've reached the point where I think I would win it, except for the CV issue you agree needs nerfing.

But I could be wrong, and Deity players like you may have no problem pulling it off.

Its probably worth mentioning again that Indonesia gets no bonuses to science. Try a different civ that does get bonuses there. Playing on immortal you kind of need to have a really strong synergy with your civ and particular victory choice.

Culture victory does need a nerf. It's such an easy win-con. I think it should require a WC world ideology to win. That means that culture victories need to do some more work and are delayed a bit more. I'd also be open to it being tied to world religion if we don't want 2

I agree culture victory needs a nerf. Its much easier to achieve than the other victories. A world ideology would be interesting. Though there is the potential problem of that being a condition for both culture and diplomacy, and now culture has the burden of requiring to pass a vote. But it does make sense on a different level.

 

[Txurce]

Its probably worth mentioning again that Indonesia gets no bonuses to science. Try a different civ that does get bonuses there. Playing on immortal you kind of need to have a really strong synergy with your civ and particular victory choice.

Yeah, I may have reached my limit of bucking the odds here!

 

[CrazyG]

I would vote against needing a world congress proposal for culture, makes controlling the world congress too important. I think historical events need another look

 

[Txurce]

I would vote against needing a world congress proposal for culture, makes controlling the world congress too important. I think historical events need another look

Agreed.

 

[ElliotS]

I would vote against needing a world congress proposal for culture, makes controlling the world congress too important. I think historical events need another look

I can see that, especially because you can already get punished for ignoring it. (Travel Ban.)

I think Historical events vs. flat tourism is cool as is, but there's just too much tourism overall. Here's my proposed solution:

All civs start with a flat 50% resistance to tourism called "boarder control", and then there's still the travel ban in world congress, but also a "open borders" policy which grants everyone open borders and removes the "boarder control" modifiers.

This would be in line with other stuff and nerf culture victories enough, though a Juggernaut could still push it though while not controlling WC.

 

[Starrynite120]

I can see that, especially because you can already get punished for ignoring it. (Travel Ban.)

I think Historical events vs. flat tourism is cool as is, but there's just too much tourism overall. Here's my proposed solution:

All civs start with a flat 50% resistance to tourism called "boarder control", and then there's still the travel ban in world congress, but also a "open borders" policy which grants everyone open borders and removes the "boarder control" modifiers.

This would be in line with other stuff and nerf culture victories enough, though a Juggernaut could still push it though while not controlling WC.

That's a cool idea I like that. Perhaps open borders (non WC) could just remove that penalty then, it would make it super valuable but also not a boost, rather removing a penalty. I would be wholeheartedly behind this.

 

[ashendashin]

Everyone's trying to reach a consensus in the wrong place again

 

[Starrynite120]

Everyone's trying to reach a consensus in the wrong place again

Haha true. Perhaps the above idea about open borders should be made its own thread.

 

[Txurce]

There's a few problems with the OB proposal in terms of nerfing early CVs. First, no player should be forced to give up control of their own border, with no recourse other than to maintain a strong WC presence, and then hope for the best.

I'm less certain about my second reason: that it favors the runaway civ more than it hurts it. This is because in all my recent games, the runaway is militarily aggressive, and has a huge empire. They win CVs without trying for it, because something's out of whack. But to the point here, they are uniformly strong in the WC because they're so huge. So they are much more likely to be able to win the OB vote than they are to get hit by a Travel Ban.

The third reason is pretty simple: CV's with continents are so off right now, that I have yet to see a vote on the Travel Ban.

 

[Starrynite120]

There's a few problems with the OB proposal in terms of nerfing early CVs. First, no player should be forced to give up control of their own border, with no recourse other than to maintain a strong WC presence, and then hope for the best.

I'm less certain about my second reason: that it favors the runaway civ more than it hurts it. This is because in all my recent games, the runaway is militarily aggressive, and has a huge empire. They win CVs without trying for it, because something's out of whack. But to the point here, they are uniformly strong in the WC because they're so huge. So they are much more likely to be able to win the OB vote than they are to get hit by a Travel Ban.

The third reason is pretty simple: CV's with continents are so off right now, that I have yet to see a vote on the Travel Ban.

Perhaps the proposal just removes the penalty instead of giving open borders. That would remove all your objections. Or we could just not have a proposal, that's fine too, so you have to work to get it.

I should also mention if we did this Japan's UA would need to be changed. You know, -100% tourism would be bad haha.

 

[Gazebo]

Much easier solution is to decrease tourism from events.