Strategies I never will do in civ V...

Acken's minimalistic balance mod locks great people output values at the turn of generation. It has been nice to play it that way lately.
 
5. Bribe civ A with all your luxes and GPT to DoW civ B, then DoW civ A (which you were going to do anyway) on the same turn, putting them in a two front war at no cost.

I do that one sometimes :lol: except I don't DoW the same turn. I give them a turn or two to move their troops around and actually engage B in battle.

Or pay someone to goto war with a civ that only has one city left -- especially one well-defended city that they can take but it won't be easy. When they capture it (and everybody hates them now) denounce them, declare war, take a few of their cities and liberate that one you paid them to take.
 
#5 is pretty much standard whenever I play deity domination.
Every other one has been done at some point:
#2 is done usually for culture CV at the end where it will save travel time for GM, at a point where the extra policy/tech cost doesn't matter.
#3 can't really be exploited unless there are spare GG or barbs, so it's rare for me.
#4 is usually the only way to win if you have a strong SV oriented AI and you plan to win another VC such as culture on deity anyway.
 
there actually is still a way to directly exploit #3 by starting to build a fort which will disconnect the resource/lux after a turn of work. Someone explained this farther up the thread.

I'm not arguing they aren't useful to win, just saying I personally don't do them as it seems exploitive given the AI's programming. :) Thanks for the input though, I could see the usefulness of giving a city so I can bulb musician quicker. I remember hiking 20 turns to bulb a musician on one game. I might do that just so the game would end quicker if I knew it was a sure thing anyway.
 
The only one of these I do with any kind of regularity is #5. I consider it the AI's own fault for backstabbing a DoF for 3 luxuries and 10 gold per turn (would you do that? I wouldn't).
 
there actually is still a way to directly exploit #3 by starting to build a fort which will disconnect the resource/lux after a turn of work.

Thanks, I forgot about that, it will come in handy whenever I'm in need of huge amount of gold when I conquer and stuck with huge negative gpt. Otherwise it will kill my science.
 
I never take CS by declaring and peacing every turn, with shots in between turns. And when other people do it I hate it a lot, because unless you have an army present protecting a CS at a strategic location or that you were interested in the future to prevent them from exploiting the poor AI.
I also personally think the GS bulking is a hugely important part of the strategy in the game, it's not only more historically realistic but it's also one of the only ways to keep the game even interesting after the early modern era, I always find myself mildly bored during the info era without having saved GS, and less militaristic civs have no chance keeping up with players who choose to hard tech focus XCom or Stealth. Bulbing great scientists keeps everybody more even and competitive in the lategame.
I don't like prebuilding in general unless it's for a specific victory strategy like futurism globe theater/uffizi. Prebuilding military for defense I guess is mildly okay although it doesn't make as much sense, and prebuilding military on offense is just sort of unfair because there's no way to really counter attacks that don't reflect demographically besides just having a huge and expensive defensive standing army.
 
I don't understand the 'Not using a Nuke that could save me from winning.' We are talking about a game. Of course the US isn't going to send a Nuke to Russia to keep them from reaching the Moon first IRL. But in a game? You are trying to win, right?

I played a game recently where I had a navy escorting a small army and 3 Great Musicians to England so I could win via Tourism. I had 1 human opponent and several AIs. We're playing Hot Seat, and we're related so we just watch each other's turns for the most part (we still do our sneaky stuff while the other person steps away for a drink or bathroom break). He was going for a science victory so was a head of me in some regards.

After I win, he mentions, I could have nuked your navy and killed your GMs preventing you from winning. As a matter of fact he only could have slowed me down, but that's beside the point. I ask him, "Well, why didn't you do it then?" He said it felt to mean. I'm like, "Dude, we're playing a game. And you know damn well I would have nuked you if the scenario were reversed." He acknowledged that but then we both just kind of let it go. I just really don't understand this line of thinking when it's only a game.

I think the only really underhanded thing I do is use workers to repair improvements during war and in unclaimed territory (like from a city that was razed) in order to make tons of gold.

I don't consider worker stealing cheating as it accurately reflects historic slavery and there are some pretty big consequences if you do it a second time. I also don't worker steal all the time.

I've also payed AIs to start wars and then immediately declared war on them. However; I only do that when going for a Tourism Victory and picking Autocracy, so it's kind of in theme anyways.
 
Is that a MP thing? Because in SP, the second DOW on a CS come with a harsh penalty!

Yes, it's a common multiplayer way to expand if your start sucks, but I find it past the line.
I steal workers, I use nukes, I trade with the AI to get city state quests. I send in pyramid liberty workers when I war so I can have invincible units. I just find blatant and ridiculous cheats that actually make the AI even less worthless to be too far.
 
Note that you can steal workers almost indefinitely from one city state, by positioning a unit next to a tile they will want to improve. This way you can get as many workers as you want without declaring two wars against city-states, though it prevents you from experience farming that target.
 
Lack of understanding of the mechanics doesn't equate to lack of quality.

I understand the mechanics, and I still don't like it. I don't know what made you asume it was a problem of understanding.

For me, civilization isn't a chess game. I mean, I don't play for achieving a win (altho I try to win ofc). I like to do things that make my empire more powerful, which end with a win.

Tourism for me, is like winning through score. It's a stat whos only purpose is to win the game (and enemy unhappines, meh).

So, I have 0 fun going for tourism victory. When it was culture victory, more culture meant more social policies, so it was making my empire better.
But now, like I said, for me it's like going for a score that makes me win.

The whole concept is lacking. If tourism would steal enemy tiles for example (not saying it should, it's just an example), or anything useful, then I would like it. But now, I play like it didn't exist.
 
Tourism for me, is like winning through score. It's a stat whos only purpose is to win the game (and enemy unhappines, meh).

So, I have 0 fun going for tourism victory. When it was culture victory, more culture meant more social policies, so it was making my empire better.
But now, like I said, for me it's like going for a score that makes me win.

The whole concept is lacking. If tourism would steal enemy tiles for example (not saying it should, it's just an example), or anything useful, then I would like it. But now, I play like it didn't exist.

That's an interesting position. I think culture victories are fun, but I can understand your point. It's worth noting that if the unhappiness is sufficient, then you can see the much more drastic effects, including a forced ideology switch (and subsequent loss of 2 tenets) or even the flipping of cities (much more than stealing enemy tiles). Since those effects, especially at higher difficulties, are rare and only-happpened-to-me-once rare, I think your point is still valid though.

But if what you like about a victory condition is that it makes your empire stronger, how does building a spaceship part fit into that? Certainly the Utopia Project of the previous iterations was a useless thing that you built only so that you could win.

I think that any victory called a "cultural victory" is going to have some degree of passivity to it. But I like that the victory condition now includes those graphics with the tourism vs. culture bars for each civ. You can see how impossibly long it looks when you start thinking about a cultural victory, and you can watch how those bars even out over time. I do think this version is more interactive in that way.
 
I think culture victory is the most fun (it's certainly the most challenging for me) -- watch the other civs collapse under the weight of my magnificence ;)

Of course I do a little military warmongering in addition to my culture war. Try an Autocracy culture victory sometime -- don't even build the artist guild or the musician guild until you pick Futurism.
 
So, I have 0 fun going for tourism victory. When it was culture victory, more culture meant more social policies, so it was making my empire better.
But now, like I said, for me it's like going for a score that makes me win.

The whole concept is lacking. If tourism would steal enemy tiles for example (not saying it should, it's just an example), or anything useful, then I would like it. But now, I play like it didn't exist.

So, a couple of things.

First of all, you still get a large number of policies in the BNW culture victory, you just don't have some arbitrary mechanic like "Finish a bunch of trees, then spend a bunch of hammers." It's interactive and incremental. Your choices influence the victory condition much more. You are still improving your empire with the culture, because culture is usually a byproduct of tourism.

Second, I assume you only win via domination then, because Science is a complete joke, and the only bigger joke victory condition in the game is diplo. If you want to call Culture "the worst" then obviously something has to be best. Well, science is pretty much a "next turn" until you finish the tech tree and either spend a bunch of hammers or a bunch of gold in order to win, and diplo requires very little effort as the AI won't do anything to stop you from controlling all the CS's. If you're going to rank them by terms of difficulty on deity, Culture is far and away the hardest of those 3 to accomplish.

So, I guess I don't see what makes Culture the worst by your criteria.
 
But if what you like about a victory condition is that it makes your empire stronger, how does building a spaceship part fit into that? Certainly the Utopia Project of the previous iterations was a useless thing that you built only so that you could win.

The spaceship is just the last small step. Spaceship victory is all about science, which of course makes your empire more powerful

Chum said:
I assume you only win via domination then, because Science is a complete joke

If you want to call Culture "the worst" then obviously something has to be best. Well, science is pretty much a "next turn" until you finish the tech tree and either spend a bunch of hammers or a bunch of gold in order to win


Like I said, I like to play as an empire, not following some game win condition. So, yes, domination is an usual win condition for me. But so is science. Maybe you see science as a victory condition, so you turtle and hit next turn. I play for having a nice empire, and that may lead to a science victory.

But tourism doesn't add anything to my empire.
 
I felt the same way in the beginning about tourism, however, I've decided I like the concept even if I still don't like the victory condition. I do like the ideological pressures and subsequent wars in the industrial+ ages as a result. It makes for some really interesting rifts and dichotomies. Friends torn apart, and if you didn't keep on top of your early-game culture and tourism you will get a massive unhappiness hit for it if an influential culture nearby has a differing ideology. I had this problem in a recent immortal game as Greece had such a huge culture they got "exotic" influence over me before I did over them and I took a -15 unhappiness hit for a few dozen turns. Seems weird you take a hit for "exotic" though, they were barely over 10% and it affected me that much :/. I personally think the ideological hits should only happen if there is a certain percentage spread in your influences rather than a cutoff. So I took a big hit for being only 2-3% behind on influence which seems pretty arbitrary.

However, I love the idea. That as your people hear about nearby influential and cultural countries they want to be like them so if they have differing ideologies they grow unhappy with the state of their own country. Very like real history in the industrial and enlightenment eras when labor parties, fascist ideas, and communist movements were springing up all over Europe and even the US to some extent. It was fun to think about how the people were feeling and work on cultural projects to make them proud of my nation and eventually I fixed the discontent altogether. It made the end-game less straightforward and added something in my opinion. What is even more fun is you can exert some awesome effects through ideology and tourism. You can give nations with weak influence huge civil disorder (viewed through the tourism screen). I love it when I see nations in "Civil Disorder" or even "Revolutionary Wave" state due to my powerful presence nearby making their nations unhappy. Eventually it can even force them to switch ideologies which I did recently the Sejong really screwing up his science and order tenet investments. My only wish is the AI was a little better at keeping up with it. The issue is winning international games and internet both double your tourism. So the human, knowing this, can get both and easily be 4x the other nations. It is really kind of broken in my opinion that just because you barely won international games suddenly your tourism is the only one increased. They should have rankings where gold medal winners get 100% boost due to the publicity of the games, but silver should get 50% and bronze 25%. It would make it more fair. They only seem decent on Deity at keeping up.

But, despite the flaws in the system that lead to fast wins I think culture does add to the feel and fun of the game as it makes for some amazing world wars at the end of the game and some strong friends/alliances if you start aligning along ideological lines as the AI readily does this and cares a lot about ideology.

However, actually "winning" culturally I feel the same as you. It basically is just spamming tourism points, then going for international games and internet as fast as possible and if that doesn't work you just pump out some late-game musicians and play concerts. Far less satisfying to me than domination or science. I rarely aim for the condition but sometimes accidentally stumble into a cultural win because it happens faster then I can launch the spaceship or conquer the world. The AI can defend a bit by closing borders which denies your musicians and slows your influence and they do do this on immortal+ however, the fact that you can simply just attack and wipe out the cultural hold-out seems an oversight to me. Basically cultural victory on high levels just becomes wipe out the strong cultures and sit there building points till you win.

I really dislike that conquering a neighboring country renders all their cultural investment useless as it makes the win condition way easier than domination. However, I suppose it was allowed as a counterbalancing measure. A way to stop runaway cultures from winning over you by war. I wish though that after being wiped out they didn't just disappear from the culture list but you still had to overcome their now static culture which is now just a memory. Kinda like the idea that even though the Western Roman Empire fell to barbarians the memory of it kept the barbarians from looking like the greatest artists of all time. It would be more balanced. You could still stop others from winning by war but war wouldn't automatically win cultural for you.
 
I would enjoy the cultural win a lot more if it was made actually hard to do--as it is I can focus on science and sometimes win at cultural, even on immortal difficulty, by accident because tourism investment just happens as I try to boost my culture and propose things in world congress. And it's foolish not to theme if you can and win international games.

A few changes I think would make cultural win better:

1. Wiping out civs does not erase their cultural presence it just stops it from growing and you need to overcome their static influence now. This makes it possible to stop someone winning over you by invading them but makes it so you can't use war to get a cheap win over someone that stopped you winning culturally. Otherwise the win condition is far too similar to domination imo and far too easy.
2. International Games should not only double the tourism of one player but should have brackets where the winner gets 100% boost, the second tier +50% and the 3rd tier +25%. This would make it so winning by a few hammers doesn't make such a massive difference but everyone who invested in the games and did well gets some tourism benefit for it.
3. Ideological pressure system should be changed from a thresholded bracket to a point-spread system. Right now you can plunge the AI or they you into massive sudden unhappiness just by crossing a threshold like 10% (exotic) first. I believe that ideological influence levels should be based on the spread-difference of influence. So if they pass into 10% they begin to get a chance to exert pressure on you but not if you are only 2% behind. Maybe the first level of influence is a spread of 10%, the second 25%, the 3rd 50%. And to win you don't just have to pass into the dominant threshold which you could do with someone close behind and suddenly win anyway, but you need to pass into dominant AND be at least 25% above their influence on you. Otherwise it would be like saying. Well you got dominant culture over everyone, France was 98% from being dominant over you but oh, tough luck they still lost. This doesn't make practical sense at all.

These 3 changes would make the AI more competitive and make the win condition actually more like it would be in real life and I would be more proud of a cultural win as it would take some real dedication to pull off and distinguish it from conquest. Right now there is no win condition that conquest can't lead too and it would be great of the cultural win was the exception.
 
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