[GS] Taking over the whole world without firing a shot - rock bands and spies

[Zeuxis]

Hi Everyone!

So I confess to getting a real thrill out of playing Civ in a really nerdy way. It started with Civ4 and the idea was always to try and take over every square in the world through culture without ever firing a shot in anger except at barbarians. I had to play on Prince level approximately or it won’t work but sad to say I never quite accomplished my goal in Civ 4 even though I often got 99.9% of the squares there were always some I just couldn’t put pressure on.

Then came Civ6 and the culture thing worked completely differently and so this nerdy approach wasn’t possible - or was it.....?

I am just playing a game on GS as Eleanor (French version) on Prince level, all settings standard and Pangea (specifically chosen). I wanted to see how much of the globe I could conquer without firing a shot. I aimed for a culture victory and specifically put great works into border cities to increase loyalty pressure. Everything went well and I won a culture victory about turn 230 (would have been earlier but remember I wasn’t putting great works into big cities unless they were border ones). I was far from over, however...... Once I could choose any rock band promotion then I found I could take out the capitals much easier than smaller cities as they had more venues. It was even good if I lost the first band or two as I could take the capital in one turn that way and then exert huge pressure on the other cities.

I reckoned that I might get two thirds of the globe under my sway. It is currently turn 353 and I have the whole globe except for 7 City States (one is about to flip to me) and ONE solitary Indian city!

But I have a problem. The Indian city is at the end of an archipelago and I can’t get loyalty pressure on it. Worse still, there is a City State between my nearest city and it. So I am stymied.

I thought spies but it seems that you can only do one “forment unrest” mission at a time and between missions loyalty will be back up to 100%! Ideas?

I thought Rock Bands, but there are no suitable venues and frankly I don’t understand why some bands can play in some places and not others. Can someone explain this to me as the Civilopedia is rather vague on this?

So anyway, Madurai the last city, has a campus and am I reduced to playing 147 more turns hoping they make it a venue that I can play?

One last bloody city remains between me and a Civ goal I have been pursuing for a decade.

Any ideas?

 

[Samouraibapt]

Hello Zeuxis,
Some players attempted this challenge in thie GOTM, you can get some ideas in the thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/6otm75-after-action.651789/
To get the city flipped, you need them to have a decreasing loyalty, not only reduce it to 0.
With your spies; you can disable the governor with one, fomet unrest with the other.
You can use Amani in the closest city with the -2loyalty promotion.
You can also pillage the tiles to reduce loyalty IIRC. If you don't want to declare war, recruit partisans if they have a neighbourhood. (Can someone correct me if I'm wrong?)
Do you have some more room to settle around them? Even one-tile city in the ocean? It can bring the pressure you're lacking to start flipping it. You can make them grow big & fast if you harvest the fishes around with Magnus in.

For rock bands, you need the "indie rock" promotion, better get the policy card allowing you to choose the promotions before buying the rock bands.

Good luck with your goal!

 

[Bangau]

Can you post the save game or a screenshot? I've done this challenge a few times and might have some ideas how to get that last one to flip.

 

[Victoria]

Can someone explain this to me as the Civilopedia is rather vague on this?

Below you should see a link to the rock bands guide

 

[Zeuxis]

Thanks everyone. I will try and post a screenshot later

 

[AlanH11]

Basic Civ6 doesn't have rock bands and I'm happy about that. From what I've read, they distort the game.

 

[Victoria]

Basic Civ6 doesn't have rock bands and I'm happy about that. From what I've read, they distort the game.

They come quite late and can be a pain but normally not. They have been nerfed a bit of late.

 

[Bangau]

Thanks everyone. I will try and post a screenshot later

Did you ever get to reach your goal?

 

[Zeuxis]

I did reach my goal but I had to declare war on the one city state between me and the last city on the archipelago.

So it was a partial win - no wars with civs but war with one city state. The archipelago killed it as I simply didn’t have enough cities to put enough loyalty pressure on the city state and without that city I couldn’t put pressure on the last remaining Civ city.

So it is possible but Pangea with no islands or archipelagos seems an absolute necessity!

 

[Bangau]

I've done it a few times. It's a lot of fun, I can imagine that real remote cities ruin it. Have done it on Pangea and Lakes maps, the latter works very good as well. Have a look at my '10K score' post from a while ago, if you like this kind of thing. I wanted to reach over 10K score on deity using peaceful domination, and I did (!), but after that the game couldn't stop crashing on me. So never got to finish it.

If you are up to the challenge, it is actually more effective on deity: the AI gets more and bigger cities. And gets great works a lot faster for you to steal or get as a bonus when a city flips. The crucial part is befriending all your neighbours in the beginning, but when you get the flipping started, it's a thing of beauty.

 

[Zeuxis]

I will try it on Deity!

sounds like great fun

 

[Zeuxis]

Started a new game and I did it!

Played Eleanor of England and won a culture victory along the way to taking out every single civ city without firing a single shot in anger. It was odd because a number of my decisions went against winning a culture victory. I had to keep moving works of art to the front line to increase loyalty pressure on the next city and used cards to have an effect on loyalty rather than culture. My biggest problem was mid game when I had to get through the Indians to get to the other side of the map. They weren't going for culture at all so when I took a new city it took a long time to hard build everything to put the great works in. In addition, they had very few venues for rock bands, so it was very slow for a while.

After that, things speeded up as I was able to take the last three capitals with rock bands and as they already had amphitheaters and sometimes great works, there was immediate pressure on the other cities that fell pretty quickly.

Now I have one last quest...…. to take out the three last city states.

One will be easy but the other two have over 30 loyalty and I can't use spies or rock bands.

So, here is the strategy:

1. For every city within 9 squares, put six works of art = -6. Hopefully we are talking about 5 so = -30
2. Put all traders in these cities to hike up the population and pop pressure.
3. Put the governor that reduces loyalty by -2 in one of the close cities.
4. Build the last two wonders that can take great works in a nearby city (Broadway and Sydney Opera House)
5. For very close cities (within 9 squares) get entertainment complexes and run Bread and Circuses.

That ought to do it but it might be about -2 loyalty per turn and take forever but we shall see.

One question on something that wasn't clear from the game. Is the 9 squares distance for loyalty loss measured from the city itself or from the square with the amphitheater/art museum/broadcast center?

This is extremely important but I couldn't find the info anywhere so I assume it is the city center.

Thanks!

 

[Bangau]

One question on something that wasn't clear from the game. Is the 9 squares distance for loyalty loss measured from the city itself or from the square with the amphitheater/art museum/broadcast center?

It's from the city center.

Congrats on reaching your goal!

 

[Zeuxis]

So the city states are proving a little tricky, but I have just had an idea. As I am of course suzerain of all three states, I can send my workers into their territory and "improve" their terrain by removing all the improvements...… (mad laugh).

It should cause starvation, loss of loyalty, and then all the world is mine......MINE!

 

[Bangau]

So the city states are proving a little tricky, but I have just had an idea. As I am of course suzerain of all three states, I can send my workers into their territory and "improve" their terrain by removing all the improvements...… (mad laugh).

It should cause starvation, loss of loyalty, and then all the world is mine......MINE!

Creative.