Tech victory: why would I ever do this?

[cccv]

I finally got my first tech victory. And my last. First is an explanation of the game simply for background so you know where I'm coming from, next is my analysis of the tech victory and why I don't understand why anyone would ever go for it after the first time. You may want to skip down to there if you think you'll get tl;dr syndrome.

Settings: Elizabeth, standard time, large map, tiny islands, prince.

Setting the stage: Alexander started on the same island as me, and him being Alex I had to remove him from the game. He DoW'd on me early as expected, and I was ready. From there I colonized peacefully while maintaining a good navy. Arabia was guarded because of my "warmongering" and the fact that we were close, so he coveted my land. Everyone else was neutral or friendly. Mongolia, Siam, Russia, and India in particular seemed to love me. Rome was indifferent for a long time, but came to love me as well. Egypt did not give a crap either way and never did. Aside from Arabia, no one considers me a warmonger. I make no DoF's despite being asked.

The victory: I build Apollo. Russia surprises me by immediately going from friendly to hostile and denouncing me. She now considers me a warmonger all of a sudden. After her denouncement, they all roll in. Everyone is now hostile except Arabia, who is still guarded. Also, I forgot how Egypt felt. Chain DoW's now from everyone but Egypt and Mongolia (I had the foresight to ask Mongolia for a defensive pact before crap got real, so they never DoW'd me even though they were hostile and reminding me of that fact constantly). But again, this was a tiny islands map. nearby Arabia was the only civ to try anything with me, and Rome and India tried attacking some of my CS allies but failed. I kept asking for peace but they kept insisting it was not an option, despite the fact that they were either doing nothing or losing (I burned an Arabian city and destroyed anything that even pretended to be a navy from all other civs). Eventually I build the parts and launch my ship, game won.

Why this is completely stupid: I don't see how this can ever be an attractive victory condition, whether you're a warmonger or a builder. If you enjoy fighting, you're clearly better off going for domination. You can deal with the other civs on your terms rather than having to beat back a dogpile. If you're going to be fighting either way, you may as well do it the easy way and actually get something from it.

As for the builder options, the main problem, really, is that the diplo victory is broken beyond comprehension. The reason it took me so long to get the tech win was precisely because there was never a time when the diplo victory wasn't much easier and faster.

Option 1: Diplo-- tech to globalization, build one building (which can be engineer-rushed), throw money at CS's one turn before the vote so AI can't react, win.

Option 2: technology. Tech all the way to nanotech instead of globalization, build several units rather than a single building (the units cannot be rushed if I'm not mistaken), then move them to your capital, all while fighting off a massive, annoying, immersion-breaking dogpile (if immersion breakage doesn't bother you, fine, but the rest of the point still stands).

I kept playing thinking "ok, I'll get the tech victory just this once so I can say I did it," then I'd realize I could build the UN and I'd say "ok, fine... diplo again" =/ It took awhile to get the willpower not to take the easy win. We all know that endgame has always been a weakness of the Civ games. You're pressing "next turn" over and over. Well, going for tech and not diplo means pressing next turn another 100 times or so (not to mention all the extra time spent fighting), and that's really the only difference.

As for culture, I can give that one a pass. I've found I can win in about the same amount of time as diplo if I know at the start I'm going for it, and it allows a variation to the usual strategies, so there's a point for that one to exist.

But tech... why? What reason could there ever be to go further down the tech tree when you could win so much sooner? And if you really just like fighting, why not go for domination or, again, fight as you please until you can win diplo? The only thing you need for diplo different than the other conditions is gold, but that's not exactly hard to come by. The last diplo victory I won I needed 9 or 10 allies, and it turns out I had 16. I overshot by 6-7000 gold. And I was hoping to get the tech victory in that game too, so I wasn't exactly trying to optimize my empire for gold. Unless you buy every building you can, there's no reason you shouldn't have enough saved up by the time you get the UN to buy an easy victory.

 

[Methos]

The victory: I build Apollo. Russia surprises me by immediately going from friendly to hostile and denouncing me.

I mean no offense, but your basing your opinion off of a single game and the above statement. What's to say that it was completing Apollo that set Russia off? It sounds like the entire game had diplomacy problems from the very beginning. I suggest trying a different game where everyone isn't so close quartered and you work on maintaining diplomacy with key allies. I also suggest playing more then one game with the aim of tech VC before drawing a conclusion.

 

[cccv]

I mean no offense, but your basing your opinion off of a single game and the above statement. What's to say that it was completing Apollo that set Russia off? It sounds like the entire game had diplomacy problems from the very beginning. I suggest trying a different game where everyone isn't so close quartered and you work on maintaining diplomacy with key allies. I also suggest playing more then one game with the aim of tech VC before drawing a conclusion.

It was literally the turn I completed it that she, immediately followed by everyone else, went hostile. There were no diplomacy problems until then except from Arabia, though we still reached agreements together (he was guarded, not hostile. It seemed like he was more worried I'd give him the Alex treatment than like he wanted to do it to me). There's no explanation for it other than the fact that I built Apollo. People weren't closely quartered-- again, tiny islands. There were no denouncements and no wars save me vs Alex at the start until Apollo went live.

Furthermore, the dogpile is only a very small part of my critique. The main thing, the whole crux of the biscuit, is that I can't imagine there ever being a time where someone is going for a tech win and doesn't realize "oh... instead of waiting another 100 turns I could just build the UN and win now." My conclusion is less from this one game than the several preceding games where I wanted tech but went diplo for that reason.

 

[flyingbunnys]

I agree diplomatic and cultural victories can be achieved well before the tech victory. The tech victory just takes much to long. If you were done at building appolo program or you could get the rocket parts faster it might be worth it, but as it is, all other victories come easier and faster.

 

[ohioastronomy]

The victory conditions are poorly balanced in effort and time. it made more sense when the Dipomacy VC involved....diplomacy.

 

[basta]

Kudos to you for actually suffering through the tedium to a space victory. I'll never do it, and your analysis is spot on about why. You actually have to renounce a diplo win to achieve it (by that late in the game I have tons of gold and so buy all the CSs and I play immortal), and the diplo win is so cheezy, unfortunately.

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

Furthermore, the dogpile is only a very small part of my critique. The main thing, the whole crux of the biscuit, is that I can't imagine there ever being a time where someone is going for a tech win and doesn't realize "oh... instead of waiting another 100 turns I could just build the UN and win now." My conclusion is less from this one game than the several preceding games where I wanted tech but went diplo for that reason.

Diplo victory is too easy. I much prefer to play on to the tech victory which feels like a real victory and is a much more satisfying conclusion to the game.

If you can't resist turning your potential tech victories into easy diplo victories, maybe you should play with diplo victory disabled?

 

[Smote]

tech win is good in multiplayer because aggressive war is very difficult, when you consider all the defense advantages of a defender (vision, oligarchy, himeji castle, nationalism, bonus healing per turn in friendly territory/cities, cities attacking, cities defending siege units).

Usually you need about 4-5x troops to attack. 3x is not enough, when the defender gets so many advantages. If a chokepoint is introduced, it becomes simply impossible.

Because it is difficult to produce and fund 4-5x as many troops as your enemy, science victory is much more feasible.


AI is another story, you can win a war vs AI with less troops than the AI has, even as the aggressor. So yes, vs AI, domination victory is easiest and most rewarding. Against players, you are likely to get trounced any time you invade.

 

[Paul+C]

I had a very different experience compared to the the OP. I finished a tech victory last night, and it was quite enjoyable. I played on a huge map, continents, Prince, Ramses, epic. I was alone on a continent, which suggested to me that this might be a good opportunity to go for the space race.

The AI pretty much left me alone. So, I didn't need to militarize myself. Except when the AI hassled me once in awhile, in which case I produced a few military units to play it safe and shut them up. I couldn't afford a diplo victory, so that wasn't an option. I had four CS allies until late in the game when I ran out of money. Same deal with cultural. I didn't feel I was on par with the AI. So, I spent my time and resources on research, and had fun. I busied myself beating my main AI opponent, who had bought off most of the city-states, before he could build the UN. Anyway, I had great fun.

By the way, if you have the hardware, huge and epic is the way to go.

 

[Smote]

or huge and marathon, so you can build some nice 27 turn farms

 

[Roto-Router]

By the way, if you have the hardware, huge and epic is the way to go.

I like large & marathon...are you getting decent performance on huge maps, and if so with what kind of hardware?

I upgraded my 3-yr old video card for this game to a current one and got...basically no benefit in performance.

 

[Paul+C]

I like large & marathon...are you getting decent performance on huge maps, and if so with what kind of hardware?

I upgraded my 3-yr old video card for this game to a current one and got...basically no benefit in performance.

It's an Asus G73JW laptop, a great machine for gaming which I highly recommend. Civ5 does stress it out though. I play on mostly high settings with 1920X1080 resolution. Turn times at the end of a game on a huge map take 25 seconds or so, which some people would find intolerably long, but the great thing about playing a game like Civ on a laptop is that you can leisurely watch TV and play a game at the same time. I think that I had one CTD on a huge map in the last game, which isn't bad. In about 90 total hours of play time (according to Steam, although I don't think I've played that much), I've had only 3 or 4 crashes.

 

[elprofesor]

I think the problem is the diplo victory, actually. In about 70% of the games where I was commiting myself to some victory, be it either domination, science or cultural, I could have won earlier with a diplo victory, without even thinking about it at first, nor even having a lead over the AIs. There was a game I played in tundra, where everyone was simply too far from each other during the first half of the game to even think about invading, so I choosed to go for a cultural victory; by the 1900, I had less than half of the last AI score, was technologically and militarily way behind them (and empire-wise too, but that's normal for a cultural victory), and could still have won by diplo 4 turns earlier than by culture.
As ohioastronomy has already said, diplo victory should involve diplomacy, and not gold. Not that I am against an economic victory, if it is correctly balanced and feels somewhat more epic than what we have now.

 

[cccv]

I think the problem is the diplo victory, actually. In about 70% of the games where I was commiting myself to some victory, be it either domination, science or cultural, I could have won earlier with a diplo victory, without even thinking about it at first, nor even having a lead over the AIs. There was a game I played in tundra, where everyone was simply too far from each other during the first half of the game to even think about invading, so I choosed to go for a cultural victory; by the 1900, I had less than half of the last AI score, was technologically and militarily way behind them (and empire-wise too, but that's normal for a cultural victory), and could still have won by diplo 4 turns earlier than by culture.
As ohioastronomy has already said, diplo victory should involve diplomacy, and not gold. Not that I am against an economic victory, if it is correctly balanced and feels somewhat more epic than what we have now.

Yeah, that was mostly my point. I think it can still make sense to go for culture if you want to play a very specific way or domination if war is your thing. But there's no incentive to go for tech ever unless you don't have gold (which I have to imagine is rare unless you buy everything) or just consider it cheating to win diplo. And as you touched on, diplo is not only a victory you can get very early, but it's also extremely flexible. If you're going for culture you have to know at turn 1. But no matter how you play or what kind of victory you thought you wanted, you'll almost always be able to get a diplo victory if you didn't waste all your gold or only build one city or do something very unconventional like that.

A huge part of the problem is that globalization is part of the path to nanotech, so you'll always have the option to build the UN and win diplo before you can build SS parts. Like someone else said, a tech victory means you actually need to renounce the diplo victory, rather than just walk another path.

Another thing I think would help is if you had to be allied with a CS for x number of turns before they'd vote for you. Then it would actually feel somewhat like diplomacy had something to do with it. As it is, the AI doesn't have time to react. You can buy all the CS's the turn before the vote goes through. All that CS buying will piss off other civs, but so what? The game is already over. If you had to buy all the CS's well beforehand the AI would be pissed off and you'd actually have to deal with the diplomatic repercussions. That would help one problem, but it would create a new one for people who don't enjoy the Civ II "dogpile the human" crap, and frankly I'm one of them so this fix wouldn't satisfy me either.

 

[flyingbunnys]

The diplo victory is too easy the tech victory is too hard. There needs to be a middle ground to balance it out. Perhaps if the diplomatic victory required more votes or a certain number of non city state votes.

What if the Diplo Victory was changed so that only the builder of the UN and the top half of the other players in score were the only ones who could vote. And they made it so you have to get 25% of the voting leaders to vote for you and 50% of the city states to vote for you?

 

[The_Quasar]

I've never had any of the other players vote for me, in Civ V, even though they had a defensive pact with me, so I suspect that wouldn't work unless something was changed...

I do agree, however, that a Diplo victory is too easy, and should be redescribed as an economic victory, and especially if you're playing China!

I would support the holding of CSs for x number of turns before the vote, say 5... that would give other AI players time to react. Much more might make it impossible!

 

[Smote]

Diplo victory can be easily avoided by conquering the pesky city states.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

I agree wholeheartedly with the Diplo Victory being too easy. I was going for culture in my last game, but didn't want to wait the 40 extra turns or so for that versus a diplo win. I have therefore resolved to removing that as a victory option until it takes skill to win. Until then, buying off CS's one turn before the vote is an "economic victory," as so many players have said before.

 

[Fizpez2]

Since I've had quite a few games with a run away gold AI I tend to turn Diplo off - so unless I planned on it a head of time, cultural is usually out as well. This leaves me with space and domination - since I play on small maps (mostly because I can't stand long turn waits) I usually end up with domination victories (fewer capitals to chase down).

I can see how someone in my same situation might find space a viable if they're playing on a larger map - sure banging on the End Turn key is boring but so it organzing a campaign half way around the world needing to take 6 more capitals. - Assuming you've played enough games at a certain difficulty level you reach a point where you "know" that you won. At that point it becomes expedient to win in the most time efficient manner.

 

[Dunkah]

I agree Diplo is too easy... Tech too difficult.

It's not that it is too easy, as much as it is too early in the game. Not to mention once the UN has been built there is a freakin election every 8 turns, (or whatever it is). That and the AI actually playing the VC correctly, I was playing a game where Alexander was trying to win via Diplo. He had 30K gold in his stash and apparently forgot to bribe enough CS's to come to his side. (He only needed like 2 more CS's and the CS's I was allied with were just on this side of allied, he could have easily won).

I think that with the loss of Espionage that all victories take on a lackluster appearance because really there is nothing you can do other than declare war and stomp on a city or two to stop someone from winning any of the victory conditions. Don't have enough money to stop a diplo victory, stomp a CS or two. Don't have the science to beat a player to space, stomp on a city or two.

Espionage could add a great aspect to screwing up someone's relations with other CS's...

Not to mention there should be better mechanics like more influence with CS's if you are on the same continent, have roads attached, have been trading with them, build certain buildings etc. The fact that diplo victories are dependent on something like gold which almost every player is going to try and build up anyway makes them inherently broken.

I think that if Diplo victories were more difficult and time consuming and reliant in some way shape or form on some other aspact rather than gold the Tech victory would be better by default.

Not sure if it is compatible yet with the new patch but the City State Diplo Mod really adds a great aspect to the game if you haven't tried it.