Tech victory: why would I ever do this?

[King Ralph]

I played through a techno-industrial win as my second game, simply because that has always been my favorite way to win in Civ since the original. Small, continents, Greece, Prince on a AMD "Nile" laptop (low power CPU, integrated gfx).

I did not see the dogpile that you described, partially because of how I played the diplomatic game with the other major civs in the midgame. I always aggressively spent money on research agreements, whenever the other guy had the cash, even to the point of paying them 50-150 extra for the priv. There were 3 to 5 RA's in place almost continuously after Phil. I always offered to swap luxuries with everyone that had a spare. Maintained only 2x maritime and 1x (later 2x) cultural agreements, since most of my free cash was spent on research agreements. I maintained a military just barely large enough to not appear ripe for invasion. Also, I slowly watched the world divide into two factions, and I made DoF's with the stronger one. Despite an overwhelming military advantage, the AI did not manage to actually kill the weaker faction. The very strong friendship, forged by having common friendships within the faction, and a long history of beneficial trade meant that their attitudes barely changed at all towards me.

The theory on the aggressive research agreements was that I would simply make more of them than the other AI's would, and thus get an advantage by neutrality. By the end of the game, I was 1 era ahead of the next closest AI, and 2 eras ahead of everyone else. By beelining the Apollo program, I was able to build up the needed industry and tech in parallel with the spaceship itself. I think I finished future tech 1 the exact same turn that the last spaceship part was completed.

Even still, it was too easy and too long at the end. I had to resist the temptation to DoW everyone on the planet with my vastly more advanced weaponry. Even getting to space in the early 1900's, I think that my tech game wasn't well optimized. Proper specialist management could probably wind the clock back another 50 years or so, but I don't see the point. Its just too easy.

 

[cccv]

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.

That's another part of the problem. I think the devs intended for relations with CS's to have more depth. They just failed hardcore at it. Your options are:

1-- build a road to the CS. This is bugged and doesn't work.
2-- eliminate a barb camp. This is almost never an available option from mid-game on.
3-- eliminate another CS. Aside from the fact that gold gifting is just easier, it's also a bad move if you actually want a diplo victory.
4-- build wonder, get great person. These things will really only happen by coincidence.
5-- gift a unit for a very paltry amount of influence.

And finally, gold. 1000 gold=allies for a good long time, and by late-mid game this should practically be pocket change.

So the devs put all of those options in there, but only made one that is attractive and actually works, thus making the whole system incredibly shallow, thus making the "diplo" victory=gold victory=very shallow.

Hey, here's an idea. If you want diplomacy to seem to have anything to do with it, maybe have CS attitudes toward you influenced a bit by SPs. No matter what style you play, as long as you don't check the box for policy saving you should have at least one early in the game. If you put more into honor, military CS's like you more. If you put more into liberty, maritimes like you more. More into tradition and cultured CS's like you more. I guess no bonus if you insist on checking the SP-saving box so you can get away with not putting any points into any of those three. Anyway, if they did that it would feel like the kind of leader you are actually influenced how those small nations feel about you, so it might actually feel a bit more like diplomatic relationships mattered rather than just gold.

 

[cccv]

I did not see the dogpile that you described, partially because of how I played the diplomatic game with the other major civs in the midgame. I always aggressively spent money on research agreements, whenever the other guy had the cash, even to the point of paying them 50-150 extra for the priv. There were 3 to 5 RA's in place almost continuously after Phil. I always offered to swap luxuries with everyone that had a spare. Maintained only 2x maritime and 1x (later 2x) cultural agreements, since most of my free cash was spent on research agreements. I maintained a military just barely large enough to not appear ripe for invasion. Also, I slowly watched the world divide into two factions, and I made DoF's with the stronger one. Despite an overwhelming military advantage, the AI did not manage to actually kill the weaker faction. The very strong friendship, forged by having common friendships within the faction, and a long history of beneficial trade meant that their attitudes barely changed at all towards me.

Trust me, man. There is no "diplomatic game." It's the luck of the draw. I played the exact same way you described. Since I was going for a tech victory I made research pacts with everyone, as often as possible. Even when I had to pay them extra. I only allied with 2 or 3 CS's and made sure no one else was allied with them first. I traded luxuries as much as I could too. The thing is, the "very strong friendship forged by a long history of beneficial trade" you mentioned does not exist. The AI does not remember things like that. Go ahead, pull up one of those saves and check out the tooltips description of why they're friendly. You will not see "beneficial trades." Nor will you see things like "you were our allies in war" or "you provided us with the luxuries/gold we asked for as friends."

In my game, the world did not form factions. Everyone liked everyone until I built Apollo, there were no denouncements. As for other random factors, I'm not sure but difficulty level may have something to do with it. Otherwise, perhaps no one else in your game was going for a tech victory so they didn't give a crap when you built Apollo. In mine, it only took one (Russia). Then she denounced me, and the fact that she did that gave me a hit with everyone else, so it snowballed into everyone denouncing me. I am also fairly positive that random die rolls are involved. When I built Apollo, Catherine's die told her: "You are pissed off." In your game, no one rolled for hate.

So yeah, I know it's possible not to see a dogpile, but it's purely luck of the draw, not "smart diplomacy."

 

[SKILORD]

When I achieve a tech victory it is usually because I suddenly realized that I hadn't done enough work to get another type of win before the clock runs out, having too much trouble managing city states to win the UN or the evaporation of millitary preparations, whatever, sh*t went wrong, I fell back on spaceship.

OMG, we totally need Espionage back, hell, I'm ready to go back to building embassies.

 

[magritte]

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.

Why are you in a hurry to win? If you're enjoying the game, why rush to achieve victory conditions? In any Civ game, there were always much faster ways to win than space race.

 

[AfterShafter]

Tech victory makes more sense as a builder option the larger the world you're in.

 

[smash9936]

I agree with OP as far as Diplo being much more preferable at this point in time over Science victory. Right now, with all the issues the game has mid-late game, why would you want to drag out the pain further? Especially if in order to even get a Science victory you have to go through the same techs that unlock the UN. I do think they need to make diplo games harder.. maybe make it so that the only people eligible for UN victory are the top 3 or so people in terms of score? It would at least force the AI to vote for someone other than themselves if they don't qualify, and it might be enough to make it a bit more unpredictable who the winner will be, depending on allegiances. This would of course require "better" AI though @_@

 

[JamesCivFan]

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?

I have made a mod request already, but I can't seem to find a mod that changes that. My idea was that every alive civ should vote, but only the UN builder, and the 1st and 2nd civ (according to score) should be participants.

Maybe that would prevent the countless wars between AI's too, because if an AI wants to go for diplo victory, he/she will think twice before DoWing another AI, because simply it won't vote for him/her.

 

[SKILORD]

I have never once seen another civ vote for me, or frankly anyone but themselves when it's UN time. Maybe I'm not trying diplo enough, but that's my experience. I don't think the diplomatic side of the AI is nuanced enough to handle it, even if you limit the candidate pool. I think ccv nailed it like six posts up and when I read it, it blew my mind and made me frown because I had been enjoying Civ V so much and then all the sudden it was stupid and like two hours later my DK hit 82...

 

[JamesCivFan]

That's what I am saying. The other civs that are not candidates must vote for one of the 3 candidate civs. They won't be allowed to vote for themselves because it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

 

[cccv]

That's what I am saying. The other civs that are not candidates must vote for one of the 3 candidate civs. They won't be allowed to vote for themselves because it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

But then you'd have to get rid of the abstain button too, since the AI is trying to win and voting for someone besides themselves would be contrary to that. Even if you did that it would feel kind of odd and out of place given how shallow the diplo system is (you can't actually do anything besides the DoF to create friendships, at best you can only try not to do things that would make them dislike you), and also given the fact that in every other aspect of the game they're out for themselves, but when the diplo vote rolls around they'd suddenly be programmed for one moment in time to act like "friendly" means anything aside from "we don't have immediate plans to conquer you and don't think you have any to conquer me."

 

[elprofesor]

Not really the same kind of "solution" to diplo victory: gifting money to city states should modify the influence decreasing rate, rather than the influence level itself. Say, gifting 500 gold to a CS would make the rate go from -2pt/turn to +6pt/turn for 10 turns, or make it follow a weird formula (make the influence rate go very high after a gift, while decreasing constantly to the former -2pt/turn).That way gold gifts would be more efficient at maintainining good relations, rather than earning them, since you would have to wait for 10 turns (or whatever else seems right) to get the benefits from the alliance, or the vote for the UN. We would then need more planning for the diplo victory, and would maybe suffice to make it more balanced.
Not to talk that the request system for CS is broken, as the OP has already said. Either have more than one request at a time, or make them switch requests from time to time, or both. And new kind of requests too... I guess we will have to wait to get a real "diplo" victory.

 

[basta]

Why are you in a hurry to win? If you're enjoying the game, why rush to achieve victory conditions? In any Civ game, there were always much faster ways to win than space race.

Are we playing the same game? I would rather have a root canal than slouch towards a tech/space victory. The endgame is slow-motion euthanasia.

Anyway, re: the diplo "victory" (aka, CS buyout), CSs should either get ONE vote for the lot of them, or 3 votes divided by their flavors. It's patently ridiculous that the real-life likes of Monaco, the Vatican, Taiwan and Switzerland are deciding the fate of the world.

But this means the devs will actually have to get off their ***es and code another option for the major civs than "I vote for me, because I'm me."

 

[biohazard72]

Tech victory is actually pretty well balanced. It's harder than the UN in terms of production and # of techs, but it is not reliant on the AI and they can't stop it.

It's probably the easiest win condition on Deity. You can't afford Diplomacy wins anymore (the AI throws too much cash around), Domination is too hard on continents, and Culture was always much too hard.

 

[Buccaneer]

What if the roles were reversed? If you see an AI getting that close to a science victory, wouldn't YOU try anything to prevent it? Whatever the mechanisms, why should the AI civs let you win easily? As far as the mode of victory, what you wrote makes sense. Besides, I never have enough production to build those expensive parts (without playing a cheesy map). But sometimes it's more challenging and fun to go for the harder path knowing that you could always take the easy path.

 

[Buccaneer]

Are we playing the same game? I would rather have a root canal than slouch towards a tech/space victory. The endgame is slow-motion euthanasia.

So the question bears repeating. Why are you in such a hurry to finish a game?

 

[cccv]

So the question bears repeating. Why are you in such a hurry to finish a game?

I'm not sure what you didn't understand, but I'll give it a shot. Late game going for a tech victory gets boring. UN victory is on the way to a tech victory and ends the game 50-100 turns earlier. That's less of the boring part of the game we have to play.

In a related note, someone early in the thread suggested I turn off the diplo VC. Well, the point is that UN is on the way to tech and comes so much sooner, so why would I not want to do it?

btw, has anyone experimented with changing the number of city states? Recently I played a huge map and changed the number of CS's to two, and was surprised to learn that the number of votes needed actually scales with the number of CS's. In order to win that game all I needed to do was buy both of the two CS's >.>

 

[plesniak]

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.

I have this exact same laptop and it works great for this game. I play with all settings maxed and when playing marathon, huge games the turns are slow towards the end...but not terribly slow.

 

[alpaca]

If you don't want to go for conquest and diplo victory is beneath contempt, the ship is the only option. Launching the ship is definitely more interesting than CS buyout and requires some planning in setting up productive cities, timing techs, etc.

Diplo victory is the most ridiculous victory condition. It was bad in Civ4 where it could have been called population victory more correctly, but now it's asinine and doesn't have anything to do with diplomacy at all. Not that the "conquer the capital of the last remaining civ to win" is much better... I've actually had games where I won against a run-away Germany who had defeated four other civs (and held their capitals) by taking Berlin. Oh and don't forget culture victory which is extremely hard to get before 2050 unless you have <= 3 cities or run only puppets.

What I'm saying is: All victory conditions are very badly done. Choose the one that's most fun for you.

 

[Smote]

If you don't want to go for conquest and diplo victory is beneath contempt, the ship is the only option. Launching the ship is definitely more interesting than CS buyout and requires some planning in setting up productive cities, timing techs, etc.

Diplo victory is the most ridiculous victory condition. It was bad in Civ4 where it could have been called population victory more correctly, but now it's asinine and doesn't have anything to do with diplomacy at all. Not that the "conquer the capital of the last remaining civ to win" is much better... I've actually had games where I won against a run-away Germany who had defeated four other civs (and held their capitals) by taking Berlin. Oh and don't forget culture victory which is extremely hard to get before 2050 unless you have <= 3 cities or run only puppets.

What I'm saying is: All victory conditions are very badly done. Choose the one that's most fun for you.

That's pretty epic. How did you take Berlin?