Toughest Win Condition

[kobo1d]

I went to the length of seperating my bias from the poll.

Poll

Which win condition do you think is hardest to achieve?

As an average with all civs, all maptypes, and all on the same difficulty.


My Opinion

It's Diplomatic. I'm currently on Prince, and can't seem to get enough people to like me, ever.

Space Race is generally pretty easy (even after the patch), Cultural is easy (if you plan for it from turn 1), and the militaristic methods take some work but are doable.

I consider Time more of a "not-lose" than a win, but that's just me!

[BigWilly1974]

I'm developing a respect for even a Domination victory. On Prince level, I'm finiding it challenging enough to simply reach a Domination victory before one of the AIs wins by Space Race.

The tech paths are basically opposite, so you can't do both. And Domination requires a huge chunk of the map and population that's tough to achieve before a smaller/weaker civ pulls the rug out from under you with a Space Race victory.

I have actually never liked that winning condition - seems too easy to me.

[NDN]

I always turn off Space Race. It's boring.

By the way: Is it possible for AIs to win diplomatically?

[Diadem]

I do like space race victory. It's a civilization classic. Only the shouldn't have removed the 20 or so turns between spaceship launch and arrival. It was always fun to take out someone's capital a few years before his spaceship reached Alpha Centauri.

Time imho is not a victory. It's a draw.

Diplomatic and Cultural victories are lame. "You seem to be doing pretty good. That means you won". What kind of victory is that?

[BigWilly1974]

Speaking of which...if an AI has the Space Race jump on you, is the only way to upset or end their progress to take their capital?

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by BigWilly1974
Speaking of which...if an AI has the Space Race jump on you, is the only way to upset or end their progress to take their capital?

Having a neighbor declare war on them does a pretty good job of slowing them down.

-Drachasor

[BigWilly1974]

I need to plan better for that. The games I tend to lose to Space Race, the two most powerful AIs left tend to be aligned...if not formally, then informally. Both times, I've attacked the Civ completing the spaceship and ended up in a war vs 2 civs.

[davor999]

What is a banana victory?

[Dis]

I'm still waiting to see a domination on a huge map save game from someone.

This poll include all map types, but I still say domination.

[kobo1d]

Originally posted by NDN
I always turn off Space Race. It's boring.

By the way: Is it possible for AIs to win diplomatically?

More often, no one wins diplomatically (the vote never passes). They just repeatedly stall until one of them

*COUGH*Gandhi*COUGH*Mansa*COUGH*

can pull through a Space Race win.

So winning diplomatically becomes very hard.

Originally posted by Diadem

Diplomatic and Cultural victories are lame. "You seem to be doing pretty good. That means you won". What kind of victory is that?

I disagree. Very rarely will I accidentally win by culture, unless I are really trying for it (and by sacrificing a large amount of usefulness elsewhere)

Diplomatic still evades me.

"FOR THE LAST TIME TOKUGAWA, I WILL NOT HELP YOU DESTROY MY CLOSEST ALLY!"

"Fine then, you suck anyways kobo1d! I'm going to tell my friend Alexander about this!"

[Tokugawa closes borders]
[Tokugawa ends Fur trade]
[Tokugawa declares war]
[Alexander declares war]

GAH!

[Diadem]

I'm not saying cultural victory is easy. It isn't.

I'm just saying it's not really a victory. In chess you don't declare victory when you're 2 pawns up. In football you don't win by being the first to score a goal.

[ghen]

Cultural victory is more a deliniation of wether your little slice of humanity will ever die off or be sucked into another's slice.. Kinda like how china and the US have huge culture and will never die.. but Russia even though its huge has almost no culture (that I'm aware of at least) and will certainly not have very much to offer humanity when we start spreading to the stars.

I'm not trying to insult anyone, just trying to define a cultural victory in the game.


Anyway, I've played 2 games to cultural victory conditions.. the first I lost and the second I won. Its by far the hardest of all victory conditions if you're ok with going to war. If you aren't then of course elimination is harder.

Diplomacy is extremely easy. All you have to do is get 2 or 3 mildly powerful civs into your religion, and then be the founder of the UN. Whatever civ votes against you just crush their cities into the dust. I win by diplomacy more often than space race because I just hate building the ship.

[Son of David]

Being made UN leader is basically being voted to dominate world policy. Notice how all the resolutions of the UN are binding on other civs if passed. So if you become leader you basically get to tell everyone else what to do. That's how I think about the diplomatic victory.

[Hombre]

Originally posted by Diadem
I'm not saying cultural victory is easy. It isn't.

I'm just saying it's not really a victory. In chess you don't declare victory when you're 2 pawns up. In football you don't win by being the first to score a goal.

In CivIV, you don't win by being the first to build a theatre. A cultural victory is a long and difficult process, and requires a game strategy aimed at acheiving it from fairly early in the game. You say you aren't condemning it for being easy, yet the analogies you give as reasons to not like it try to condemn it for exactly that reason, and only that reason. This means I can only make guesses as to the real reason you don't like it, so I'm guessing it's the word "culture". Really this is just another point based system, sort of like the space race. Except with the space race you build certain things and win, with culture, you must build them and manage them for a long period of time, usually sacrificing some commerce to get enough points out of them to win, and trying to balance this with keeping enough commerce to maintain your empire.

Personally I like having the culture, domination, and score victories. The UN and Space Race ones seem too cheap since they don't require any lengthy strategies to achieve, and a civ that has been clearly beaten in all previous stages of the game can suddenly switch to these victory attempts and win over the better-managed civ. Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind later.

[Senethro]

If a Civ comes from behind to win a Space-Race then its only because the "better managed" civs permitted it. Having said that, Space Race is still somewhat cheap.

I don't like cultural victory because you have to plan for it TOO early in the game. Its like making a decision blind before you have the information needed. There is also no catchup on culture after a certain point in the game because Space-race will be available before it.