AI Cultural Victories are EVIL

[Robert]

So, I'm playing this Emperor level, large Big&Small map with 10 AI players. I'm doing good. I'm leading in points, leading in technology, leading in space ship development. My army is big enough to keep any enemy from invading me. I have about 20 cities, 2300 beakers per turn, 3 corporations, 1 worldwide spread religion.

I'm doing pretty good, I'm heading towards a well deserved Emperor win...........
Then Hatseputs wins a cultural victory..........
She's so behind me, it's not even funny anymore.

I had already send 5 transports into her direction to raze one of her legendary cities, but then the UN decides to force peace

CULTURAL victories SUCK!
I never felt like they have any value when I win one myself, but this sucks even more.
I just don't want to turn the option off since it wouldn't feel like a real win if I would win a game with that option turned off.

Now I have to do it, sigh.....

/rant

[Solver]

[Blake]

Bwahhhaaa

[/Blake]

[darrelljs]

Re: AI Cultural Victories are EVIL

Originally posted by CyberShy
I had already send 5 transports into her direction to raze one of her legendary cities, but then the UN decides to force peace

Did you not have the option to defy the resolution?

Darrell

[wodan11]

I've been hit by this before. So, now, I always check the F8 screen frequently and also plan ahead to have spies ready and military force in hand.

Wodan

[LzPrst]

happened to me too once. never bothered to check the victory status. had finished and just sent the spaceship the turn before the inca won cultural.

i should have guessed though. for some weird reason he fell off the science train completely in the late industrial age. spent 100 turns researching stuff. turns out it was his cash going into culture.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by LzPrst
happened to me too once. never bothered to check the victory status. had finished and just sent the spaceship the turn before the inca won cultural.

i should have guessed though. for some weird reason he fell off the science train completely in the late industrial age. spent 100 turns researching stuff. turns out it was his cash going into culture.

This makes me wonder about something. Is the AI smart enough to know that it must spend this many turns with its culture at that percentage in order to get to legendary status before time run outs?

Or does the AI just enter an endgame mode at some point and decide to focus entirely on culture if that's the victory it's going for?

[wodan11]

Probably only Blake can answer that.

Wodan

[Adagio]

Cultural victory

I haven't lost to an AI winning this way yet, but I've been close


The closest I've been was when Russia had a lead in culture and was heading straight for this victory. They had the strongest allies and the weakest enemies. While I was in the middle. I didn't have a strong enough military to take both Russia and their strong allies out... hell, even holding back from them was impossible
Lucky me Russia did something very stupid: Just before winning they decided to attack America, who also had a defense pact with the strongest player, which means Russia's ally was forced to attack them. And since Russia had a smaller army than me (after their ex-ally took one of their cities) I decided to attack and raze one of their cities...
The end result: I won by culture instead

Had Russia played it smart I wouldn't have had a chance

[Jaybe]

Cultural victories are one of the more suprising ways the AI can pull a rabbit (victory) out of a hat. Depriving the AI of this victory opportunity is a big .

I've noticed in ALL my BtS games that someone was gunning for it. In my current game the Inca have one candidate city (about 70,000 with 400 turns remaining), but the 2nd is only half that and the third is NOwhere. OTOH, his Japanese neighbors (Agressive AI) have been, uh, ... aggressive (i.e., attacking infantry with riflemen, cannon & knights).

[MontyMort]

Always load up on nukes.



Always have a strike force ready to jump in and raze the offenders capital to stop that annoying space ship/culture win, and check victory conditions often.

[Robert]

Re: Re: AI Cultural Victories are EVIL

Originally posted by darrelljs


Did you not have the option to defy the resolution?

Darrell

I had been checking the Egyptian culture now and then, but didn't expect them to get to it that soon. After the resolution was accepted I checked again (too late )
Then I couldn't declare war for 10 turns

Too late............

[wodan11]

That's one thing I wish they would fix. You can't check the info screens during a Apostolic/UN vote. (They fixed it so that you can do it during negotiations, which was a step forward.)

Wodan

[TriMiro]

AI cultural victory happened to me once. I had modern armor and mech. infantry, I had already launched the space ship, and Netherlands won cultural victory before the spaceship got to destination. The Netherlands did not even had steam power, and had only rifleman and cavalry. I got mad, reloaded from the auto save and razed two of their legendary cities.

I was mad, because I was forced to go to war, it turns out that even a really weak enemy can win unless you give them a savage beating on regular basis. Then I took time to think and reevaluate what happened, it was all my doing. I had both Creative Const. and Civ Jewelry and I was greedy enough to spread it to all Netherlands' cities (for cash). Had I not done this, the space ship would have reached destination first.

[Blake]

Remember, the AI is behind BECAUSE it's going for a cultural victory. It's not going for a culturally victory because it's behind or something...
In other words, there's a good chance that at least some CV AI's, could have done a viable spacerace, if they wanted to, but instead they decide to go for a CV.
(Which is an earlier win, anyway).

[Willem]

Originally posted by LzPrst
for some weird reason he fell off the science train completely in the late industrial age. spent 100 turns researching stuff. turns out it was his cash going into culture.

Aaah, this might explain one game I had where it was taking Ragnar over 100 turns to research Medicine. I thought it was because he had spread Mining Inc. to almost all of his cities, leaving him bankrupt, but he may in fact have been going for a CV. I didn't finish that game to find out though since he was also ahead in points and there wasn't enough time left for me to pull off a space race victory.