AI Cultural Victories are EVIL

[Dinner]

I will sacrifice a banana tomorrow so that the banana god will be pleased and Cybershy can win his next game.

[Robert]

Seriously, thanks!
That means a lot to me, Oerdin!
If I can every do something in return, please let me know!
Lump in my troath! Tears in my eyes!
It really gives me goosbumps when people are caring! Seriously, only at Apolyton the community is that tight.

stop it now, or my colleagues will actually see me crying like a baby!

/me runs to the bathroom

[yin26]

Yes, in testing I lost a few games like this and thought: EXCELLENT!

[Tattila the Hun]

Perhaps there could be a warning... "Hatty is getting perilously near of CV..."

On the other hand, it almost feels like cheating, or atleast dastardly, to declare war on a small nation, who's about to win culturally. But it's the "easy" way, unfortunately, and works relatively late in the game... Perhaps one should receive greater diplomatic and domestic penalties from just flatout razing a culturally strong city? Raze a city few turns away from cultural victory, and your cities fall into rioting, your friends turn away from from you, and you enemies, and even neutrals, declare war on the spot. Maybe even some of your military units desert, with few cities... Because you're a bloody lunatic. Even worse with Rep and Free Speech and such... You prevent Hatty from winning, but risk losing the game in the process.

[Gaius Octavius]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
On the other hand, it almost feels like cheating, or atleast dastardly, to declare war on a small nation, who's about to win culturally. But it's the "easy" way, unfortunately, and works relatively late in the game...

How is this cheating? Dastardly perhaps, but do you think the AI would have any qualms (assuming it could) about declaring war on you if the situation were reversed? No, sir!

Nothing wrong with it being easy. I don't see any other viable alternative if the civ in question is 10 turns away from victory. What can you do--send spies and cause the cities to revolt? I don't even know if that would kill the cultural development or not; shows you how long it's been since I last played BtS! But even if you did, why not just go all out and kill the civ, or raze one of its cities?

As I see it, foreign conquest is simply one of the dangers of going for a cultural victory. The AI shouldn't be exempt from it; the human player certainly never is. I do like your idea of a warning system, though. Reminds me of the Civ II days when a rival was about to complete a wonder. Never fully understood why they got rid of it, especially now that the espionage system is back. The pop-ups could be dependent on how much intel you've gathered.

[Blake]

I think that cities at the last two cultural levels should be raze-immune and ungiftable except to the original owner, such that an Aggressor actually has to permanently occupy the city.

[Kuciwalker]

Nukes ought to removes some % of accumulated culture, too.

[Robert]

Originally posted by Blake
I think that cities at the last two cultural levels should be raze-immune and ungiftable except to the original owner, such that an Aggressor actually has to permanently occupy the city.

Yeah, razing metropoles is a bit weird.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by CyberShy
When I checked earlier on in the game Hatseputs had about the same cultural city values as I had, that's why I didn't worry for a long time
Then about 200 turns later it was like 48000/32000/30000, that's when I started to worry.
And then she really was on fire and got about +800 per city per turn. w0w!

I just didn't saw it coming.
I lost the game before that as will to a cultural victory, that's why I checked it early on.

+800!!!!!

I'm trying to work out a way of getting a cultural victory at the moment. The capital is already safely on it's way but cities 2 and 3 need a lot of work. It'll probably work itself out over time but I can't see where I'm going to get much more than 200 culture per turn. Fortunately I managed to pop a GE - at long last - so I could rush a high culture building in the second city. How nice that Taj Mahal had just become available.

My suspicion is that two things will work in my favour later in the game.

a) Some older buildings will double their cultural value
b) The aggregate value of settled GAs will start to kick in seriously.

[wodan11]

800's not that farfetched. I've had cities get over 1100 a turn.

Now, what is surprising is to see the AI successfully doing it. Good job to Blake on the new AI!

Wodan

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by wodan11
800's not that farfetched. I've had cities get over 1100 a turn.

Now, what is surprising is to see the AI successfully doing it. Good job to Blake on the new AI!

Wodan

What 3 cities getting over 1100 or just the one. With Cultural victories it is the amount in the third city that matters.

I can see the trick now running late-game Caste System and farming everything to feed the artist specialists. I reckon I'll get the city up to 350 and by that stage I'll probably be using any Great Artists the culture bomb.

[Geronimo]

If I disable a victory option the AI will realize it's not available right? An AI civ won't gun for a cultural victory in a game in which that victory option is unavailable will it?

[Blake]

Originally posted by Geronimo
If I disable a victory option the AI will realize it's not available right? An AI civ won't gun for a cultural victory in a game in which that victory option is unavailable will it?

Correct.

[snoopy369]

Trick to getting 1000+ culture:

1. City should be a 'commerce' city with lots of cottages.
2. City should be a high pop city so it can work those cottages.
3. Wonders don't matter much, except the hermitage, of course.
4. Cultural buildings are a good idea, but they don't make or break the city. Most of your culture will come from the slider if you haven't noticed
5. The exception to that, is the cathedral. Get as many religions as possible, then spread them all around, then build lots of temples everywhere. At least 9 of each, so each culture victory city has a cathedral (needs 3 temples each at normal size+speed).
6. Artist specialists are nice too. A city with a lot of free food can do artist specialists instead of cottages, although you'd rather have cottages (usually more overall, unless you have some insane 5 wheat 5 floodplain city or something).
7. FREE SPEECH ...

A cottaged-out city with towns will have 80+ raw commerce (depending on how truly cottaged out you can get it), plus say 35 raw for buildings is 115; 300% for 6 cathedrals (you can get seven, but 6 is reasonable), plus I think a bit more for a few other buildings (theatre etc., can't recall off the top of my head), say 350% total multipliers, plus 100% for free speech, gives you +450%. That's almost 650 right there, and honestly that's without really trying - you can increase that number significantly between settled GAs (they quickly give you more than the 4000 standard culture, if they are being multiplied nearly by 6), specialists from mercantilism etc., trade routes, etc. Add on the Hermitage in the city the furthest behind, and you can generally win a cultural victory less than sixty turns from when you set out to achieve it (if you haven't been killed by your enemies by this point...)

This by the way is ignoring the various corporations, which make cultural victory almost so easy it feels like cheating (if it didn't before). Each of those can significantly increase your culture beyond that, if you're careful how you spread them I imagine a 1500/turn culture is reasonably possible with them.

edit: I'm not sure, but I feel like at least one of the multipliers might be post-other multipliers (multiplicative not additive). Perhaps free speech? I don't remember. (This would increase the culture significantly).

[joncnunn]

The only thing I have to add to Snoopy is that in my games, I find Free Religion to be an even bigger impact boosting culture.
The reason is that the locked no state religion allows each and every one of your religions to yieild an additional +1 culture (and your other religions holy cities +5). These are included in the doubling that takes place with Free Speech.