which ways to win are the easiest?

[Jon Miller]

note neither me nor my freinds are great players

I quit playing SP after I could dominate emperor

my freinds quit after regent

we still play MP occasionally

but there are arguments about which victory conditions are unfair (we play MP like an SP game but with some Victory conditions disabled)

I say that Cultural is too easy, and after that probably domination

my freinds say that diplomatic and spaceship are too easy (I never reach the spaceship era...)

so we have played a couple of games with only conquest allowed (we should stop playing them before hand because someone gets unhappy or the game screws up)

so what are the easiest and hardest winning conditions

what ones are broken?

JOn Miller

[vmxa1]

I guess Domination is the easiest. It is the only one that the AI cannot beat you at even on Sid. It can beat you to SS or UN and culture with ease at the highest levels, but it cannot run you off the map.

Well it can if you are in a bad spot like next to several hard case civs at Demi or better. It can at Deity or Sid if it chooses to attack you right away, but it rarely does. I only had it once at Sid, jump on me with those large numbers it gets.

[kmad]

I'd say cultural is the easiest. I've won accidentally by culture before, when I was trying to win by conquest.

[vmxa1]

Conquest requires a lot more time and by definition means you are constantly reducing the other civs holdings. This means that the ratio of culture will be growing and reach the threshold.

So you really have to disable culture to get to conquest. You probably need to disable domination as well. It is pretty hard to not get 66% before you eliminate all the civs in an epic game.

[Aqualung71]

I always thought Chieftain was the easiest way to win

[Mountain Sage]

Originally posted by Thriller
I always thought Chieftain was the easiest way to win

No, it's Atari's

[TheArsenal]

Easiest? Assuming the AI can’t get a spaceship win, playing until the clock runs out (2050? 2150? It's been awhile).

[Arrian]

In a MP context like you describe, Diss, I really don't know.

SS requires a tech lead + industrial might, and the ability to absorb some nuke hits, right?

UN victory requires skillful diplomacy (or really bad diplomacy by your opponent, or a combo of those).

Culture doesn't seem like a big problem, since humans are pretty good at recognizing if an opponent is threatening to win that way. The only time it could be a serious issue is if someone playing a good culture civ gets an island continent to themselves and manages to prevent invasion long enough to win by culture... but even that wouldn't be all that easy (though it would be boring).

Domination should be difficult for similar reasons: humans should be smart enough to see it coming, unlike the AI, and band together to prevent it. Conquest should be even harder.

-Arrian

[Last Conformist]

In SP, I'd say SS.

In MP, well, you're likely gonna have to take out your human opponents, and if you succeed in doing that, you should be well on the way to Domination/Conquest.

[eris]

You (and many others) play at higher levels than I do. However, in my experience, a culture win is easiest. This is primarily due to my fixation on keeping my people happy and educated, in the belief that this helps make them more productive. As a side effect, these city improvements all create culture. In fact, there have been times when I have had to race against my own culture clock to achieve a different win. This is especially true of a space ship win. I have never been able to let the clock run out past 2050.

In a multiplayer game, I would expect the easiest win is military, either conquest or domination. Which would be easiest would depend on map and players. Only if you had a group of people with a pre-agreed set of less aggressive behaviors would you expect another win condition to be possible. Somebody is going to make it military, sooner or later, probably sooner.

In my SP games, the hardest win is the diplomacy win. I can never get the other civs to like me. It might have something to do with my willingness to invade for resources, maybe. In fact the only diplomacy win I have is a recent one based on the fact that I could never get the right resources to create offensive troops. I built a gazillion defensive units and upgraded as I raced up the tech tree. To my understanding , I wasn't militarily dangerous, but I was indigestible. So, no wars, a lot of trades to get what I could out of it, a continuously renewed ROP with everybody to keep out of trouble, and when I built the UN, presto, I had won. I learned two things: One, it is possible to overcome a lack of strategic resources. Two, I never want to try that trick again.

[vmxa1]

eris I think you alluded to a valid point and that is the difficulty level. Culture is seriosly impacted as you move beyond emperor level. It gets to the point that I often disable it as a victory condition at Sid as you can easily lose that way.

[Chemical Ollie]

I have scored all types of wins at Monarch and a few on Emperor (domination, space and culture), but normally I get so fed up after 30 hours of playing that I just want to quit the game and start a new one. You normally know if you have won or lost when you enter the industrial era, but you still have most of the playing tima ahead of you (at least in my games). I play less than half of my games to the end, including some that would have made my personal Hall of Fame if I finished them.

[Jon Miller]

yah

it gets boring cleaning up

also, our MP games rarely have human wars (even though they are often threatened)

in fact there has been just one, in the last one

after I defeated two of the humans armies, with the third human afraid to start a war with me, my opponents quit

and they were all pissed with me (for attacking a human, they sure have talked alot about allying together against each other in the past, I think the no human attack thing just came about because of allowing computer players, I don't think I will continue to play in games with computer players (At the very least with computer players below emperor))

Jon Miller