%$# cultural victory !

[neilr]

Well I was playing as the Zulus in a 16 nation huge game. The date was 1960, and I was in a clear first place (well, it was Chieftain level, but I'm new to this). All 16 nations were prospering - the only warmongering by any civilisation throughout history was a successful attempt by myself, the Zulus to peg back the neighbouring Japanese by annexing their border cities.

So I was two turns away from the United Nations and researching the first advances of the Modern era. My cities were still growing, my armies stationed and contemplating invading Persia (though I chickened out every turn). Every year would take a good 15 minutes of city-building and I had many days' playing time left to complete the game.

I gave orders to my final worker, expected a good 5 minute wait or so until my turn started again, and went to the loo. I came back to a message: "You have achieved a cultural victory"

That's it. All over. History remembers me as Shaka the meek. I was winning my game but never actually did anything.

What a waste of hours and hours' playing time

[Disk Killer]

At least you can turn off cultural victory for your next game. I'm actually happy with it, the game I'm in is getting ridiculous and I'm holding out for it...

[1st full game, Chieftain level, English (called 'em British), I'm in the modern tech age and all the AIs are in the middle ages still, in 1810, I could conquer but would rather just run out the time, should be 10 turns or so for cultural victory - corruption doesn't lend itself to encouraging empire building anyway, I already have about 75-80 cities including all the previously Russian ones]

I just need to up the difficulty level for the next game.

[neilr]

Yep - I have turned it off for the next game, even daring to up the difficulty by one whole level

I had a look around after my game finished - looks like you need a total of 100000 culture points to achieve a cultural victory (but you probably knew that)

[Bubba_B]

Look out.....

Turn off diplomatic victory too!! This will also end a game abruptly and not in your favor.

Just a warning.

[JayKay]

Originally posted by neilr
Yep - I have turned it off for the next game, even daring to up the difficulty by one whole level

I had a look around after my game finished - looks like you need a total of 100000 culture points to achieve a cultural victory (but you probably knew that)

Or 20000 culture points in any city!
_________________________________________________



Portugal
Nation of: Magellan's (from Magellan's Expedition);
Vasco da Gama (Discoverer of the Maritime path to India);
and Pedro Álvares Cabral (Discoverer of Brazil in 1500)

[barefootbadass]

Raise the difficulty level some next game, that will make it harder to get a cultural victory because it will be harder to get the good wonders. Can one of the ai civs win with culture(at least theoretically)? I would hope so, otherwise it is a fairly one-sided stupid kind of victory. But then you still have to build culture to prevent assimilation and loss of territory.

I'm not using diplomatic victory in my current game(only my second game, I'm slow) but I'm going to put it back in to see what its like, it would mean you have to have some friends and stuff like that if you don't conquer, or build the UN and not call a vote, which would make the game more challenging.

[DickK]

Be real careful with the Diplomatic Victory. As far as I can tell there's no way to know how many votes you're going to get.

Once you get the UN built and you're eligible you're going to get a dialog asking if you want to vote -- the box defaults to "yes". Hit return and the game is over one way or the other, unless the vote is a tie, and there's a good chance the vote will go against you regardless of how dominant you are.

Seems to me that the whole Diplomatic Victory thing just wasn't well thought out at all. I tried to use it but I've turned it off permanently.

[RickBlaine]

I really don't like the way diplomatic victory works (I've won with it on all my complete games) and am thinking it of turning it off.

On my last game as the Persians on Regent, I was building the UN purely as a preventive measure to deny a vote (when I saw the Russians would finish it a turn ahead, I mined all my irrigated tiles and reclaimed a couple of tiles from another city to beat them--have to love indistrious civs). When I built it in 1780, I decided to allow a vote, figuring I would reload the save from last turn and continue to go for a spaceship win (since I had not seen that yet). Although I had done nothing special in diplomacy except regular trading, all the remaining civs were polite to me and I won the vote 5-1 over the Americans. Game over, and quite unsatisfying, unlike the more complex diplomacy required for such a win in SMAC.

I did reload and complete my spaceship a bit ahead of the Russians in 1802.

[Raleigh]

Masters of Orion 2 had a great diplomatic win function. Each nation had votes based on the number of population it had and you need a 2/3 majority to win. If you didn't receive 2/3 majority (of total votes so abstains counted against you) you couldn't win the vote. Come to think of it, SMAC had a similar system no?

I guess they dumbed it down you know for all those newbie players who would be to intimidated by playing this game (isn't that what they said they did for a whole bunch of features). I don't understand that however. Anyone willing to wade through a 200 page manual should not be scared of sophisticated features.

[DickK]

The diplomatic (UN) victory condition isn't, in my opinion, viable. There' s nothing in the game or docs that I can find that provides guidance to the player about it--an explanation of when the vote occurs, how voting takes place or how to influence/predict the outcome. I have no idea what its purpose is except to annoy me . In the game I tried to use it, I found that if I triggered the vote, I would lose the game even tho' I was near a dominance victory and a culture victory. There were 5 other small civs still in the game, everyone's friendly and 4 of 5 are "in awe" of me. My score is 3 times the next guy in order. But if I trigger the vote, 4 of the 5 will vote for the guy in second place so I lose. Maybe I missed something but it's a mystery to me how I could get their votes. I'd thought it would work something like SMAC with numbers of votes based on score or something similar but that's not it. This feels like it got tacked on at the end without any real thought or playtest.

The "Real Problem" you've encountered is a lack of choice, okay its really a lack of control. I agree with you -- I don’t feel like I control when and how I win. I can’t delay the spaceship launch. I can’t bypass the domination win to play for a conquest win. Trigger the culture conditions and its over even tho' I wanted a spaceship win. Of course, I haven’t a clue how to actually win with the diplomatic approach.

(Aside: then there’s the disappointing fact that when you do win with anything except the spaceship you get a simple dialog box – no video sequence at all.)

I don't think the victory conditions and end-of-game process were very well thought out.

[ElitePersian]

i dont understand how you can get cultural victories...you need 100,000 culture points!! i cant even get NEAR that much.

[adaMada]

Originally posted by ElitePersian
i dont understand how you can get cultural victories...you need 100,000 culture points!! i cant even get NEAR that much.

You can also win if any of your cities have 20,000 culture points. I think this is how most people are doing it, but I'm not sure.

-- adaMada

[Xenophon]

I retired from a game the other day (it was getting boring) and was presented with a screen that had my beat up mug in middle and the AI players chucking abuse at me. The next screen was the histograph which showed that I'd won by a large margin. Inconsistency, perhaps? Answers on a postcard.

[Ralf]

Re: %$# cultural victory !

Originally posted by neilr
I gave orders to my final worker, expected a good 5 minute wait or so until my turn started again, and went to the loo. I came back to a message: "You have achieved a cultural victory"

That's it. All over. History remembers me as Shaka the meek. I was winning my game but never actually did anything.

What a waste of hours and hours' playing time

hmm - you can always carry on playing regardless.

[Ragnarok]

Yes but "History will always remember you as Shaka the Meek!"