Conquest = Only Method of Winning?

[Falconeer]

I've now played through about 6 games all the way to the end and I was wondering if it was just the way I'm playing or if others had come to this conclusion to; that conquest is the only real way of winning?

My case:
Alliance 'victory': Is it truly possible to come to this victory without first beating the snot out of the computer and leaving it no choice? I have tried everything I could think of (building all the regard wonders, not crossing national borders a single time, etc) and have only had 1 nation agree to an alliance with me after I pounded them to 1 city remaining. To get 4-7 civilizations to agree to treaties this way it seems like you'd have to come within a hair's breadth of a conquer victory and then hold back.

Science 'victory': You have to cover 60% of the map with obelisks (wish they'd said this somewhere (pre-patch) in the manual or great library... even the gaia victory screen lists a minimum # of each component to be built but that yields nothing). 60% is a lot of the map. Every time that I've been able to cover 60% of the map with obelisks, I've been well on my way to completing a conquer victory within a number of turns.

Both these victory types seem to be for those who could achieve a conquer victory but just pull back at the end just to get the desired victory type.

Solutions?
SMAC had one of the best diplomacy systems I've seen in a computer based game. Each 'nation' had it's own personality that you could actually sense and know how to deal with and you could achieve forms of diplomacy with them without having to beat them to within 1 warrior of utter defeat.

Science victory has always been a difficult one for me to figure out a way of achieving without first wiping out your opponents. In SMAC achieving the science victory you wiped out some of your resources, but by that point in the game you had the techs so that you could actually benefit from it. Civ2/1 had I think the best system in that you built components and had to figure in how long it would take to reach the destination couple in with how long it would take to build more components.

One thing that I liked in SMAC was the Commerce Victory. Here you had to watch out because even the small nation could sneak up and win on you by cornering the market. With the amount of gold flying around in CTP2, this could be a viable way of winning besides conquest.

Conclusion:
It seems as though the 2 extra victory types are for those who just don't have the heart to finish moving around the screen and wiping up insignificant cities. Go for one of these victories and put a somewhat quicker end to a game you could win in another hour or so through an assured conquest victory.

Am I playing this game too aggressively or am I justified in my thinking?

--Falconeer

[Dave Boshko]

Parking a huge army next to one of their cities (and/or having a huge army in general) and threatening to declare war plus large bribes can do the trick. After I knock off conquering the world in my latests game I'll take winning a science/alliance vitory with 8 Civs on the regular map on Impossible without firing a shot as a personal challenge...

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[This message has been edited by Dave Boshko (edited December 19, 2000).]

[Sabre2th]

i've won with the diplomatic victory.

Sabre

[RayvenWolfe]

quote: Originally posted by Falconeer on 12-19-2000 01:55 AM Science 'victory': You have to cover 60% of the map with obelisks (wish they'd said this somewhere (pre-patch) in the manual or great library... even the gaia victory screen lists a minimum # of each component to be built but that yields nothing). 60% is a lot of the map. Every time that I've been able to cover 60% of the map with obelisks, I've been well on my way to completing a conquer victory within a number of turns. Both these victory types seem to be for those who could achieve a conquer victory but just pull back at the end just to get the desired victory type. * Snip. * Science victory has always been a difficult one for me to figure out a way of achieving without first wiping out your opponents. --Falconeer

For the science victory, one thing that my housemate figured out is that while you can't drop down a fort on someone else's land, you -can- put a fort on land that isn't owned by anyone. After the fort builds, your nation has a 'border' there. Then place the obelisk in the border (even atop the fort). This is how he got his science victory.

Obviously, obelisk your own stuff. The README says that satellites increase the effect of the obelisks and you can have a max of 20 satellites. So, build the max satellites. And look over the map (Hope you have the global satellite wonder?) and drop down a fort on land that isn't owned by anyone. This, of course, only works if there's land left over, and you're not playing on a mostly ocean map since forts can't be on ocean tiles.

The way I tried to achieve my science victory is with alliances. I couldn't get everyone to ally, but I got some of the weakest ones, and they still had enough cities where I could dump an obelisk onto each and get the coverage I needed.

Hope this helps.

Ray


[This message has been edited by RayvenWolfe (edited December 20, 2000).]

[Yatermie]

I have to agree that alliances are completely too difficult to form. I just think they should have other reasons than protection to form an alliance.

And the science victory is more of a science/conquor/building victory.

In the average 8 player game, you may of conquored two opponents, wiping them off the map, this would give you, on average, 37.5% control of the map. There is no possible way to win a science victory without additional conquoring, or a massive amount of ocean cities. Even on my second game at easy, I still had to go on a fusion tank conquor spree at the end to grab the neccessary area. Its.. stupid.. In civ1/2 you had to build tons of little bits for a spaceship, it helped if you were biggest because you had massive production. in SMAC, you just researched your way up, and built a couple wonders.

I also realized that only one person can truely get close to acheiving a science victory at one time. Seems sort of silly to me

[down th' pub]

Of Obelisks & Satelites

If you build an obelisk on your own border half of it's coverage is outside your territory (nearly).

Best guestimate is you would need to occupy 40-50% of globe to get coverage at 60%.

Isolated cities are particularly good at boosting this figure with 4 obelisks N, E, S & W of the city you could cover literally hundreds of tiles (I don't have time for the math).

It's a useful out to those who are a little too large and don't want to make all the plebs miserable.

[D4everman]

I'm glad I read this because I was getting frustrated. In my last game I was the largest civ with about 35 or 36 cities and in a corporate republic. The Greeks weren't too far behind me in tech so I figured I needed to really speed up my science rate. I wasn't at war with anyone so I stood all of my troops down. I had every trade rout possible going. But the discovery of nano-assembly was going to take 35 turns! 35 TURNS! Geez...it was already in the mid to late 21st century! So I plodded along and avoided any conflicts.

(Side note: The greeks discovered Fluid breathing and wouldn't sell or trade the tech. I used three spies on three different cities at different times and the all failed. Spies suck.)

Anyway, I discovered technocracy around 2205. (I don;t know why this took so long) So I went for supewrconducter seeing how the wonder it gives might speed things up. You wanna know how long it'll take to get it? 37 turns. Thats where I quit. Theres no way I'll get a science victory in time and the AI has been busy nuking everyone into disaster. Maybe I'll try again in a few days...any advice on what might have gone wrong or is the game just...wonky?

D4

[Yatermie]

yeah.. I know what you did wrong, you need to assign about 1/3 to 1/5 of the population of each city to science, or else your sceince rate suffers, a lot. I start doing this at size 10, it works good, keeping discoveries at between 5-10 turns. You also need every science wonder and improvement.

[D4everman]

Hold up a minute...I have to have every single science wonder? Then I'm doomed from the start, because in my last few games at Hard level I've never ever been able to get Aristotle's Lyceum. And not from lack of trying either.

IN EACH ONE of those games I made a beeline for monarchy and Philosophy is a requirement for that so I knew I'd come across it ASAP. As soon a Philosophy became an option for research I went to it. IN EACH ONE of those games I got NO PRIOR warning (No "A race is afoot to complete a wonder of the world...etc") but always about 9 or 10 turns before AL would be complete I'd get "We have run out of time 'X' has almost completed Aristotle's Lyceum". HUH? At first I thought I had missed the initial warning but it became plain to me that the AI simply was cheating. So I don't even attempt to build AL anymore. Whats the point if the computer is going to cheat to keep me from getting it?

Secondly you say I have to convert citizens to scientists? Gee, maybe if the manual had said that I'd have actually finished a game by now. (Yes, Activision that was a smart alecky remark) If thats the case then whats the point of building orbital laboratories? Since most of my cities were producing infrastructure (there was literally nothing left to build in them) When OL's became available I qued all cities to build them and rush built them all! It was a feat of Wonder and I got a science bonus! One that didn't mean SQUAT!

I really hope Activision fixes some of this crap somehow. I really want to be happy with this game but they're making it really hard.

D4

[RayvenWolfe]

I don't set up the scientists at population 10 or similar. I actually look at the build queue. Some cities, like you had, there was little or nothing left to build. So I started upping the science then. Once the city is established, even adding one scientist per city will help dramatically, if the city is large enough to handle it.

Don't throw the game out yet! Seriously, I've been really sickened by the lack of effort put into documenting the game. Some games don't need documentation but this isn't one of them. I pretty much come here when something goes awry, say to myself 'Well, that was silly', then go back to my game armed with new information.

Good luck to you. Happy Holidays.

Rayven

[Collie]

I was a victim of the AI not telling me about building the Lycaeum until it had almost finished it. Had I known earlier, I would have stopped building some unnecesary things and upped the production rate any way I could.

However, isn't a Republic a better choice all round for science and production than a monarchy? I'm still only in my third attempt at CTP2 but so far the Republic seems a much better government at the start.

[Gwap]

Currently playing on "hard", got all wonders except Empire State Building (had it, but gave it away again as I didn't want to have too many cities). The solution: save your money and rush buy! And don't do what the AI is currently doing in my game and build only mines and farmland improvements: trading posts, supermarkets and nature reserves... GOLD! GOLD! GOLD! You win either way, as 80-90% goes into science, the rest goes into rush buying wonders. And occasionally in rush buying everything currently in build queue for each of my 41 cities. Easy peasy.

Ok, admittedly, I only installed the diplofrenzy mod halfway through the game.

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