%$# 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]

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]

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!"

[Roland Ehnström]

I agree that cultural and UN wins are not very satisfying.

I've actually never won a cultural win, but in my last game (at Monarch difficulty), I had 98,500 culture points, and was pumping out 850 more every turn, when I finished my space-ship. I actually rushed to get my space-ship done before I won by culture, because I felt that a space-ship win was more rewarding (and I got to see that excellent movie! ).

I'll probably turn off cultural and UN victory conditions for my next game, sad as it is.

Peace!
-- Roland

[neilr]

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 need a lot of major cities full of improvements. Plus I had every Wonder that had ever been built. The combination of these two things took me over 100000, although my top cultural city was only about 5000.

But don't forget I was on the easiest level, and also on a huge map (plenty of room to expand and build). Without these two easy things I doubt I could get near 100000 anyway.

[neilr]

Originally posted by Ragnarok
Yes but "History will always remember you as Shaka the Meek!"

exactly !

[Badtz Maru]

On a larger map it's hard not to win a cultural victory on Chieftan if you don't screw up completely. I hadn't played a Civ game for years when I got this and didn't fully understand how to utilize the interface and various features, and I still got a cultural victory in the mid-20th century the first time I played. I moved up to Warlord and it's considerably more challenging, but in my first game where I got a good start I hit that cultural victory soon after starting on my spaceship. On the easier difficulty levels it's probably best to disable it if you want any other ending.

[Kolyana]

I've won through Culture, Diplomatic and Spaceship means and the most rewarding thus far has been the latter ... simply because there is much more of a build up towards it.

Okay, okay, you can argue that getting the required culture or nuturing those diplomatic ties can take the entire game, but it doesn't feel like work ... building that spaceship piece by piece and blasting it off is most rewarding.

I think they need to redo the Cultural and diplomatic scenarios somehow ... and in all truth, I don't know how. The voting needs to be less cut-throat and - definately - an ending movie sequence would ensure that they were much less of a let down.

Diplomacy: If someone wins - anyone - then another nation should be allowed to object, thus plunging the world into worldwar. All those who voted against the objector go to war against them until they are eradicated and then a new vote?



I dunno ... thinking aloud. Either way, I'm turning these unsatisfactgory options off.

[Expatriate]

Originally posted by Kolyana

Diplomacy: If someone wins - anyone - then another nation should be allowed to object, thus plunging the world into worldwar. All those who voted against the objector go to war against them until they are eradicated and then a new vote?

Thats how it was done in MOO2, and its a much better idea. After all, why should you accept defeat if you have the military power to wipe out everyone else? I lost that vote in MOO2 once and I that ended up as one of my best wins ever. Had to eliminate every one race completly, but it was worth it

[Alex 14]

Exactly the same thing happend to me, I was 1 turn away from completing the UN, and about 30 turns away from finishing my spacship when I won cultrally. I'm not too angry because now I'll just turn off cultral victory, and see what the diplomatic victory is like, then I'll turn that off and try finishing the spaceship...

[JayKay]

Originally posted by Alex 14
Exactly the same thing happend to me, I was 1 turn away from completing the UN, and about 30 turns away from finishing my spacship when I won cultrally. I'm not too angry because now I'll just turn off cultral victory, and see what the diplomatic victory is like, then I'll turn that off and try finishing the spaceship...

You don't need to turn the diplomatic victory off! If you don't want diplomatic victory, build the UN and just keep saying "no" to the UN vote, when prompted!
_________________________________________________



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)

[RickBlaine]

Actually, the spaceship victory is a little unsatisfying, too (aside from the nice little movie, which only reminded me how much I miss the wonder movies). It's just too easy if you can get a relatively strong civ into the modern era.

The required techs are researched pretty quickly once you hit the modern era and (unlike Civ 2, which required your whole civ get involved making the necessary components and supports), the 10 components are a joke to make by time you get the techs. I had several cities in the 125 shield neighborhood on my last game (which is not all that high, though I did not have manufacturing plants yet), making the components 2-6 turns to build as they became available (and since there is no penelty for switching production, I generally had the preselected cities building something else for a couple of turns prior to getting the tech and then switching).

Also, since the spacehip techs can be researched before several other techs, I have never (and likely never will) get a chance to play with unit/improvements like stealth, radar artillery, and manufacturing plants. Even units like modern armor come so late as to be of no real use. Yes, I can turn spaceship off, but domination/conquest just does not suit my playstyle (like Colin Powell, I only go to war when able to I can apply overwhelming force, and even then only for limit purposes).

BTW, the patch will make spaceship parts buildable only in one city. I am not sure what this means (I do not think anyone from Firaxis has responded to several requests to clarify this), since IIRC individual components, like wonders, are only buildable in a single city now. If, as some think, it means that one city will have to build ALL components, the space race will certainly be lenthened a bit.

[Kolyana]

Nice comments.

As for the Space ship parts only in one city, it measn the same as it does for the Palace.

Some users have been experiencing the possibility of multiple cities building the SAME part at the same time. This is oviously a bug that has been rectified.

BTW, the parts taking only a couple of turns and the modern units? Both extremely valid points.

Now, if the spaceship took longer, if the 2050 cap was removed (upped), if the UN victory was a lot harder and the cultural victory almost impossible ... then those modern units would come into play more.

As it is, they tend to get built during the winning phase of any game, IE 2 turns before you hit thr LAUNCH button.

[RickBlaine]

I see a few fixes for the spaceship victory, primarily involving the tech tree. A couple of the techs required for the SS could be moved further up the tree, becoming the last techs researched before future tech. Research time could be increased for these also (like for Republic in the ancient era). Even better IMO (but even more unlikely) would be adding a couple of new techs required for the SS (and possibly new components) at the end of the present tech tree. The modern era tech tree is kind of bare right now anyway.

Which seques into another of my pet peeves--the modern era is sort of bare of wonders also. What is particularly missing are wonders that model the effect of modern media on culture. Wonders such as Hollywood and Internet, possibly acting as multipliers in some way of a civ's culture, would seem a natural for Civ 3. IIRC, these were CTP wonders and may have been overlooked in part for that reason, but they still make a whole lot of sense, I think.

[Rushton]

Ah...Mr Richards we meet again!

I turn off the cultural victory. It was great the first time but I too want to get to "the end". It doesn´t stop you taking cities by culture.

Paul

P.S If you have any more problems I recomend buying Tonton Zola Mokouku - always works for me

[The Hermit]

Well, I've actually, mostly to spite everyone else, done a lot of work on figuring out how diplomatic victory works. I actually won my second game of Civ III this way (the first was cultural - 20K culture in one city on a tiny map). I'm not big on warfare, as you might guess. Anyhow, here's the monkeys behind diplomacy...

The reason people on these boards tend to lose the vote is because you're being too *aggressive*. I won diplomatically in the late 1900's with the Babylonians on a huge map - and I never had over 15 cities the entire map. I've toyed with it in a few other games, too. Basically, if you want to win the vote, you have to be the most likable guy/gal around. This means peacetime as often as you can muster, heavy trading, and possibly some MPPs. That's the short version. Now, the long version...

Using the Babylonian game - huge, 16 civs, 60% water with continents, middle-ground in all weather factors. I was originally going to try for the 100K culture victory, but that didn't pan out in the long run. Anyhow, I was stuck with some miserable land to begin with - at least it seemed that way. No rivers in sight, and perched on a hill surrouned by some mountains, a bit of desert, and a GIANT swath of jungle. I almost gave up, but decided to go with it. After all, it would be nice for a defencive war. Anyhow, I popped out a temple, two settlers, and two workers, and started on iron working. Shortening this a bit, I settled five cities south - a direction that ended up being a mistake, but not one I'd regret. My expansion continued northwards after I hit the sea south, east, and west, except for a pocket pennisula of pure tundra to the southwest, mostly for farming barbarians. This was a mistake I much later WOULD regret.

Anyhow, my progress north was halted by a yellow wall of Egyptians. Three of the six goodie huts in the region yielded techs (alphabet, pottery, warrior code), so I made a fateful decision around the 1,500's (B.C.) that would begin my foray into the world of diplomacy. I traded the Egyptians one of my techs for contacts with the greeks and romans, as well as two gold per turn. I was amased at the quality of the trade, and noted that I was able to slide my science to 60% without hitting negative income. Lucrative, if brief. And addicting. Babylon had been working on the Great Library, and with one turn left on it, I sold literature to everyone I have contact with, netting me some 30 gold/turn, and contacts with ALL eleven civs on the continent (ended up with two large ones and four small islands of only the most minor importance later).

And then came the Great Tech Sharking - I fleeced every civ on the continent with multiple techs in exchange for gold that flowed like water - one or two techs to each civs, and I came up with about 80 gold/turn from everyone on the continent. WOW. I was hooked - my sliders immediately went to 1.8.1 where they stayed until the middle ages. 800 AD saw the rise of my democracy, the government I would never leave. I would continually sell techs every twenty turns, for ever-increasing amounts of gold, saving the military techs for the Egyptians - mostly because there were a giant wall between me and the rest of the world that stretched over one-third of the continent and acted as a shield. When the Egyptians were too poor to pay for a tech I considered outdated (i.e. I was at least two steps ahead of it in the tree) I would give it to them for free. And the gold fueled the research which in turn fueled the trades. My half of the world stayed at peace until the late 1,400's as civs were paying me 90%+ of their incomes for old techs, now being research since the 1,100's at full 100% science as luxuries and marketplaces which traded all eight luxuries kept my citizens happy. Around this time, contact was made with the other continent, offering up a whole new clientelle and inane amounts of cash for the time - bilking fifteen civs simultaneously does wonders for an economy. My limited number of cities never got me to four-turn researches, but 5-6 was good enough for me.

Wars started to break out on my continent, wars which were wholly directed by me - I would decide who won the battle through gifts of techs and gold. If I made one mistake here, it was that I never kept Egypt in check, but seeing as how we'd had over 5,000 years of buddy-buddyship, I'd felt that they'd never turn on me. I had allowed them to settle the tundra wasteland to the southwest, though, a move that later bit me in the arse, but that ways a ways off. The Persians, Greeks, Romans, German, and French were all dead by the dawning of the seventeenth century, and the Zulus were knocked off the continent, retreating to a lone island city they'd never leave. They became excellent clients, paying absurd amounts of cash they had no use for in turn for techs that they'd never get to using. The eighteen hundrerds saw me in to modern era techs and the defeat of the Japanese on the other continent (America/Japan/China/Iriquois/Indians). Sadly, much of my consumer base had gone, but the rest were gladly picking up the economic slack in my research - my coffers were being lined in excess of 600/turn from the remaining civs for excess spices and techs. The Americans actually started war with me once after I refused a demand of theirs, which they abandoned for 200 gold after twenty years once they realised they had no way of actually reaching me conveniently. Heh.

The modern age continued on until a fateful urge struck me in the 1920's - the urge to find out what modern units were like. My first game never reached modern technology, despite having gone to the year 2028. However, I needed a war to fight...and the research of rocketry led to one fateful event - while I had been lucky to get every strategic resource to pop in to my little 5-6% of the world thus far, the only two sources of aluminum even on my HALF of the continent were both in or near Egyptian territory. Originally I sent a worker stack to go build a railroad/colony to a source a good thirty tiles off. However, this was shortly after snagged by Egyptian borders. The twenty turns or so I had had it, I cranked out forty or so mechanized infantry (shortly after Egypt demanded a tribute from me, which I begrudingly paid), enough for a solid line across my northern borders with Egypt, and one at a choke-point in the southwest. I had two infantry in every town which were upgraded, and rolled out six modern armours just before the aluminum was lost to me. Then I declared war on Egypt with a force of three armours heading towards Alexandria (the town with aluminum in its borders) and three mechanised infantry/modern armours towards Thebes. Originally things went well - I softened up both cities' defences considerably. Ended my turn and awaited the reprisals.

They were swift and bloody. I had not long ago traded the Egyptians flight, expecting the Civ II shyness towards air combat from the AI. BIG MISTAKE. I was absolutely CARPET bombed. Cash-popped fighters came from all my towns in two turns, my supply lines were being decimated (largely in part from bombers launched from the southwest tundra towns, where my coal and oil had both *been*), and having captured Alexandria, my goal had been accomplished, as well as netting me a GL which became a three-armour terror army. I lost two of my big culture-producing cities, instantly razed. I nearly screamed. I just suicided my own victory goal for some aluminum. Merde. I went on a bloodythirsty rampage, eventually taking Thebes with a second, academy-produced army a dozen and a half turns later, after razing all but two of the five cities in the southwest (both of which had oil resources) which allowed me to decisively re-enter the war. I had been using calvary stacks to take back the offence after some three or four tanks and about SIXTY calvary had mostly spent themselves against my mechanised infantry walls, which collapsed and reformed to attack. I had a dozen or so units, an army included, on Thebes trying to prevent its inevitable recession back in to Egypt, a doomed effort from the start, since in order for it to have been within my borders, I would need to have not lost one of the two cities I did. I did not yet know that one hundred units could have been swallowed by that revolt. Eww. But I did have what I came for, my aluminum.

I panicked - all this time I'd been trying for a culture victory, and two of my main producers just got snuffed. Quick math told me that I'd never hit 100K by 2050, and I was going to try for a spaceship victory since I now had the necessary aluminum - but then a plan began to formulate, and I decided to make a beeline for building the U.N. I had suspected that with a nearly unblemished record as the world's goto guy, it might be worth a shot. Twelve turns later, the vote was casted. I was literally on the edge of my seat, still mentally recovering from the vastly improved AI war tactics from Civ 2. Egypt and the Iriquois had voted for Egypt, but the rest of the world gathered behind my flag, knowing that Hammurabi, the Merchant-King would lead the world in to an ever-lasting peace...


A move for that would have been great, but alas. Future tests in similarly large games, and a small one, induced the same results - staying wholly out of war whenever possible (I did have an MPP with Egypt some good time that the Persian activated once, but they never got through Egypt to attack me) and doling out trades and gifts to other civs would get me landslide victories at the U.N. Despite having no way to press a military attack and having a civ which dwarfed only the Iriquois (six cities) and Zulus (one city) on a huge map, I was able to turn an otherwise hopeless situation in to a victory.

I think I may have rambled a mite bit, so sayeth The Hermit.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, you're saturating me." Tool - Undertow