Civ V - Stalemate

[Gusington]

The Civ series has gone from being one I was 'meh' about for a long time to one of my favorites with Civ V, its expansions and mods.

I always customize my games to advance through the renaissance, industrial and modern eras [mostly] because those are the eras I am most interested in. But almost every game I have played always ends in a stalemate, and I wonder if its because I am modding the game to be more limited in scope.

Without the usual elements of tech growth and epoch advancement, am I disabling the core of the game with the result being a statemate at the end of every game I set up? Have any of you customized and limited the advancement of games you have set up, and won?

I play on Prince difficulty (Level 4, IIRC). Thanks all for any thoughts.

[Barthheart]

What's yer definition of "win"? If you are restricting the game to shorter periods what kinds of "winning" are you expecting to see? Domination only? Culture?

Culture wins take a long time. Space race won't happen in shorter games either.
Domination is hard on large maps with lots of players.
Win by points?

[bayonetbrant]

I turn Domination off and my wins tend to be science/space or culture

I don't mind getting in a fight, but I don't want the game determined by digital Risk

[Gusington]

Well I just started a game as industrial-era Russia, stalling in the modern age, on a standard map with 7 other civs and 16 city states. I chose to have any of the five win types available...culture, science, domination, diplomacy,etc.

In other smaller games I had domination as the victory type, against only one opponent (I was Serbia vs. Austria-Hungary, tiny map) and the stalemate went on forever after AH declared war on me.

So what do you guys do to mix up the game a bit, and what strategies do you use for different victory types?

[MetalDog]

I can't speak to V, but there must be enough similarity to IV to at least make some salient points.  I am not sure what order it is in, but, I have found that the A.I. will go after a certain type of win before any other.  I've seen it with Space Race repeatedly.  So, depending on what VC you choose, that will be what the computer goes after first.  As for a stalemate, most often, I get to the Modern age and everyone has buckets of guys and nukes and etc., and it is just suicide trying to attack any one.  It's why I usually pick Sace or Cultural as VC and go with it from the start.  To make it fair, I include other VC for the A.I. to shoot for, but, Space and Cultural are my two favorites.  As an aside, as long as I have been playing this game, I have found that I am just not as aggressive or focussed or dilligent enough in winning.  It takes all those things to be truly good at this game imo.

[Gusington]

^Interesting...so do you typically just give up at a certain point?

[MetalDog]

Since I don't use VC that require taking over the board exclusively, I usually play to the end.  The A.I. has beaten me to the VC I wanted or I make it there first.  Oddly enough, most of my MP games are abandoned.  The SP get played to the end.

[Gusington]

I've played to the end, but I've never won in Civ V. In this newest game I've made any type of victory condition possible...I want to see if that eases up on the stalemate phenomenon. But I wonder if by limiting era progression/tech I am adding to stalemate too...

[MetalDog]

I've never started any where but Ancient.  Do you still start with one city in later starts, or do you have a small empire?  I have to imagine starting after Ancient does add some to the difficulty of making your goals.

[Gusington]

In all the mods I've used I've started with nothing but settlers.

[MetalDog]

I said one city, I meant one settler.  There is always another unit, a Scout or Warrior.

[BanzaiCat]

I give up maybe half of my games because I get bored. I enjoy the early game tremendously, making discoveries and revealing the map. Once I'm in the Renaissance era or thereabouts, most of the map is revealed and usually at that point I have a huge lead on the AI. Civ V has changed my perceptions a little in that the AI can be pretty aggressive when provoked. The first time I nuked an enemy in Civ V (no reason except I could and wanted to see what it did) they came right back and nuked me. Never had that happen in previous iterations of this game.

In V before the BNW expansion it seemed the AI liked to go to war with everything and anything, and the only way to keep pace would be to go to war with the warmongers and carve more empire off of their rumps.

[Gusington]

^Austria is like that in Civ V too. I also tried nukes just to see what it was like and admittedly got a rush from using them, but the atomic era doesn't interest me much. I also got a kick out of the giant robot. But the modern age is usually my last one.

So I see I am not the only one who is getting bored with 1000 similar turns. There's got to be some more ways to get over that late game hump...

[BanzaiCat]

If I'm able to build the Giant Death Robot, the game's pretty much over. I've not had the AI build one yet. Nukes, yep, but not the GDRs. They're fun to play with but hardly needed at that point.

If you want a different challenge, try playing Venice.

[Gusington]

^Yeah I have yet to play Venice. BB and a ton of others have sung the praises of The Most Serene Republic in Civ V.