Wow! Did a culture bomb that was almost *TOO* effective.

from Stardock Forums
I was playing a slow-paced game, everyone on normal, and I had managed to stay out of any wars. I had decided that I didn't want a culture victory, since two of my three victories were culture.

I was buzzing along with tech, selling techs to everyone (BTW, Brad, the AI should have a special value for certain techs, or certain techs under certain conditions, such as Stellar Cartography or Terror Star when they've been outlawed), but not choking them out like I could with CivIII. I'm staying ahead, and out of the war, so it's good enough for me.

Problem is, when I was expanding, I ran into the Torians in one sector, and they were beating me to the good stuff there. I just got the Culture Palace, and I was ready with a bunch of constructors for a culture bomb. Well, you could say that I overdid it (4 starbases with a +303% modifier each). I immediately took the sector, and started nibbling away at the surrounding sectors.

Mind you, before I set this off, I was just about dead last for culture.

Well, the radius kept expanding, more systems defected, and the end of the game was a terrifying race trying to finance my research when my trade routes kept disappearing because the other end had been assimilated. I'm finally getting close, and I get the 12-month warning on the cultural victory. Gads, and I upgraded to 1.02 just before this game, so reloading won't reset the timer. Well, I dropped military and social spending to zero, went into deficit spending, and managed to beat the clock by about three months.

Of course, I couldn't walk away from a game that intense, so it's 5:45am here, I'm working a screwy schedule this week, and I just really messed up my sleep cycle, so I'm going to bed as soon as I find out where this landed me in the Metaverse :)
598 views 14 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Fart, just barely missed the top 100 >:( At 102. Way down from where I first showed up, at 26 (But it was a smaller Metaverse then).

Oh, well, it's light outside, so I definitely need to go to bed.
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Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Yeah, it's a pity that when that timer starts, there is *NOTHING* any civ can do to stop it, short of exterminating you or you giving up.

You win, but still play for 12 turns. :P
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
My timer is at 12 months for about 5 months now and it's not counting down. What's going on there?

~SDC~
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Nothing they can do? I thought that if you lose enough cultural influence in that time, the timer stops and is back at 12 mts if/when you gain culture back.

~SDC~
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Here is a foolish question. But what would have happen if you Disbanded your "Culture Bombs"?
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't think that's foolish, ZardonF. I was just going to suggest that. Give away a SB or planet or something to deliberately sacrifice cultural control of a sector or three, and the timer will stop. :)

- Ash

~SDC~
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
I try not to turn of culture. As many times the Civs dont resign to either me, or the other AI's it gets a bit repetative killing them off on a larger map. I normally get bored at the time i have clearly won, and so end up just grabbing a culture victory to save me an hour of mopping up.

~SDC~
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
giver away a cultural starbase. obviously you want to be careful doing that.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
By the time I realized that it was going to be a problem before I got my tech victory (bad planning on my part, in all honesty), I'm not sure that anything short of giving them my entire culture bomb would have made a difference, as the only other place I did any cultural enhancements was in my home sector, and even then I'm not sure it would have been enough, as there's "per turn culture" according to the Encyclopedia writeup, and these had been in place long enough that turning the tide would have been very hard to do.

Simply disbanding them probably would have worked if I did it after the bomb had eaten away that sector and the surrounding sector. (note to self, in the future when doing a culture bomb in an area were I'm not afraid of loosing the starbases, put them in seperate starbases so that I don't loose any other development if I decide to disband the culture bomb).

Oh, one other thing that I think I learned from this (I had a lot of time to kill while I did my research) is that it appears a starbase with trade enhancements anywhere along the route always enhances the trade route, but there is some falloff. I packed my home sector with about 30-40 starbases with +50% on trade, ran all of my trade routes with Sol as one endpoint, and even brand new trade routes were bringing in at least 100 BC/turn regardless of where the mini-freighter was on the run. so I don't think the starbase has to be in the same sector as the mini-freighter for it to have effect, as some have suggested. Oh, and you should see the starship-size slingshot that many starbases with stellar wake/inverse tractor beams has ;) Throwing ships over half way across a 12x12 galaxy in one turn makes for some very effective rapid deployment forces.

On the other hand, having a planet with a +thousands% production bonus isn't nearly as much fun as you think it would be, because you run out of social projects *FAST* and then no matter how high you crank your social spending, a large part of it is going towards this one sector with the huge bonus with nothing to spend it on.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
I seem to recall reading in some thread that you could only achieve a cultural victory if you were not at war with anyone and that going to war would halt the timer. Something to keep in mind for future games or something to test if you really feel like it.

Ian

~SDC~
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
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I packed my home sector with about 30-40 starbases
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i thought i was overdoing it with 5 starbases in my home sector. (btw, +27 attack modules is funny)
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
Ian Lee: I'll check on that sometime. (maybe load up an auto-save).

russelmz2: This isn't anything I'd normally do, since by the time I've got enough constructors to do something like this I can culture-bomb the galaxy in a single turn. I just wanted something to do other than hitting Turn over and over again while getting a tech victory.