Hi guys,



Is the following a viable strategy or does it only work in very specific circumstances?



Faction: Cultists

Game settings: Pangea, endless difficulty, everything else set to default

Game plan: Ignore military and quests altogether, focus on growing your one city. Get only the first two or three quests and convert only two to three villages to make sure not to anger any other faction. Get all of the legendary district deeds (I have never been able to get the Museum of Auriga, but all of the others). Win a scientific victory by turn 215 [withproperdecisionmaking,210oreven205shouldbepossible].



I tried twice and it worked twice. Does this work all the time if done properly or only if certain factions are not in the game, etc.? It's weird because you do not do anything all game except for a little bit of diplomacy and trading. The AI could stomp you at any second or surpass you in science at any time, but they simply sit there and watch while you tech to victory.



Looking forward to your replies!

I don't know, never tried that myself, but it sounds reasonable to me. The only surprising thing is that you were able to hold onto a few converted villages. In my experience, Endless difficulty AI ends up settling the whole board, and of course, wiping out any villages, in its own territory, at least.



The first thing about EL's AI is that they are very, very random. If they luck out on the right techs in the right order, they would beat you to a peaceful victory. But they just pick a little from this column, a little from that column. So there are probably games where the AI would luck out on the right techs and massacre you.



The other thing about EL's AI is that it doesn't pay one sneeze to victory conditions. It doesn't try to reach them. It doesn't concern itself with whether you'll reach them soon. It just chugs along regardless.

Thank you for the reply.



They destroyed one converted village but kept the other ones intact even though they were in their territory. I did not pay attention whether they settled the region before signing a peace treaty or afterwards, will do so in the next game. The villages were converted while the region was unsettled.

natev wrote:
The first thing about EL's AI is that they are very, very random. If they luck out on the right techs in the right order, they would beat you to a peaceful victory. But they just pick a little from this column, a little from that column. So there are probably games where the AI would luck out on the right techs and massacre you.

That explains a lot, thank you. So it's never a good idea to trade essential techs with the AI unless they are about to get eliminated anyways. All in all, I'm not sure whether the randomness of the AI is a good thing for the game. If certain strategies become viable or completely unviable depending purely on luck, that does not feel like good balance. One could argue it's like a coinflip.