I really like this game, but after playing my 10th game now (on noble and prince) I am starting to wonder if some of the (non performance related) dissatisfaction with Civ4 that we see sometimes in these forums has a lot to do with victory conditions. I certainly think that they all leave something to be desired.

Although I realize there are threads in this forum that address each and every victory condition in detail, I am writing this as a general strategic overview for those who, like me, often find themselves in the middle of a game wondering what path to victory is best to pursue. I am also hoping to get some comments on my understanding of the various victory scenarios. Finally, I am subjectively rating each victory condition; please feel free to do the same.


1- The Space Race victory:
====================
This one seems to me to be the easiest victory, and is certainly how I won most of my games. I have recently taken to switching it off after a few games where I increasingly felt that the pressure to “join” the race was robbing my games of variety and “hijacking” my game.

Strategy description: You seem to need 10 or so good industrial cities. Have to focus on science and wealth production. Seems well suited to the defensive player who will have enough military techs to fend off harassing Civs while making a beeline to the needed spacerace techs. If you are not in touch with and trading techs with AI Civs from the get go you will probably end up way behind in tech and spend too much time trying to catch up.

Wonders do not seem too important. Space elevator, as was mentioned elsewhere on these forums, seems irrelevant as by the time you build it you’re probably well on your way to completion.

Questions regarding Space Race:
I read somewhere that the 1.09 patch has made this victory more expensive; I hope that’s the case. Do most people find this victory to be completely boring or is it just me?

Satisfaction rating 1-5 (in my opinion): 2



2-Cultural victory:
=============
Seems like you have to plan this one way in advance. I always get two, sometimes three wonders in the early game through chopping down forests and/or plopping my second or third settler straight onto a stone resource if I can find it. Have to focus on Great People generation, getting the defensive techs you need, and otherwise more or less switching off all science production in the late game to generate culture instead. All well and good, except I really dislike having all the other cultures get so far ahead of me technologically and militarily in the late game while I wait for my 3 cities to amass culture and for my great artists to emerge.

I also find this victory condition extremely difficult to achieve for the following reasons:
a) Cultural victories are risky, in my opinion. Not only do they have to be planned in advance, but culture is only useful for creating your legendary cities and extending your borders (perhaps landing you a defecting city and a subsequent war in the process) – i.e. unlike gold or techs, it cannot be traded in a pinch. Also, significantly, culture in itself is a minor factor a time based victory score, except indirectly through making your boundaries a bit bigger and your citizens happier.
b) I am somehow always pre-empted by other Civs forcing me to join a Space Race

Questions regarding Cultural Victory:
- Are early religions good or bad for a cultural victory? Religious buildings generate a decent amount of culture, but in a recent game when I developed both Hinduism and Judaism in my biggest culture city I ended up with 5-6 great prophets when what I really needed were great artists (this despite forcing artist specialists).

Satisfaction rating 1-5 (in my opinion): 4


3-Diplomatic Victory:
================
This one I just plain don’t get. It just seems too risky to pursue willingly – the only time I tried for this was to salvage some 30+ man hours of gameplay in a game where it was obvious that I was not going to win any other way. I suppose you can “plan” this one in advance by somehow becoming really good friends with the 2nd and 3rd or so biggest cultures who have most of the votes after #1 (who will be a candidate for the election himself), but somehow I think that that’s not really a viable strategy.

I did not win despite a handful of ‘elections’ because others civs were not very enthusiastic about handing me or my opponent a diplomatic victory (he eventually won on Space Race). In fact my biggest problem with this victory is that it doesn’t make any sense to me; I always abstain unless voting for myself, and I don’t understand why any culture would choose to give the game away no matter how much they like you.

I noticed that after several elections other civs were more likely to become partisan and less likely to abstain (again, why?) and it was obvious to me that my victory hinged on getting Julius Caesar’s vote. He had been annoyed (and annoying) for the entire game and suddenly I was giving him free techs and resources in a feeble, futile attempt to bribe him for his vote. It wasn’t very fun – I mean all those many hours of thoughtful (and, ahem, intelligent) gameplay had come to this?? Next time around I think I will just switch this victory condition off.

Satisfaction rating 1-5 (in my opinion): 2. It just seems so arbitrary.



4-Time Victory:
============
To me this one makes the most sense. Engage in wars just enough to make your Civ land area significantly large (not necessarily as large as the biggest Civ around), then develop your cities to get high population, commerce, and science growth. Race to get techs and build wonders in order to boost your score, and use culture to expand your borders and grab border resources that will help make your population healthier and happier. This is not to say this is an easy win, esp. when Tokugawa or another warmongering Civ start expanding like nobody’s business.

The problems with pursuing this victory condition are (a) you will be preempted by other CIVs landing their own victory some other way. I don’t really mind this except in the case of Space Race, which I think is easier than the others. (b) I really think the amount of culture your Civ generates should logically factor directly into the score (c) It seems from what I’ve read that the “leadership” rating you get after you win hinges on the time it took to do so, which means that this victory guarantees you an ego-boosting “Dan Quale” rating. (Is this correct?)

Satisfaction rating 1-5 (in my opinion): 3.5


5-Conquest and 6-Domination:
======================
I don’t usually aim for these so I can’t really say too much about them. Both of these are the warmongerer’s path to victory, and seem to involve the following.

- Make a beeline to the war techs when everyone else (probably) isn’t, OR start pumping out UU’s as soon as you can for their (time-limited) comparative combat advantage AND cheap production cost
- Concentrate your production on military units
- Overwhelm your neighbors when they haven’t yet had the chance to build up militarily and/or have not yet invested/have fallen behind in military techs
- Do all of the above while keeping your economy afloat and your citizens happy. Ok I admit again I am not an expert on these and don’t have much to say about the subject.

What I do not find appealing in the warmongering victories is that I personally like to build up my civilization and snap up certain wonders before others do, and it seems that it is very difficult to land a conquest victory unless you start really really early (is that true?).

Satisfaction rating 1-5, Conquest (in my opinion): Don’t know
Satisfaction rating 1-5 Domination (in my opinion): 3, although I haven’t achieved it yet.



Last thing I want to say is: I wish there were more options for victory conditions, as all of them seem a tad lacking in one way or another.

I agree about cultural victory being the most interesting because you have to shoot yourself in the foot to pull it off.

I see all these people turning off space race victory in the name of skill. However i think it takes away from the other victories to disable space race. It seems to be the only way the AI can really challenge the player in a way that involves the AI winning. So even if you dont go for it your nonspace-race victory is more impressive with space race enabled.

If the AI was better at some other victory types i wouldnt say that.

1- The Space Race victory:
====================
This one seems to me to be the easiest victory, and is certainly how I won most of my games. I have recently taken to switching it off after a few games...

For me the most common has been Culture. I did win Space Race once, but usually 3 of my cities (including my capital) attain Legendary status sometime between 2000 & 2025. But as far as Diplo goes, I agree with you--I'm always a few votes short of the votes needed to win Diplo. Also like you, I tend to play peacefully, so Conquest & Domination are out.

I was losing a game so I tried building the UN.
I did build it but I didn't even come in first.

Since it was so late in the game I could only go for a space win.
Luckely I did.

I got both the Three Gorges Dam and The Space Elevator.
It's like the AI completely ignored them.

About the UN.
I don't think it is supposed to work that way.
I thought Firaxis specifacally made it so you couldn't bribe the other civs with money/tech just before voting.

Questions regarding Cultural Victory:
- Are early religions good or bad for a cultural victory? Religious buildings generate a decent amount of culture, but in a recent game when I developed both Hinduism and Judaism in my biggest culture city I ended up with 5-6 great prophets when what I really needed were great artists (this despite forcing artist specialists).
The religions themselves aren't bad, but the common mechanisms to generate your first great prohpet (Stonehenge, The Oracle) usually are bad, since you will get more great prophets than you want. These will keep generating the occasional great prophet long after you need them, unless you are careful about building them somewhere other than you great person factory city.

Having lots of religions (whether you found them or not) is mainly important in the mid-game (to get cathedrals going) and late (when you have the +% culture modifiers in place). Having multiple religions early doesn't really help that much in a culture game since the amount of culture you get per turn is trivial compared to what you ultimately need (of course you have to build the temples sometime, so early isn't a bad thing).

For a Cultural Victory, I found what works best is to build all the Wonders that generate Great Artist points in one city (Parthenon, Sistine Chapel, Notre Dame, etc) and any other Wonders you want in another city. Then build National Epic in your artist city and you'll start cranking out Great Artists. Also, make a beeline up to Music to get the free one. Settle the first three you get in your three cities as super-specialists and then leave the rest for the end-game to culture bomb for the win. It's the most satisfying way to win the game.

Space Race is as lame as it was in Civ III and I turned it off there and do so in this game as well. Whatever strategy you have gets thrown out and it's just a race to build up the parts instead of playing the end game.

I dislike the cultural victory. I think it's highly luck based and not much skill involved. Luck with the AI's not declaring war on your technologically backwards civ, luck with getting religions before the AI, luck with building wonders before the AI gets them, luck with getting great artists instead of other types. I know you can improve your chances of all these things going the right way for you with doing things a certain way, but in the end the luck factor is still quite large.

Also, like the other guy above said, turning off the space race victory condition may make the game more fun, but it is handicapping the AI's substantially. So you're basically making the game much easier to win.

So far I like diplomatic victory the best. It is something you can shoot for and succeed at at an early date if you understand how it all works. It's like a space race victory needing a fast tech pace but you also need to worry about pleasing the other AI's and rampantly spreading religion around. You also have to analyze the different AI's relationships with each other and determine which civs you can win over and which ones you can't, etc. The other option is you can carve out a giant empire and vote yourself to diplomatic victory. So it has flexibility. I think there's a lot of strategy involved with diplo wins.

So far I like diplomatic victory the best. It is something you can shoot for and succeed at at an early date if you understand how it all works. It's like a space race victory needing a fast tech pace but you also need to worry about pleasing the other AI's and rampantly spreading religion around. You also have to analyze the different AI's relationships with each other and determine which civs you can win over and which ones you can't, etc. The other option is you can carve out a giant empire and vote yourself to diplomatic victory. So it has flexibility. I think there's a lot of strategy involved with diplo wins.

Interesting. I didn't realize that there was a SIGNIFICANT connection between other people liking you and rampant spread of your religion, because other Civs with my religion always declare war on me anyway (or I them). And I suppose diplo victory can be a good victory clincher if you have good relations with other civs, instead of waiting for the clock to wind down or other civs to beat you to some form of victory

As for hoping not to be attacked in the cultural victory, rest assured that on high difficulty levels you WILL be attacked viciously. In my current game on monarch I am at war with 3 Civs simultaneously, but I am still maintaining 90% culture production while successfully fending them off with my Mechanised infantry and Bombers. I made sure to get Robotics and flight before I switched off tech research, although admittedly I do have space race turned off so I can afford to postpone my win a little bit and grab a few extra techs.

I dislike the cultural victory. I think it's highly luck based and not much skill involved. Luck with the AI's not declaring war on your technologically backwards civ, luck with getting religions before the AI, luck with building wonders before the AI gets them, luck with getting great artists instead of other types. I know you can improve your chances of all these things going the right way for you with doing things a certain way, but in the end the luck factor is still quite large.
Less luck that you outline here. You don't need to found any religions. You don't need to build any world wonders. If you don't build any world wonders, you have complete control over what great people you get. So that leaves us with one "luck" factor - keeping the AI from pounding your backwards civ into the ground. But just as you can manage relations for your diplomatic victory, you can do it for a cultural win as well. Worst case, you fight your defensive war with cavalry, grenadiers, and catapults and buy your opponent off with one of your non-core cities first chance you get.

I've won about 75% of my cultural games on Emperor (about 9 out of 12) and a higher percentage on Monarch. I've gotten to the point where I am pretty consistently inside a 25 turn window (1875 AD to 1925 AD), regardless of starting position. So yeah, it's not perfect, but there isn't that much luck involved. The three things that I really can't control for:

1) Starting alone on an island when everyone else in on continents. This is rough because you can't trade tech early and you often get (any) religion very late. This isn't a complete deal-breaker, but these games are harder, with victory generally coming after 1925 (which cuts it very close for AI space wins).

Now archipelago and custom island games are actually easier, since everyone's advance is slowed. This only applies to games where nobody is isolated but you.

2) Very fast AI space wins. In a non-cultural game, you can slow down the pre-1875 space wins by fighting an offensive war against that civ or using spies. That's not possible when you stop researching military techs at gunpowder or chemistry and/or military tradition. This becomes a bigger problem on Immortal. My win date doesn't really change at all, but the AI's win date moves forward.

3) Somebody who really, really, really wants to kill you. I get attacked, on average, a little over once a game. Usually it's stuff a little better than what I have (infantry, for example). I can deal with that. In fact, I can fight off 6 tanks easily enough. But sometimes somebody attacks with 2 stacks of 12 or more units each. Catapults and Cossacks aren't enough to handle this.

But usually, this doesn't occur in the first wave. If I can survive the first wave, trading a scrub city for peace has always kept that civ away long enough to win. But if they do show up in force for the first wave, I'm toast. I just have to hope that they attack a scrub city full of grenadiers rather than pillage my precious cottages around my core cities (or worse take a core city).

I will agree that there isn't much skill involved. By removing founding religions and building world wonders, I've managed to develop a strategy that is a little too cookie-cutter. The only variations seem to be in a few early tech and development decisions.

I've always felt like the victory conditions were one of the biggest places for improvement in Civ. Civ 4 made small strides, but I feel like many of your complaints are valid.

Still, to talk about strategy...

- Conquest victory happens more often on a map like Terra, where there's a large chunk of uncolonized land.

- Domination is quite satisfying once you achieve it. But the problem with Domination is once you're half way there, it really makes more sense to coast until the space race victory. Nobody has a chance to stop you.

- Cultural victory is actually a cathedral victory. Strangely enough, being a really strong proponent of one religion will work against you. It makes more sense to just let religions slip into your borders, so you can spread multiple religions between your cities, build temples, and thus enable cathedrals. 9 is the magic number here. And once you have the cathedrals, you either want to max out your culture slider (and stop all research), or switch your production to culture, or both.

- the space race is still the victory you settle for when you're large enough to be the best, but not large enough to claim domination. this makes it boring. but you know what to do -- get ahead on techs, and coordinate your production.

- diplomacy victory is still a cheap unfulfilling victory to me. in my experience, you can kind of settle for it as a dominator the same way you settle for a space race. but if i can offer one useful piece of advice -- find someone that lots of people hate, and make them a mutual enemy. people love it when you hate their enemy. "+4 our mutual struggle brings us together!"

About the UN.
I don't think it is supposed to work that way.
I thought Firaxis specifacally made it so you couldn't bribe the other civs with money/tech just before voting.

If you have maintained decent relations with the Civ in question it is possible to trade/ gift them and in doing so warm a tepid relationship prior to the vote.

I have done this by offering Washington a very favourable (for Him) trade or a gift (I cannot remember). He abstained in the previous vote but after improving relations he voted for me next time around and I won the Diplomatic victory!!

What do people think about victory conditions in multiplayer games? Or in games with several humans and several AI players?

In human-only multiplayer games, it would seem diplomatic victories are pretty much impossible unless you populate enough of the world to vote yourself winner. There would be no reason for an opponent to vote for you.

Cultural victories are probably pretty difficult in multiplayer, too. You'd need to keep a real strong (and modern) standing army to protect your legendary cities, or your human opponents will roll right over you.

Religion should help for cultural victories. Only the broadcast tower would +50% your culture rate, and this is pretty late in the game, while if you've got enough temples going around, you can build the stupas/academy that +50%.
Building 2 of these in your culture cities are going to double. If you can get 4-5 religion in them, then it's going to be crazy.
But yeah, I'd be the first one to admit that cultural victory is hard. There's always the danger of being attacked in an attempt to stop you from winning. I'm not good enough yet to make great person factories so that I could culture bomb my way to victory.

eh still have yet to get a cultural victory.

Since I'm a low-level, peaceful player, AIs seldom declare war on me. I tend to keep only 2 defenders in every city, but I do upgrade them as I get the tech & the cash. But yes, it does help to have multiple rels in most of my cities. I have spent late games building temples & cathedrals (as well as wonders) in core cities, so maybe that is why I win Culture so often.

Just the other day, however, I won Domination in game year 1998. I suppose it was due in large part to my playing on a Duel map vs Egypt at Settler. On larger maps, at higher levels, vs multiple opponents, one would have to warmonger to achieve Domination.

I even got a Time vic once--the only vic I never could get in Civ2 or 3 because I'd always get one of the other vics LONG before 2050 AD.

So now, in Civ4, the only wins I have not achieved are Diplo & Conquest.

Cultural victory was my win on my very first civ4 game. It does seem the most interesting out of the lot. Though I have yet to get a diplo,conquest and domination victory. It would be good to add additional victory conditions like capturing a certain city/capital of someone, or reaching a specific population, or protecting a certain city or civ, or researching a specific tech or a combination of those. Kinda like in scenarios.

I've won space race, diplomatic, conquest and cultural victories. Cultural was the most satisfying because it required a lot of planning (as well as more diplomacy than the diplomatic victory, frankly). Space race was, frankly, a little boring--too much like earlier civ games, I think.

Next I will try for a domination win--I wonder if it might be possible to get one relatively peacefully using culture as well as might for expansion?

5-Conquest and 6-Domination:
======================
I don’t usually aim for these so I can’t really say too much about them. Both of these are the warmongerer’s path to victory, and seem to involve the following.

- Make a beeline to the war techs when everyone else (probably) isn’t, OR start pumping out UU’s as soon as you can for their (time-limited) comparative combat advantage AND cheap production cost
- Concentrate your production on military units
- Overwhelm your neighbors when they haven’t yet had the chance to build up militarily and/or have not yet invested/have fallen behind in military techs
- Do all of the above while keeping your economy afloat and your citizens happy. Ok I admit again I am not an expert on these and don’t have much to say about the subject.

What I do not find appealing in the warmongering victories is that I personally like to build up my civilization and snap up certain wonders before others do, and it seems that it is very difficult to land a conquest victory unless you start really really early (is that true?).

Satisfaction rating 1-5, Conquest (in my opinion): Don’t know
Satisfaction rating 1-5 Domination (in my opinion): 3, although I haven’t achieved it yet.
It is not true about having to start really early to win a conquest/domination victory. I usually go for this type of victory as it's my favorite (Space Race IS so boring, and a 'cheap' victory in my opinion). In the beginning of the game , I usually play with very little military units ... pretty much just 1 defender per city. I use this time to build up infrastructure and my economy + science.

Once I find someone I don't like (or who has land that I need for resources or other reasons) , I build up my military and strategize an attack. I don't like to use the open borders exploit , I feel it is a cheap, dishonorable way to battle someone. I do, however, like to make enough units to capture at least 2 enemy cities and have some left over to continue an attack.

The other way is if I'm not ready for war but am forced into it by an aggressor which unnecessarily declared. In that case I pump up my military production and effectively distribute retribution, not stopping until every single one of his (or her) cities is destroyed :)

The UU approach is logical because for that time you have an advantage over other players (assuming they're not ahead of you technologically) , but it is not necessary or required. I've won without using my UU before , it's pretty much all up to strategy and how you use your units.

I think the problem with the Diplomatic Win is that it's almost contradictory. Assuming you go through the process of building, you don't really get a benefit by building it, aside from inclusion, but it's highly unlikely that the other Civs will vote for your Diplomatic Win. So even though your name is on the board and you went through the trouble to build it, odds are, the wonder isn't going to pay off.

By having the United Nations within your OWN borders, there should be definitely be a plus in Prestige for your nation. As a result, there should be bonus points, as in your Civilization has more weight in UN votes, or you should get a reputation boost, giving you +3 relations among all the Civs, given the fact that you built such an Institution in the name of Global unity. (Or even make the other Civs more obliged when the UN builder asks for Favors, something like that)

Or maybe to change the way the voting process works. Put everyone's name on the board when choosing a Secretary General. Why not, the UN is designed for Global inclusion. But have it where Civs can NOT vote for themselves (but can abstain). This would force more of a diplomatic effort among ALL the Civs, allows the potential for other Civs to be Secretary Generals and would give it more of a 3 Dimensional feel.

In my opinion, the Diplomacy Victory and indeed the United Nations wonder could use some revamping.

I think almost everything has been said already about the victory conditions!!! Space Race is boring plain and simple (I turn it off most of the time). I also tried cultural but miss by less than 10 turns to a AI space, Its the hardest I think to get... but the satisfaction level must be great, I also won 1 domination which is pretty entertaining in my opinion but... the point I wanted to bring is Diplomatic victory!!!!

In some ways its more a under acheived Domination victory turn into Diplo!!! The victory I got is exactly that... I was conquering every Civ that didnt vote for me and after a while I just saw that I had enough vote to elect myself secretary and pass every thing that I wanted (like putting back NUKE ;)) and played with it a little... I finally realized that I needed only 2 more ai civ to make myself a winner... which I did get... and won

IMO we have to consider it a SIDE victory condition cause I dont think you really can aim for it... Most of the time you're elected Secretary with 80% + of the vote but when you ask to be the victor some turn on you (even with a +15 relation) and you dont get it!!! the ai just seem to do everything it can to not make u win, so you have to own more than 50% of the vote seeking for the last 25. Might as well just blow them away at this point!!!! that was my 2 cents

I think the problem with the Diplomatic Win is that it's almost contradictory. Assuming you go through the process of building, you don't really get a benefit by building it, aside from inclusion, but it's highly unlikely that the other Civs will vote for your Diplomatic Win. So even though your name is on the board and you went through the trouble to build it, odds are, the wonder isn't going to pay off.

By having the United Nations within your OWN borders, there should be definitely be a plus in Prestige for your nation. As a result, there should be bonus points, as in your Civilization has more weight in UN votes, or you should get a reputation boost, giving you +3 relations among all the Civs, given the fact that you built such an Institution in the name of Global unity. (Or even make the other Civs more obliged when the UN builder asks for Favors, something like that)

Or maybe to change the way the voting process works. Put everyone's name on the board when choosing a Secretary General. Why not, the UN is designed for Global inclusion. But have it where Civs can NOT vote for themselves (but can abstain). This would force more of a diplomatic effort among ALL the Civs, allows the potential for other Civs to be Secretary Generals and would give it more of a 3 Dimensional feel.

In my opinion, the Diplomacy Victory and indeed the United Nations wonder could use some revamping.


I really like civs not voting for themselves, aside from that major change, perhaps the UN could give someone more votes.


What's really needed is the option to have diplomatic votes in the diplomacy screen (you vote for this and I'll give you tech X, Gold X, to War with, etc.) How likely a civ would value that would depend.

I think almost everything has been said already about the victory conditions!!! Space Race is boring plain and simple (I turn it off most of the time). I also tried cultural but miss by less than 10 turns to a AI space, Its the hardest I think to get...

The thing about the space race is it IS boring. But the game becomes even MORE boring without it, I find, because then the end game has absolutely no pressure. Part of what makes domination interesting is to know that your opponent might have a chance of launching a spaceship before you take them out. But I don't knock your choice -- so long as you're having fun.

You should apply your own technique to culture. Conquest anyone who has a shot at the space race while you squeeze out those last few turns of culture.

In some ways its more a under acheived Domination victory turn into Diplo!!! The victory I got is exactly that... I was conquering every Civ that didnt vote for me and after a while I just saw that I had enough vote to elect myself secretary and pass every thing that I wanted

Here it is again -- conquest your way to diplomatic victory.

Fixing the Victory Conditions

I think you and I are complaining about the same things. The victory conditions have always sucked for the Civilization series, although it's more pronounced now that domination is harder. The best strategy is to conquest and switch. Take out your opponents AND boost your economy.

There's nothing wrong with conquest. It should definitely be an option. Maybe even make it happen a little faster. But it needs to be seperate from other victory conditions.

I'm not claiming to have all the answers. But let me take a shot --

Take cultural victory. If you're the most hated nation on the planet, then how can your culture be respected? I always thought cultural influence shouldn't just be something you generate in your cities, but something that requires you to reach out to other civilizations. Whoever does the best job of reaching out would have a bigger surge in culture. Hence, conquest would actually HURT your chances at cultural victory.

If they introduced an economic victory, it would need to be along the same lines. It couldn't just depend on your flat amount of cash. It would need to depend on your international trade. Otherwise it would just be another form of domination victory.

I also think the diplomatic victory leaves the most to be desired and ought to be completely rebuilt. I think this could depend a lot more on minor civilizations and barbarians, if they go to the trouble of making those interactions more meaningful.

I think Domination is actually the kind of culture victory you envisage, dh, because the amount of land you dominate is all about your total cultural influence, not that of three cities. Hitting the %pop requirement seems to me to be trivial compared with hitting the %land requirement. If they were reversed I think Domination would be not so far adrift in terms of being so hard to get (compared with other VCs).

So my suggestions are:

1. Remove "three-city" culture VC altogether, replace it with %land based cultural victory (ie. Domination without any %pop requirement). This would favour more smaller cities, carefully laid out, and make military defence and/or diplomacy important.

2. Replace Domination with a "religion" VC, where you need a %pop requirement and the most extensive religion (ie. your state rel is in the most cities, must be over 50% of cities). This would be interesting because you could win with just a few big cities yourself, persuading AIs to adopt your rel and spread it for you etc. I think it's a shame that no VC currently features religion.

3. Reduce Conquest VC to something like 90% of cities (or maybe of world pop) to avoid tedious endgame and enable beating that last AI with three huge cities who's close to the space VC ...

4. Add some requirement to the space race VC to make it less of a no-brainer for the AI. Not sure what to add, but some sort of condition like "at least 15 cities" or "at least X total pop" or something which forces people going for space race to keep expanding instead of being able to focus on it so easily.

5. Re-vamp the Diplo VC (and the UN) in the way others have suggested. This seems to me even harder than Domination at the mo, because I end up winning Domination well before I can vote myself to a Diplo win! I like lots of the suggestions on this theme so far, esp. that building the UN should get you something extra, and that you can "buy" votes through trade (though some leaders may be more likely to double cross than others ...)

6. Personally I hate the "time" VC, I think it's lame and I always switch it off. The world doesn't grind to a halt in 2050, and the scoring system is totally broken, so IMO the time victory is meaningless. Happy to leave it in for those who like it though - it does at least prevent the game dragging on forever if you can't win but can stop the AI from winning ...

CC

2. Replace Domination with a "religion" VC, where you need a %pop requirement and the most extensive religion (ie. your state rel is in the most cities, must be over 50% of cities). This would be interesting because you could win with just a few big cities yourself, persuading AIs to adopt your rel and spread it for you etc. I think it's a shame that no VC currently features religion.
CC

A Religion victory is a GREAT IDEA, I think... they should have had something like this in this new Civ release, since as a concept religion is tackled for the first time. I wonder if they can introduce something like this in patch!

1. Remove "three-city" culture VC altogether, replace it with %land based cultural victory (ie. Domination without any %pop requirement). This would favour more smaller cities, carefully laid out, and make military defence and/or diplomacy important.


If the required percentage is anything close to the current domination requirement, his would require military conquest, which is kind of the opposite of what I think of as a culture victory. There is no way you can control a significant percentage of the land without using force. You can't culture flip several entire civs in any reasonable timeframe.


2. Replace Domination with a "religion" VC, where you need a %pop requirement and the most extensive religion (ie. your state rel is in the most cities, must be over 50% of cities). This would be interesting because you could win with just a few big cities yourself, persuading AIs to adopt your rel and spread it for you etc. I think it's a shame that no VC currently features religion.


You'd have to make the requirement considerably higher than 50%. You can easily get 50% by just spamming out missionaries. The only things that could make it difficult are:
1) Closed borders - It's not too tough to get open borders with most AIs if you really try.
2) AIs running Theocracy - This can be a little tougher, but if nothing else you can try getting the UN to pass Free Religion. And most AIs don't run Theocracy all of the time.
3) The limit of 3 missionaries per civ. This is probably the biggest limit, you'll spend most of your time waiting for missionaries to get where they are going.

Problems 1 & 2 are probably only going to be an issue with a few AIs (Tokugawa, Isabella, and Montezuma in particular), but they can be overcome by force or changing religions to match the AI (while sending in missionaries from your religion!) or via the UN.

Somehow, having the primary difficulty in acheiving a victory be the travel time doesn't sound like a fun game to me. :)

Keith

I'm kind of surprised at the dissatisfaction with the victory conditions. I've never minded any of them, overall. I think domination was a good addition back in Civ3 since fighting all the way to conquest isn't always going to be motivating to some people. In fact, that's the core of the idea I want to bring up.

To me, what makes the game fun (or not) is whether it's a challenge. Do I have to make interesting choices and trade offs? Is there a point in the game (hopefully several) where I'm not certain I can win?

If there are these points, then I have fun - even if the last few turns of building the spaceship (or whatever) aren't thrilling in and of themselves. (Though I did have a close space race game not long ago.)

If I DON'T have these experiences in a game, then ALL of the victory conditions are of little interest. Either I'm so much stronger than the AI players that I can just pick whichever victory interests me that day, or I'm so weak that none look achievable.

I admit I sometimes enjoy just kicking the crap out of the AI, but most of the time the game is only interesting if I have to figure out how to win. For me, in Civ4, this is probably at Prince or Monarch. Noble doesn't seem to pose much threat any more. For other people it will be other difficulty levels.

Do you agree the element of challenge is more important than the particular victory condition?

It seems from what I’ve read that the “leadership” rating you get after you win hinges on the time it took to do so, which means that this victory guarantees you an ego-boosting “Dan Quale” rating. (Is this correct?)


To answer my own question, it does not seem that the only consideration in the leadership ranking is the time it took to win. I just won my second game on Monarch through a time victory, and my leadership rating was ..... Ivan the Terrible (For the first time something higher than the bottom 3 ratings). My leadership score was something like 7600 while my in game score was 5406 vs. 5207 for the AI civ next in line.

Here is my 2 cents on the subject.
First off, I am usually a peaceful builder. I like to expand early, maybe have 1 war to make my civ the biggest and get more resources. Usually sometime around 1500-1700 it will become apparent that I am the most powerful and have the game in the bag. This is when the victory conditions bother me.

Culture: Why after spending all this time to make a great civ would I want to decapitate it by shutting off all science? Culture would be a LOT better if there was some way to win while not crippling your civ.

Space Race: Lets face it, it takes forever. You have to research all but like 2 techs, and then build basically 10 wonders. So the game I have been winning since 1700 runs until well into the 1900s. Oh boy

Diplomacy: I swear it is almost impossible to win diplomacy unless you fight a TON. I do not think only population should matter. Tech and military strength should have something to do with it.

Time victory: Takes forever and is super boring, I wish I could just tell the game to *end turn* for 20 turns in a row

This leaves only the war victories, and not everyone is a war mongerer.
With all that said, I still really enjoy civ 4, especially the first 2-3 hours of a game. Once I improve my system, I think I will start playing large and huge games to make the expansion and exploration period last longer.

Question about Time Victory ... mousing over the Scores tell me that the Factors the game considers in scoring are (I'm at work and this is from memory) land size, population, wonders and techs.

So Culture has no direct effect on your score?

Also, I'm looking for more information on exactly how the score is calculated. For example, do you get points just for TRYING to build wonders, even if you get beat to them?

I fully agree with @SwedishChef and @ajil.
This game is all about early expansion. Once you are the best Civ in the game, doubling the 2nd one in every possible parameter, choosing a VC and winning is boring. In fact, I never finished my games in Civ3, I would just start another game when it was clear I was going to win.

Regarding turning off game conditions, it seems like cheating. If you want to put a handicap on yourself, do it, but let the AI choose his own path to victory. Who do you think will win the game if you disallow every VC but cultural? There is no point in winning such a game!

I find that less micromanagement makes Civ IV much more fun in the late stages.

Finally, I don´t consider Time Victory a victory at all. It is only my opinion, but I feel it is just a draw, nobody was able to win in the given time.

Actually, I find the space race very interesting, for reasons mentioned on the first page of this thread. Yes, it's a lame way to win, but it's not easy on Monarch and above to prevent other civs from beating you with the spaceship. With everything set on the defaults and most of the world being left in peace, my Monarch opponents are usually well on their way to finishing the spaceship by the 1960's. If I don't want to race them, I pretty much have to fight them. And that introduces a very important element of strategy.

Basically, there are only two cures to being beaten by spaceship: building one first or plunging the world in a modern-era war. So in my last Monarch game, when my most advanced enemy started making progress on the spaceship, I switched from Pacifism to Vassalage+Theocracy and started building lots of modern armor. Pretty soon I was pretty tough, and after thousands of years without so much as a barracks, I ended up overrunning the world and winning by conquest (deliberately interrupting my own production of the last spaceship part one turn before it was finished).

I think many of the people have the same basic issue: at some point in many games, you have an insurmountable lead, but have to keep playing for several more hours to actually reach a victory condition. None of the conditions are that bad if you have a close competition going with another civ or civs, but when you are way out in front in 1200AD and know you're going to win, any type of victory condition is often a long way away (unless you've been warmongering for the last millenia or two).

First off, if this happens to you often, you need to move up a difficulty level. If it happens to you often on deity level, well, I just don't know what to say. :)

But as an additional solution, how about a "blowout" (there's got to be a better name, but I'm drawing a blank right now) victory that kicks in if one civ has over twice the score of any other civ? It would probably have to be time limited to prevent a lucky goodie hut on the first turn from doubling someone's score, so maybe it would only happen after 1AD. If you have twice the score of the next civ, a victory is pretty much a foregone conclusion, so why not have it end right there, rather than having to play a couple more millenia?

I enjoy the domination and conquest victories far more than the others. In Civ III I typically was one of those peaceful types who usually won space race or time victory. But then I figured out how to implement a good warmonger strategy and now that's the only strategy I enjoy. I have started about 8 or 9 games so far mainly on noble. I have won on prince and am pretty sure I could do so now that I have gotten good at completely destroying everyone on noble. The latest I have finished a game so far is in 1864; I usually finish in early 1800's. However, the game I am currently playing is on a large map instead of the standard map that I had used in all the other games. On this larger map, I have realized an adjustment has to be made because you really cannot build too many cities or it really strains your gold, and hence, the speed of research. I like to make a game in the late game where my goal is to finish off a civ as fast as possible. This requires me to strategize my attack, especially on an island/archipelago map. Coordinating navy and land forces to work together is just way too much fun for me. I haven't had to worry about air forces yet b/c I usually win about the same time I research these. Siege weapons are the key to a quick victory. Just imagine having three separate armies all being transported simultaneously to different areas of a civ's empire. One army for taking the capitol, one for taking as much land as possible where he's weakest, and another to take another major city or resource next to the capitol. Then coordinating them all to knock out the civ as fast as possible. For me, the rest of the victories are just their in case I fail in my military conquests. Space race is ridiculous to me, cultural is impossible b/c I have sacrificed wonders and culture to build my military, diplo is also impossible for obvious reasons, and time victory is also ridiculous b/c if my game went that many turns, then in my mind I would have lost.

I agree with zienth that if you're dominating long before the game's over that a bump in difficulty level will make things interesting again. As I'm playing I usually feel that there's no way I'm going to win until the very end when I snatch victory out from under their feet... or get completely crushed. Except of course for domination victories... when I'm... dominating...

In single player, all these victories are fun, but in Multiplayer, you get a real sense of acheivment. I have even won a diplo victory in a multiplayer game with 7 humans left at the vote time. I was only 3rd largest, but i had built the UN, and the 2nd and 4th civs hated #1 so much that they voted for me. Most satisfying win ever.

I use Diplomatic for "Lazy Man's Domination". Modern era domination attempts can increase the RL time it takes to finish a game exponentially - especially with a lot of water on the map. After 25 hours in a prince level archipelago map, I realized I could either spend four more hours getting the last 5% of land area I needed for domination or I could simply vote myself the victor with my recently captured UN. I needed no other votes. Kind of defeats the purpose. This situation probably only occurs on archipelgo maps though, as land area is more densly packed with cities usually. Apparently you get no domination credit for water area covered by culture borders.

Space race I just use in those games where it looks like beating down the space racers will be too time consuming to accomplish before they launch. Usually if you just mobilize against any civ that starts building parts you can stop them though.

1. Remove "three-city" culture VC altogether, replace it with %land based cultural victory (ie. Domination without any %pop requirement). This would favour more smaller cities, carefully laid out, and make military defence and/or diplomacy important.
I'm not quite sure how this would be different from current domination. Population is really not an issue when you control that much territory, I usually have way more population than required when going for a dominance victory (last one I think was like 60% population)
This simply isn't the point of the current Culture VC, which I think is create a few legendary cities instead of culture bombing the entire world into your empire.
I'm certain that it's fully intended that you are NOT achieving a cultural victory as a military superpower.

2. Replace Domination with a "religion" VC, where you need a %pop requirement and the most extensive religion (ie. your state rel is in the most cities, must be over 50% of cities). This would be interesting because you could win with just a few big cities yourself, persuading AIs to adopt your rel and spread it for you etc. I think it's a shame that no VC currently features religion.
If someone goes for this Victory, just have free religion passed by the UN to counter him entirely. No state relegion - you lose. I think a victory should be designed for both AI and MP wins, and persuading your rivals to adopt your religions then would be just like persuading them to join a defensive pact and vote for your Diplomatic victory.
Religion already is a tool for a Diplomatic victory, as it's most unlikely that an AI player will vote against you if you share the state religion while the other guy worships something else.

3. Reduce Conquest VC to something like 90% of cities (or maybe of world pop) to avoid tedious endgame and enable beating that last AI with three huge cities who's close to the space VC ...
I agree, except for the last part, which makes you sound like a sore loser ;)

4. Add some requirement to the space race VC to make it less of a no-brainer for the AI. Not sure what to add, but some sort of condition like "at least 15 cities" or "at least X total pop" or something which forces people going for space race to keep expanding instead of being able to focus on it so easily.
it indeed appears like you lost more than one Space races to AI while going for a different victory? Space Race however definatly needs to be made more challenging =)

5. Re-vamp the Diplo VC (and the UN) in the way others have suggested. This seems to me even harder than Domination at the mo, because I end up winning Domination well before I can vote myself to a Diplo win! I like lots of the suggestions on this theme so far, esp. that building the UN should get you something extra, and that you can "buy" votes through trade (though some leaders may be more likely to double cross than others ...)
Dip VC already can be "bought", you just need to chose your allies well in advance. Founding Christianity and making it your state religion when other civs are likely to do the same makes it pretty easy to get def pacts and therefore diplomatic victory votes. Religion is one of the keys to this type of victory.

6. Personally I hate the "time" VC, I think it's lame and I always switch it off. The world doesn't grind to a halt in 2050, and the scoring system is totally broken, so IMO the time victory is meaningless. Happy to leave it in for those who like it though - it does at least prevent the game dragging on forever if you can't win but can stop the AI from winning ...
it's not even a victory, it's more like "yeah at least you had most points" at 2050 or something. Can you even get better than Dan Quayle by time victory?

CC[/QUOTE]

Take cultural victory. If you're the most hated nation on the planet, then how can your culture be respected? I always thought cultural influence shouldn't just be something you generate in your cities, but something that requires you to reach out to other civilizations. Whoever does the best job of reaching out would have a bigger surge in culture. Hence, conquest would actually HURT your chances at cultural victory.


I don't agree. Take for instance the Romans, I'm not a historian but I don't think the romans where well liked at all by their neighbours but their culture is respected and remembered to this day. The Incas where an isolated high-culture empire that got wiped out fairly quickly by gunpowder but their cultural achievements are still recognized. The U.S, dare I say, are not very well liked but no one can deny that american culture has a direct impact (dominant?) on everyone living on this planet. I'm not one of those that wants total realism in Civ games but culture, as implemented in Civ IV, works and makes sense to me.

Ok... there needs to be SOME victory for the non-warmongering player that isn't broken. Space race is crap, time victory is failure, culture victory is too hard, diplomacy too easy, etc. What choice is there but warmongering?

For the space race, I think it would be interesting if you NEEDED certain resources to be able to produce the parts. Or have a lauching platform that needed to be built in a city - one that could be easily sabotaged.

On a side note, I wish there were more espionage. Maybe a "global spy network" style victory. Big Brother is watching you...

I'm with other people on the not-finishing thing. My interest generally doesn't hold out long enough for a victory. Will be playing it on a harder difficulty soon. Or against humans.

I agree with the victories´conditions,as they are IMO the logical and right end to a game with multiple and independent good strategies (not a limitated game,as,for instance,a game who forces the pacific builder to obtain a building device only by war,is).
So,I think to disable one path to victory is a bad idea;that´s the path of one,or more,of my opponents and must prevent him/she/it to arrive there before I arrive to my path´conclusion.
Conversaly,the idea of a religion victory to add (not to replace)to the others seemms interesting.
Best regards,

I agree w/ you about space race hijacking the game. I, too, have started to turn it off in some games.

For me, diplomatic is the most enjoyable. All of the fun of a conquest game, but without having to go the extra mile. It makes taking population centers important, and (also important) gives nukes a very important role -- sometimes you just need to nuke your enemies' population down to increase (relatively) your own population %, thus letting you 'corner the market' on UN votes. Very important, too, in games where you start isolated on a island and haven't had the benefit of early conquest wars. Think of it as using the UN to legitimize your conquests.... :-D

Is it just me who find the multiple religions in your cities/empire ADDING happyness extremely odd? We all know just how tolerant religious people tend to be. ;)

I think they should add downsides to religion and maybe take away some of the religious control from the player when it comes to spreading it. Then it would make sense to have it in the game. To spread your religion, you'd have to have a powerful culture and open borders. Not just send religious zealots to another city. That should pretty much always fail if the other state already has a religion and more culture...

my 5 cents.

Whom do you see as likely to be more tolerant: An 85 year -old grandmother who has lived her whole life in a small town in Kansas with one Pentacostal church, or a 28 year-old man in Boston who grew up with friends, or at least acquaintances, of many races and religions?

As for happier? I'm not sure. But the minority populations in Kansas are likely to be less happy than the minority population in Boston, and that could surely have an effect.

(Plus you only get the happiness bonus for the state religion, or from all religions if you have free religion, right? So there are conditions.)

The problem I have with the victory conditions is they mean your civilization is always headed towards goal from the beginning of time while at the same time you are trying to experience all these different time periods.

I think it would be better to have each era have it's own victory conditions and one way to win the game would be to win 3 eras.

Some potential era victory conditions:

1) Build the mega-wonder. Essentially this is what the space race is for the modern era now. I would make the Pyramids be the one for the ancient era, not sure on the rest. The point being that it would require a significant investment of production from multiple cities.

2) Research a Tech. It would be a very high beaker cost branch tech. It would give some benefit along the lines of Future Tech, and only the first to reach it get the bonus.

3) Capture a Capital. This might have to scale to multiple capitals depending on number of starting civs.

As far as diplomatic, I could see having treaties to share any of the above 3. If successful both would get credit for the win. Teamwork and backstabbing possibilties, ahoy.

The more I think about it the more excited I get at the possibilities.

I win most of my games with Domination VC. I like developing huge military and conquer my enemies away.( is there something wrong with me ;) )Currently I´m playing in monarch for the first time. Start is more difficult and I hope also end is more difficult. Noble was too easy (in late game) while I had Infantrys against longbowmens and knights...Not fun anymore...
I have started to add interest to my games by choosing continents or archipelago maps, this makes war more difficult.
Probably the most difficult war I ever have had was against human player (in civ3). We both had railways and we were in separete continents...That was amazing fight with naval and air units...:)...we ended up nukeing eachother...

Human is clever in war :)

I've also considered disabling the space race victory in Civ4 simply because I consider it rediculously unrealistic. Some of the technology involved is stuff we haven't come close to mastering... like the Stasis Chamer? Come on...

And I guess I missed out on where exactly the spaceship is going, but no engine we have developed so far would get that much mass out of the solar system in a reasonable amount of time.

Just my two cents.

I find the comments about the culture victory somewhat odd. The key is religions, and lots of them, along with strategically placed wonders. Cathedrals stack, and you can get massive multipliers on culture. I've won several cultural victories, and in all cases I didn't move the slider much above 20% until the last few turns (mostly to end won games). Shrines also help..

I don't get the appeal of the new Culture VC. I liked the Civ3 version better. Civ4 culture seems like you're completely selling out. And considering that most of the culture is bought or bombed, it seems lame compared to having all the Wonders and actual buildings creating that culture for you.

If you are having to give away cities to your opponents because you're getting your butt handed to you, how do you consider that to be a successful strategy? I realize that not everyone is a warmonger, but crippling your civ, having your culture magically appear, and bending over for anyone who comes calling is not my idea of a satisfying type of victory. I'd rather be in control, rather than merely hoping I can hold out long enough. Seems about as satisfying as a time victory to me.

Time - sucks
Space - sucks
Culture - sucks
Diplo - sucks
Conq/Dom - The only ones I personally enjoy.

I always leave all of them enabled though, because the AI can only win by space and diplo it seems.

I think the space race should be difficult to pull off by 2050 and should really only happen with a real dedication to tech. As such I changed the thrusters req to fusion and casing req to composites as well as tripling the beaker cost of fusion, as it's only use is for the space race. I also just increased the cost for the spaceship parts in general. Unless you're playing on a very hard difficulty level (Deity+ I would say) or freakishly there's a really really dominant AI in tech, they won't finish by 2050 thought they might be kinda close. Likewise, unless you have a strong dedication to science, the space race isn't happening. That was my solution. The Project stuff is in the GameInfo section if you're interested in editing the space race a bit.

I agree with ohio on the culture comments. Culture Bombs are definitely NOT the way to win unless its very late on. Given all your multipliers a super specialist makes a lot more sense. The sistine chapel is absolutely huge. I go for a specialist model in culture games so I really don't need commerce to get science. (Representation ftw) I still don't actually use the culture slider though. I think wonders are still of some importance. +10 culture really means +50 with your multipliers and the added GP generation is very very nice. With Sistine, great Artists produce 14 culture per turn unmodified. Assuming you have +400% culture in your core cities thats 70 cpt. Also, I don't tend to fall that far behind in tech anyway. I don't see why going for cultural victory means you have to stop time in a certain era. That's certainly not how I play.

"Cultural victory is actually a cathedral victory."

This is exactly right.

Three things are required for a cultural victory:

1. Loads of commerce/trade.
2. Loads of cathedrals.
3. Machiavellian warmongering among your rivals.

Note that Great Artists are not among the three. I prefer any specialist over the artist.

A quick comment on the need for religion for cultural wins - I won a deity cultural game today without building a single cathedral. I also didn't have The Hermitage. So my only cultural multiplier was +100% from Free Speech. The bulk of the culture was provided by 16 great artists used for great works.

Religion was still a key part of the win - I wouldn't have been able to generate 16 great artists without Pacifism (and the philosophical trait).

What you really need for cultural wins is some combination of the following:

1) Loads of artist specialists. These will directly produce culture and also produce great artists for even more culture.

2) Loads of commerce. This gets turned into culture whenever you decide to flip the culture slider.

3) Loads of commerce-producing buildings. This is the traditional "build lots of wonders" way to win and works great at lower difficulty levels.

4) Loads of cultural multipliers. Cathedrals and late media wonders can turn a mediocre culture city into a powerhouse.

You generally try to maximize #4 and have a combination of 1, 2, and 3, but as my game today proves, you can pull a win out without the multipliers.

Nice game and thread.But look,Walkerjks won because made her job And avoided be destroyed by a warmonger,Shadow2k must fight the others warriors And criple or destroy the culturated,travellers,diplomatics before they win.IMO,that's a game to "stand the test of time".
Best regards,

4-Time Victory:
============
To me this one makes the most sense. Engage in wars just enough to make your Civ land area significantly large (not necessarily as large as the biggest Civ around), then develop your cities to get high population, commerce, and science growth. Race to get techs and build wonders in order to boost your score, and use culture to expand your borders and grab border resources that will help make your population healthier and happier. This is not to say this is an easy win, esp. when Tokugawa or another warmongering Civ start expanding like nobody’s business.

The problems with pursuing this victory condition are (a) you will be preempted by other CIVs landing their own victory some other way. I don’t really mind this except in the case of Space Race, which I think is easier than the others. (b) I really think the amount of culture your Civ generates should logically factor directly into the score (c) It seems from what I’ve read that the “leadership” rating you get after you win hinges on the time it took to do so, which means that this victory guarantees you an ego-boosting “Dan Quale” rating. (Is this correct?)

Satisfaction rating 1-5 (in my opinion): 3.5



I really, really, agree with this. I'm not someone who typically starts a game with a certain victory condition in mind. I find that style of gameplay to be restricting. Instead, I go to build the best empire I can, with a fair mix of science, culture, military, and diplomacy. What this means is, I always win via Space Race, because it is so easy.

I currently see time victory as something of a loss. If left to their own devices, the AI WILL get a SR win by 2050, even on noble. If I have the power to stop them, then I just as easily have the power to go ahead and finish building the spaceship myself.

What I would absolutley love to see would be some type of "Histograph Mode" for the game. All victory conditions are disabled except time. Your goal is simply to build the best empire you can in the time alloted, and fufilling "victory" conditions would contribute to your score. In other words, instead of the relativley dull "Pop + Tech + Wonders + Winning Early" forumla we have now, you would get points based on Land Area, Population, Number of Civs wiped out, Culture (either as an entire empire, or bonuses for legendary cities), Spaceship Parts Built, and the final turn would have a UN "Victory" election that would yield points based on votes.

Obviously such a thing would require a LOT of tweaking to balance out right, but to me, there should be some kind of game mode that rewards the player who does a little of everything.

I've always been one of those type of people that likes to build my cities up as big as best as I can, with healthy spread of resources.

I just play the game and go with it...though when I get a big lead I usually end up restarting with a difficulty increase.

Just curious:

If you disable the "time" victory... does the game still end at 2050?

No, unless someone wins using another victory condition at that exact date!

I don't think anyone has said this yet, but you can win diplo without war. I've won only three, on noble, but in the ones I've won, one I was originally going to domination, but the other two I was peaceful. BTW did any read Sulla's (spelled right?) walkthrough?

In one, religion was key. I got both Hindu and Judism I think. It was continents and no one else on my continent had any religion at all. I spread Judism (because it naturally spread the fastest) and Everyone there had +4-6 :) . I was the largest country so when I got UN, the three countries all voted for me (each more than +15 :) ). I also cranked out missionaries like crazy and tried to convert other continents (didn't really work, but got lots of shine money).

In the other, I couldn't get any religion initially so I just went with the biggest influence (pangea) which was budda. I accepted any trade/help request/tribute and except for fighting some forced wars (and maybe one expansive war) I ended up winning diplo because it was the fastest way to win (space takes forever and not big or strong enough for domin).

I'm with other people on the not-finishing thing. My interest generally doesn't hold out long enough for a victory. Will be playing it on a harder difficulty soon. Or against humans.
I found that if you turn on "permenant alliances," you'll never be guaranteed a victory. I just lost a game where I was ahead in score (I had roughly 4,200, 2nd place had only about 2,500). Well, with 10 turns left for a Time Victory, the #2 and #4 teams formed a permenant alliance, catapulting them to first place (4,800 vs my 4,200). With only 10 turns left, there was nothing I could do to win.

I'm not sure if I liked that or not though....

The problem I have with the victory conditions is they mean your civilization is always headed towards goal from the beginning of time while at the same time you are trying to experience all these different time periods.

I think it would be better to have each era have it's own victory conditions and one way to win the game would be to win 3 eras.

Wow. This is one of the most interesting ideas I've ever seen on the forums. Sincerely.

Kind of like a tennis match. Someone can dominate the first set, but lose the last two, and then it's game over.

A variety of ways this could work... hmm...!

I think diplomatic would be greatly improved if you could have the option of positively influencing your allies a bit more. Currently you can ask your friends to cancel trade deals they have with other civs, but there is no opposite positive request.

Lets say that you and Mansa Musa are best buddies, you share a religion, you have fought in wars together, you have a defensive pact, you have a long standing peace and positive trade etc...

Late in the game you are trying to become friends with Hatty, but Mansa hates her for some stupid reasons. You can't maintain your friendship with both because they keep giving you those stupid "You traded with my worst enemy" minuses.

Mansa has been your friend forever, you should be able to ask him to start up some trade deals with Hatty - even possibly give him (or her) excess resources so he can turn around and trade them. Or maybe you can request your friend to "forgive our new ally HAtshepsut..." or something similar.

The point is, obviously you could just conquer Hatty thus getting all of "her votes" for diplo win, but I think it would be more fun for the peaceful builder to try to figure out ways of using your influence over the years to get AIs to like each other.

I never do space race and have enabled the religious vicotry that they left out. Much more fun now.:)

Whom do you see as likely to be more tolerant: An 85 year -old grandmother who has lived her whole life in a small town in Kansas with one Pentacostal church, or a 28 year-old man in Boston who grew up with friends, or at least acquaintances, of many races and religions?


Well dont really know, looking at the bakcgrounds of recent Al Queda bombers especially those that bombed London underground and to lesser degree 911 pilots..

Cultural and religious diversity certainly does not seem even half way patent solution for increasing understandiung and tolerance does it...

Of the previous suggestions of new VC, I like the idea of the "empire" scoring suggested by SmartMuffin. Successful wars of expansion/military campaigns, tech achievements, religious achievements and diplomatic solutions are all parts of the history of great empires, not individual crowning points.

Would you just point to the British development of the Magna Carta (government), the works of shakespeare (cultural), the science and math of Isaac newton (tech), the formation of the Anglican Church (religion) or the fact that for a while, the sun never set on the British empire (economics and military and cultural). The same could be said for the meso-american empires with the calanders and temples and military expansion and agricultural achievements. The Civ IV victory conditions almost are all pieces of the histories of great empires. The previous suggestion of winning a victory condition in each era comes close this premise, but does not quite get there.

As for the victory conditions themselves, I think they could use a good tweaking. Note I was a dominant Civ III (Diety, biggest map, as many civs allowed) player and now I am barely noble level Civ IV player (playing since Christmas). Even though am not a dominant Civ IV player yet, I feel the changes in Civ IV are for the better and the game is a great challenge.

For the cultural victory , I think a cross between the Civ III and current Civ IV cultural victory conditions would work. Have a total empire culture value that must be reached along with a certain number of legenday cities. Newly captured cities lose their cultural buildings/improvements so it doesn't lead to a late game conquest by default victory. If you keep the Civ IV culture allocated by city, then opponents capturing or razing of cities still can threaten this victory condition. IMO, the Cutlural VC can easily be modified to an empire scoring system with total culture and legendary city bonuses mathed fairly with other "vc" scoring inputs

The space race is what its name says it is. A Race. Should winning the race win you the world? Last I checked, the moon landings did not let me not ever have to work for a living while growing fat off tribute from all other nations. I think this victory condition screams for an empire scoring system. The tech heavy race and focus would command a good chunk of points in a Multiplayer "empire scoring system".

Conquest. What can you say, last man standing has always been the victor (except when one cheats himself/loses his soul in the process ;) ).

Domination could be augmented by requireing that you make any remaining countries your vassel (see the Aztec empire).

IMO, the Dimplomacy VC is broke since dimplomacy itself is broke. As stated earlier, an example is the player does not have any positive request to make with his/her friends (i.e. be nice to another country). I would go further and state that there is no diplomacy between the AI and the player at all. When an AI asks for a gift or tribute (depending on the AI character and game situation), if I say no, then I get a negative penalty. If I ask for a tribute or gift from them, and get refused, I get a penalty. How come the AI can ask for outrageous demands from the player and NOT get a penalty. Are you not upset at an AI that asks for outrageous demands? Do you not want to go kick the living bejonkers out of that pesky annoyed AI? In Civ IV, diplomacy is all about the player the only one giving. In real diplomacy, it is about both parties giving. Then again, the Diplomatic Victory is also based on a UN that does not intervene in wars (or try to broker peace), enact trade embargoes, send relief or any of the things the UN does (or is supposed to do, I am a cynic).

Anyways, this is my premier post on a kick-butt forum for a super-sweet game.

I think Space Race can be challenging if you're trying to get it as early in the game as possible with as few steps as possible. Try getting a SS victory score that is on par with an early domination or conquest victory score.

Cultural seems like it would be lot of planning and nail bitting tension until the the very end. I doubt if it would yield a very high score unless it was used in conjunction with a domination victory.

I guess I'm pretty sad, but I love the war path. I know, it's barbaric and all, but Civ 2 and Civ 4 both make awesome War Simulations. How uncultured... but it is the most fun in my opinion. I research early a few needed techs, then set the computer on auto research toward tanks. I work hard to get oil early and as soon as tanks are available, I really start taking care of business.

I have won the space race, but that "one more turn" hype only works for me when I'm at war.

Timed victory is miserable. I usually forget to turn it off, and so I'm out trying to conquer the world, and then learn I only have 100 turns left... time to consider nukes... which is beyond uncultured, but wha'ts a guy to do?

Sorry how do you switch on/off victory conditions?

After playing for many hours (Warlord on a standard map at Epic speed) against 6 opponents, four of whom I defeated, I had amassed 52.5% of the land and 57.3% of the population. Time and Space Victory conditions were disabled of course. As I was preparing to invade victim #5, the game ended on a Cultural victory. My score was a mere 9501, but all I received was 615 making this the poorest result so far on my little results table.

I don't think realism should enter into the victory discussion. Sure the space race shouldn't win you the game. But in real life, has it EVER been possible to eliminate every last rival? How long do empires manage to hold their territory? Not long. Moreover, the UN Secretary General does not rule the world, and having three of the world's biggest tourist attractions does not guarantee world domination for years to come.

The real issue is gameplay.

The problem with victories in Civilization has always been this: you pursue the hell out of a conquest victory, but when you realize you don't have the time or willpower to finish the job, you settle for one of the other victories. In other words, there is one major victory in Civilization, with several lesser secondary victories that you can get should you fall short of the major victory.

The solution, in abstract, is to make the secondary victories into primary victories. They can no longer be victories you settle for should you fail at conquest. This can be done in two ways:

1. Make domination count against certain secondary victories, rather than helping you towards them.

2. Make the mechanisms to pursue secondary victories as intricate as the mechanisms to pursue domination (units, XP, treaties and pacts, cities as critical milestones). Currently, the other non-war mechanisms are too simple.

I definitively like Diplomatic win, my last game was really tight, I won in 1932AD (Prince difficulty). If Roosevelt had 5 more seats he would be the #2 candidate (instead of Russia, who by the way hated me) and he would vote for himself so there would be no winner. I was also starting the space race VS Elizabeth. I liked that game very much, I made Elizabeth, Roosevelt and Asoka bang on the rest (except Russia, I didn't wanted them to loose population points because I knew Elizabeth and Roosevelt hated them so they would vote for me instead of abstaining or voting for Roosevelt)

...The real issue is gameplay....

exactly - as usual always forgotten, but all important.


1. Make domination count against certain secondary victories, rather than helping you towards them.

2. Make the mechanisms to pursue secondary victories as intricate as the mechanisms to pursue domination (units, XP, treaties and pacts, cities as critical milestones). Currently, the other non-war mechanisms are too simple.

I really like these suggestions. I totally get number 2 - that was what I was just starting to suggest in my post earlier.

How would domination count against the other victories though? Would there be a space ship building penalty if you had too many cities? That seems too crude. Any ideas?

The problem with having a space race penalty for too many cities ... hardcore competitive players would just trade their cities away towards the end of the game, if it gave them a better shot at that victory type.

What would be cooler, more fair, and less exploitable is if your population was more responsive to your foreign policy. Not just war weariness... but production bonuses for excess happiness, anger for backstabbing a well-liked neighbor, happiness bonuses for trading with well-liked neighbors... those could motivate people to stay at peace.

The reality is most empires crumble from within. Not to say this is a game where empires should crumble, but they should experience a different mood and mindset from their peaceful rivals.

That's just one of many suggestions.

Well dont really know, looking at the bakcgrounds of recent Al Queda bombers especially those that bombed London underground and to lesser degree 911 pilots..

The above quote really belongs in a different forum, but since it is here....I must point out that..

There was no link between al Qaeda and the London bombing.

The London Bombing were carried out by disaffected British Asian young men.

NO LINK HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED WITH ANY TERRORIST ORGANISATION AND THE LONDON BOMBINGS

al Qaeda + Iraq = Tooth Fairy

Regarding victory

Half way thru the game I usually know whether I will win.

At about 70% thru victory is often a foregone conclusion... the final slog to achieve space race, conquest, domination or diplomatic win then becomes quite boring. I wish this was not the case because I really enjoy the early and middle parts of the game. But knowing you will win when only half way thru makes for a tedious end game.

Am I alone in feeling this or do others have the same experience?

Regarding victory

Half way thru the game I usually know whether I will win.

At about 70% thru victory is often a foregone conclusion... the final slog to achieve space race, conquest, domination or diplomatic win then becomes quite boring. I wish this was not the case because I really enjoy the early and middle parts of the game. But knowing you will win when only half way thru makes for a tedious end game.

Am I alone in feeling this or do others have the same experience?

YOu're not alone. I find that when i look like i will win, i get bored and start a new game. Sometime i start a new game before i look like im going to win, because i find the late ages boring. Nukes are pretty lame, planes suck, ships are pretty useless, and if you dont have tanks, you're dead.

Does anyone know the rules on Abstaining from UN votes? Can you only Abstain once or not twice in a row? Are the Abstain votes just removed, or do you still need to get the same number of votes for a diplo victory?

Very theoretical example: 5 civs each holding 20% of population. If 3 abstain, would it prevent a diplo victory, or would the vote of the other two prevail?