Good to see this again, with this easier survey I took some time to make sense of it and fill it out.
Also, I suspect you're students working on an assignment. Having been in your shoes once, I know how... difficult... people can react to a survey. I'm only glad I did my survey on the street or in the office, because that allowed me to explain about the approach and the meaning of my questions. Online questionnaires can be very problematic. Like Seraiel, I don't mean this in a bad way, but in case it's just an assignment: Crunch the numbers you get, run some statistics, deliver the paper on time, be done with it. Probably present and compare with your fellow students who studied other games. Also, posting your results in whatever form here, would be a nice touch.
But if you are on the warpath to really get serious research on game behavior done?
Please take the advice that the experts here aren't reluctant to share. In the old thread, I suggested running AI games to see which AI wins how. That was one idea, but it isn't the best for human decision making which I assume is your deal.
Now some thoughts on what you might consider - please bear with me for a paragraph or two: Productive cities are always important. You can use that production towards all goals directly or indirectly or in-in-indirectly if I may say so. The decision to finish THAT health building in THAT city in THAT early round may be an important factor in swinging my empire towards victory - which one, might be decided later even. Less and less, I also make bad decisions which keep or delay me from achieving victory. Each game I played, I could write entire stories about why I made which decision. For each game, I would fill out a questionnaire about it differently, because I'm varying my setups so much.
Which brought me to an idea: In fact, there are many stories, screenshots, videos and writeups available. I don't think you want to deeply analyze these, as it is time-heavy (though that may be a research angle to firstly get game knowledge. You are very focused on the victory types, but decisions are based on your strategy which is something else entirely in my eyes).
Now I'm getting to it: the Hall of Fame!!
A casual player without ambitions, I never participated there, but I understand that they store the final savegames of thousands of games. This is the creme de la creme of Civ IV players over the course of many years, and in their games, they always played sequential through these games without ever reloading (i.e. cheating).
Contact the guys who run HoF, ask whether or not you may run studies on this knowledge base: While you still can't directly observe intention and playing style of the decision makers, you could possibly crunch the large numbers on Victory types, map types, number of cities of winner, year of victory, which civilization+leader was used for which victory type, totals of empire productivity and empire happiness, religions, technologies researched, and so on.
And I'm not even talking about forensical stuff. As far as I understand (HoF players please correct me if I'm wrong), it is even possible to dig into the savegames and learn in which order players researched and built, how they used their sliders, and so on.
Again, just some thoughts, feel free to adopt some of them in your approach if you like them.
This seems like great advice.
Keler has already done multiple AI vs. AI games. (43 tournaments)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=551932
Zara Yaqob is the strongest AI. (Wins the most games)
Justinian is a very close #2.
Even more insane, this was attempted by another Civ 4 fanatic named
Sulla, and got similar results.
Justinian won Civ 4 Survivor Season 1, with Zara placing 2nd.
http://www.sullla.com/civ4survivorindex.html
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There is lots of data in the
Hall of Fame sure.
Everyone tries to win the fastest.
Keep in mind that to achieve the fastest victory, the victory condition is decided on
before the map is even generated.
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The survey appears to question when and what factors make people decide to pursue a victory condition
after the game has started.
Broadly speaking, the human player tries to get the most cities possible with the most amount of
Every victory condition is easier with more cities and more food.
Taking cities with military units from the AI has the best possible
cost:benefit ratio, so a player who goes to war tends to do much better than a pacifist player.
Not only do you get a 100
city with resources that help the entire empire, you get all the improvements the AI spent Worker-turns improving, population that can be whipped into production (30
each pop), and buildings that you didn't have to produce yourself.
Apostolic Palace is by far the easiest victory to achieve.
I ignore it because it is so easy that there is no challenge.
The devil himself made a map and put the Human Player on an island with
no resources whatsoever.
One player won that map, and it was an AP Victory.
http://www.sullla.com/Civ4/comments.html (Adventure #26)
Right at the start, I aim for a military victory. (Conquest, Domination)
If I'm too weak to achieve that, I'll try for a Culture win.
If I'm too weak and my diplomatic relations with the AI are really good, I'll try for a UN Victory instead. (This is rare, I get a lot of -1 diplo every time I declare war)
Space Race is mostly for fun.
All victories can be achieved earlier than Space.
