Victory Conditions [Civ 3 Complete]

I am curious as to which victory conditions people use and play for.

I only use 3 victory conditions: Conquest, Space Race, and Cultural.

I don't use Domination because it feels like a watered down version of Conquest and it prevents come from behind victories. If I want to win militarily, then I want to crush all of my enemies. But I don't want my Space Race cut short by some AI civ hitting some arbitrary land & population figure. If I'm still alive and competitive in the Space Race, then the AI hasn't dominated me (even if I am a relatively small empire).

I don't use Diplomatic because I find it to be too random and unsatisfying. I had several nice Conquest or Space Race games prematurely interrupted by a Diplomatic ending. Sometimes I won the vote, sometimes I lost, but I always felt frustrated that the game ended in that way.

I typically play on Monarch as the Germans. I use continents and 70% water, with all environmental settings in the middle. I play a combination of builder and warmonger (depending on the circumstances). Usually, if I have the capability of building significant amounts of Modern Armor before the AI has Computers or Rocketry, I blitz the remaining AI civs and win by Conquest. If not, I forgo conquest and take the Space Race option.

I have won cultural victories before (by both the 100K and 20K routes), but it usually comes as an accident (e.g. I get unusually lucky with Scientific Leaders and can rush build several early and middle age wonders in my capital). I've also lost a few times to Cultural victories. In a way, Cultural has features of the conditions I don't like (it can abruptly end games that are still competitive militarily or scientifically), but Cultural victory happens so rarely in my games that I don't mind.

I don't really count the 2050 end score victory as a true "victory," but I don't think that any of my games have ever made it to 2050 without someone hitting a victory condition.

Is my disdain of Domination and Diplomacy unusual? Are there any victory conditions that rest of you dislike?

Roundman said:

I am curious as to which victory conditions people use and play for.

I only use 3 victory conditions: Conquest, Space Race, and Cultural.

I don't use Domination because it feels like a watered down version of Conquest and it prevents come from behind victories. If I want to win militarily, then I want to crush all of my enemies. But I don't want my Space Race cut short by some AI civ hitting some arbitrary land & population figure. If I'm still alive and competitive in the Space Race, then the AI hasn't dominated me (even if I am a relatively small empire).

I don't use Diplomatic because I find it to be too random and unsatisfying. I had several nice Conquest or Space Race games prematurely interrupted by a Diplomatic ending. Sometimes I won the vote, sometimes I lost, but I always felt frustrated that the game ended in that way.

I typically play on Monarch as the Germans. I use continents and 70% water, with all environmental settings in the middle. I play a combination of builder and warmonger (depending on the circumstances). Usually, if I have the capability of building significant amounts of Modern Armor before the AI has Computers or Rocketry, I blitz the remaining AI civs and win by Conquest. If not, I forgo conquest and take the Space Race option.

I have won cultural victories before (by both the 100K and 20K routes), but it usually comes as an accident (e.g. I get unusually lucky with Scientific Leaders and can rush build several early and middle age wonders in my capital). I've also lost a few times to Cultural victories. In a way, Cultural has features of the conditions I don't like (it can abruptly end games that are still competitive militarily or scientifically), but Cultural victory happens so rarely in my games that I don't mind.

I don't really count the 2050 end score victory as a true "victory," but I don't think that any of my games have ever made it to 2050 without someone hitting a victory condition.

Is my disdain of Domination and Diplomacy unusual? Are there any victory conditions that rest of you dislike?

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Conquest, Space Race, and Domination.

If you own 66% of the population and 66% of the land mass, I have the idea you're the winner anyway. It's only mop up until everyone is gone. (the part of the game I don't like much).

To be honest, it's the only way I play the game, I've never cared for making much Culture. Culture is a land grabber for me .

I play with all civs, I don't stick to one much. The Austrians are fun though, so are the Chinese and Dutch.
I put the map at random all and land mass depending on the time I have (normal or large).

I made a UN victory once, but felt like a anti-climax. "Everyone likes you! Yay!"

Space race is always nice, I've won many games like that even since the Civ1 days....

Theov said:

Conquest, Space Race, and Domination.

If you own 66% of the population and 66% of the land mass, I have the idea you're the winner anyway. It's only mop up until everyone is gone. (the part of the game I don't like much)...

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The mop up is my favorite part! I love it when the helpless AI is trying to defend its last few cities from my Modern Armor onslaught using conscript Riflemen because it no longer has access to rubber. It's payback for the AI's behavior throughout the games. I play on standard size maps, so the mop up rarely gets too tedious. Getting Marine transports to isolated, one-tile island cities can sometimes be boring, but conquering Magellan's Voyage helps speed things up a bit.

I have won games via Space Race in which one massive AI opponent would have won a Domination victory if Domination were enabled. Granted, my scores for those games usually weren't that high.

I play on custom modified maps of my own making, but as this is a discussion of favorite victory conditions, I do not think that matters much.

My standard victory conditions are Domination, Conquest, and Space Race, along with enabling Victory Point scoring. The maps I play on are typically 250 X 250 or larger, with 360 X 180 being my current experiment, as Archipelago with 70 to 80 percent water, climate Normal, Temperate, 4 billion years, and Barbarians set to Raging. I add a fair number of boosted Barbarians (Gallic Swordsman/Cossack/Privateer, all with 4 added Hit Points to make them reasonably tough), and make sure I have a few single-tile islands with a Barbarian camp.

As I like to build Wonders, I do not go for either a Wonder or Cultural Victory, and on the large maps that I play on, Domination is fairly difficult to achieve, and Conquest even harder. Generally I win with either Space Race or Victory Points. While I do not bother with a UN/Diplomatic Victory, I will be using that victory condition for my summer historical games class, assuming that I can get Test of Time working the way I want it in time.

Roundman said:

The mop up is my favorite part! I love it when the helpless AI is trying to defend its last few cities from my Modern Armor onslaught using conscript Riflemen because it no longer has access to rubber. It's payback for the AI's behavior throughout the games. I play on standard size maps, so the mop up rarely gets too tedious. Getting Marine transports to isolated, one-tile island cities can sometimes be boring, but conquering Magellan's Voyage helps speed things up a bit.

I have won games via Space Race in which one massive AI opponent would have won a Domination victory if Domination were enabled. Granted, my scores for those games usually weren't that high.

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It's fun to get back to an AI you met earlier in the game.

I'm now busy wiping america off the map, after that the Inca will finally be put down.
My first landing there was not successful; I could tear up their infrastructure, but they repaired quickly, and had a large army.
Now I come back with Guerillas and Marines, and they are still in the Middle Ages.

"Remember me?"

So yeah, it's nice to tear through a country like a knife thru butter, but no, I find it a bit too tedious.

I habitually enable all the standard VCs, so as to avoid weakening the AICivs even more than they are already.

Up until a couple of years back, I'd generally play out all my games (Vanilla, Regent-Monarch, all Standard-Continents, Random-opponents) right into the Modern Age (if I could manage to last that long!), and go for the Space VC if I had the choice. I've always loved Sci-fi, and for me, that's the 'good ending' of a Civ3-game (it's the only one the Devs bothered to make a movie for!). I'd take a UN-vote as second-best if I had to (although on a Standard Continents map, there usually aren't that many nations left to vote by that point -- and making MPPs with everyone just before the vote makes winning a Diplo-VC kind of hollow); Histo was just boring (not least, waiting for the clock to tick over to 2050 AD), but if there was nothing better, I'd rather have a win than a loss.

I deliberately went for Culture (100K) only once, in Vanilla (as the Babs, at Regent), but at that point in my Civ3 career, I still didn't really know what I was doing (arguably, I still don't!). I didn't get the Culture-win when I expected to, because the French already had just over 50K when I got to 100K. There weren't quite enough turns left to win a 20K before 2050 either, because although I'd built a lot of the GWonders -- mostly using straight builds, IIRC -- they were spread over 3 cities, because Babylon wasn't coastal, and Ur had the most SPT. I could probably still have got the 100K VC if I'd carried on racking up more culture points for another 20-30T (because with all the late Medieval, Industrial and Modern GWonders, I was now earning Culture more than twice as fast as the French), but I was getting bored with that game, so I just rushed all the Spaceship-parts in a couple of turns and went to Alpha Centauri instead. I would almost certainly have won 100K if I'd whipped/rushed more cultural improvements at the early stages of the game (and built more culture-farms and fewer Metros later!), but I've never gone for a Culture VC since then.

Since I got Conquests early last year, I've been trying to break out of my habitual builder-mindset (I didn't even start playing CivDOS until after I'd got bored with SimCity2000!), and have won quite a few military-based Dominations -- most recently with the Aztecs at Emp (Small Pangaea). I was actually going for Conquest on that one, but even though I successfully overcame my usual aversion to razing captured non-Wonder cities, I wasn't strong enough to resist the urge to plant beaker/gold-farms all over the captured territory, so I hit the Dom-limit instead. I also played a Tiny Continents All-random Emp Vanilla game a couple of months back, got the Persians assigned as my Civ, and was 2 cities short of a full Conquest VC when I hit the Dom-limit, for much the same reasons -- although in that game, if I'd taken 1-2T to better array my forces, and then captured all the remaining French cities in a single turn, instead of 3/5 of them, I would have got the Conquest.

I'm not really ruthless enough to be comfortable with full-on genocidal warmongering, or whipping culture-buildings. (In my current game -- Small Continents, Emp Koreans -- I just used the whip for the first time ever, because I was under attack and wanted a decent defender in that town to make it less attractive as a target, but I felt dirty afterwards)...

I am happy to win any way I can. I am an occasional winner at emperor level.

I have to admit, my last Domination victory was a bit disappointing ... I'd defeated the Americans, Babylonians, Zulu and Iroquois, and was just getting ready to take out the Chinese. I think next game I'll be more selective in which VCs I allow.

I've also never gotten far enough technologically for a Diplomatic or Space Race victory, so I've only ever gotten Conquest, Domination, Cultural & Histographic, and because of Domination it's been a long time since total conquest. Again, I think I'll have to be more selective.

My first preference is either diplomatic or Conquest /domination. I rarely go for the spaceship if I want to see the animation of my spaceship taking off, as that requires some extra research and building. Culture 100k just comes on its own by chance (if I built the ToA earlier and if I've got lots of libs and universities) .

Roundman said:

Is my disdain of Domination and Diplomacy unusual? Are there any victory conditions that rest of you dislike?

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Yes it is unusual. As for domination, its generally achieved in the path for Conquest if you don't raze AI cities. While opting for diplomatic victory, you can very easily get a majority vote. Just make sure you declare war on your to be un rival and take in all the other civs in Alliance with an mpp to further improve relations. Apart from that you could also keep gifting them some techs from the early IA (at monarch by this time one can have a very decent tech lead) . This would almost ensure that you get a majority.

Domination, because By the time all my rivals have been destroyed, I usually have way more than 66% of the world's land area and population.

If a game lingers into the Modern era I'll go for Spaceship.

Atishay Jain said:

Yes it is unusual. As for domination, its generally achieved in the path for Conquest if you don't raze AI cities. While opting for diplomatic victory, you can very easily get a majority vote. Just make sure you declare war on your to be un rival and take in all the other civs in Alliance with an mpp to further improve relations. Apart from that you could also keep gifting them some techs from the early IA (at monarch by this time one can have a very decent tech lead) . This would almost ensure that you get a majority.

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It's not that I find the Diplomacy and Domination conditions difficult to achieve, it's that I don't like achieving them. I turn them off so that they aren't in the mix. To me, Domination seems pointless other than to shorten a game. I had a Conquest win today. When I was preparing my forces for the invasion of the last continent, I wasn't wishing that I the game would give me a Domination victory screen (even though at that point I probably would have qualified for one had it been activated). I have fun finishing the game and grinding out the total conquest before the clock ticks to 2050. Plus, I have had fun being the small, scrappy underdog defying the world dominating AI power to win the game via Space Race. I just don't see the appeal of cutting the game short.

As for Diplomacy, I don't like the way it is implemented. The vote mechanism is too gimmicky (for some of the reasons you pointed out), and it makes the diplomatic wins implausible and unsatisfying to me. Plus it sometimes cuts short interesting games (usually a neck and neck space race for me, but sometimes a conquest). I got tired of the games ending on a UN vote, so I turned it off. I guess for the real experts this doesn't matter because the games are usually over before the modern age, but, due to my play style and civ choice, I almost always get to the modern age.

Roundman said:

I just don't see the appeal of cutting the game short.

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Now this is where I think we differ. I try to finish my games as quickly as possible, as I can't spare a lot of time and for me, quicker games = more games=more fun. For me the best part of the game is the initial phase struggle, early game changing wars alongside settling and expansion. My games rarely go late into the modern age (only when I want a spaceship victory) . So I guess we both play with different aims so naturally we have different victory preferences [emoji3] [emoji3] [emoji3]

Atishay Jain said:

Now this is where I think we differ. I try to finish my games as quickly as possible, as I can't spare a lot of time and for me, quicker games = more games=more fun. For me the best part of the game is the initial phase struggle, early game changing wars alongside settling and expansion. My games rarely go late into the modern age (only when I want a spaceship victory) . So I guess we both play with different aims so naturally we have different victory preferences [emoji3] [emoji3] [emoji3]

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It also likely depends on map size. I play on standard sized maps with 8 civs. I automate my workers after I have some of the key features of my core cities set up the way that I like (which is probably one of the reasons I can get enough challenge out of Monarch that I'm not interested in advancing). Usually, my space race games end in 4 to 6 hours, and even my longest, most drawn out conquests only take 10 or 11 hours to finish. I could see maybe being content with Domination if you're playing on Huge and it takes 50 or 60 hours to play one game- but that's why I don't play Huge maps in the first place.

My favorite parts of the game are the Ancient Age land race and the late Industrial Age onwards when I get to use my Panzers, Bombers, Marines, Modern Armor, Artillery, etc. The lull for me usually happens in the period between Gunpowder/Education and Replaceable Parts / Scientific Method during which I'm consolidating my core empire and preparing to defend against the possibility of a Cavalry horde.

I agree with the map size being a decisive factor but I also play mostly on standard and below, rarely on large and only once have I played huge. Also, I automate my workers a bit later, after railroading is done in my core cities which may be a reason why my games are longer. Generally though I can achieve diplomatic victory in 5-7 hours, cultural 20k and 100k in about the same time and Conquests/domination usually in about 4-5 hours.