Imbalanced Victory Conditions?

OmniPotent42 said:

Depending on the map type and size, Diplomatic or Domination are quickest.
Science is always the easiest
Culture is the longest and gets harder with higher difficulties.

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That's quite odd, since all of my cultural victories are finished long before I get anywhere close to the UN or the Apollo project. Usually done by the time I get my first sniff of the Atomic Age. And frankly, I'm not even very good at it. If you are playing a deliberate cultural game from the start, it can be much faster than the Diplomatic route.

Remember that you would be taking a very diffferent tech path for, e.g., a science or diplo victory. Yes, you have to get to later eras for those VCs, but you are prioritizing science buildings and population to slam through the tech tree, rather than beelining culture techs and building culture wonders. You may be able to get a culture victory without even researching Plastics, but it may well take longer than a corresponding beelined science or diplo victory.

Browd said:

Remember that you would be taking a very diffferent tech path for, e.g., a science or diplo victory. Yes, you have to get to later eras for those VCs, but you are prioritizing science buildings and population to slam through the tech tree, rather than beelining culture techs and building culture wonders. You may be able to get a culture victory without even researching Plastics, but it may well take longer than a corresponding beelined science or diplo victory.

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Maybe, but you certainly won't be stopping along the way and saying, oh, I'll just build the UN now and be done with it, either

You can gun for any victory on King and below, the AI won't fight you. This is true on Emperor too, but here the AI sometimes try to win.

On Immortal, you win if you kill a lot of AI's, which of course the human player do well. You can still lose if an AI is on a different continent and is running away in techs/SP's.

On Deity, it's all chance or/and a very good player.

I agree that a diplomatic victory is the easiest, after my first few games i have always turned off diplomatic victory as it just seemed too much of a cheap (as in tacky) style of winning and not very diplomatic, it's a little better in G&K but still quite a tacky way to win.
Referencing what others have said about playing on harder difficulties though, from a player perspective it is a lot harder on immortal+ as the AI is swimming in so much gold that it can often buy every CS in a single turn.
Even so i still turn that condition off because i don't like the style of winning, a diplomatic victory should be based on how you treat other nations, not simply how many you can buy off.

If your bored of a victory type and want to play a different game you can always turn off the victory conditions you don't like.

Diplomatic victory is the easiest to counter. Buy/conquer enough city state and decades war on the civ that is about to win and it won't be able to buy it back. It is too dried may on other factors and that's what make it harder.
Plus on immortal + you always end up with a runaway who has 200+ influence with every city states on the map, and a tons of gold.

Hammer Rabbi said:

to me, science was always easiest ... the only constraint you have is aluminum and it isnt that hard to either find some in your borders, ally a CS that has it, or trade for it with a civ you arent at war with.

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Same here, and no matter what I set out to do unless it's Cultural, I invariably build the spaceship after all. Aluminum is never a problem anymore, you just purchase five Recycling Centers and you're golden. I've never even attempted a Diplo victory, and in Civ4 I always disabled that victory condition. I prefer my Diplomacy at the point of a sword