New Victory Conditions?

[Gyra Solune]

So do you think the addition of new VCs is a good idea? If so, what should they be?

Of course, the very first one that comes to mind is a religious victory, which has the simple focus of making your religion the majority in every city, including Holy Cities. Though straightforward, this would definitely cause one to aggressively push their religious goals, both to make headway towards a victory even in the early game, and to defend an opponent from doing just that.

Secondly would probably be an economic victory, though this wouldn't be the old "Get lots of money!11111", but rather revolve around some kind of refined Corporation mechanic. Instead of you directly founding a Corporation, instead, they are founded independently when certain conditions are met, and they will move to whichever location is the most attractive to them. This, of course, would entail cities with a high GPT output and are connected to lots of trade routes and resources. The victory would be simple in concept: have every Corporation put their headquarters in your empire. It is not a simple matter of having the most GPT though, but rather, having access to boatloads of resources and attracting the interests of entities beyond the boundaries of empires. This also would have the effect of promoting colonialism and establishment of foreign outposts. Corporations would be attracted to setting up their shops in newly-founded cities primed to grow, or cities that have trade route access to foreign lands. There's other routes too- you can appeal to them by effectively selling Delegates to them, giving you money and their interests in relocating their headquarters to you, but of course, has the effect of, you know, giving corporations control over the affairs of your empire, and they are perfectly happy to support proposals that would benefit their own interests over yours.

Those are just my thoughts, but I wonder if any others could be added. Brave New World showed us they are perfectly willing to entirely change the conditions for an existing victory, so I wonder if adding in new ones is viable.

 

[otaman1]

Economical Victory - Found a Corporation and have at least 200 GPT funding it from all civilizations ingame (all civs ingame must contribute a GPT to the Corporation)
Expansive Victory - Control more than X cities (X depends on map size) by 2050

• Duel = 20 cities
• Tiny = 25 cities
• Small = 30 cities
• Standard = 40 cities
• Large = 50 cities
• Huge = 60 cities

Religious Victory - Have all cities in the world adopt your religion by 2050 (religions that still can founded is limited to number of civs ingame)

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Revised Diplomatic Victory
I've always thought the current popularity contest is a little bit lame for a diplomatic victory. I'd prefer if war and distrust against other cultures was the norm in each game, and to remove this norm, thus achieving true world peace, became a victory condition. This could be achived with Negotiators, which each civ recieves two of if the "Recruit Negotiators" resolution passes in WC. They go to a currently in war foreign civ and perform the negotiate peace action, which consumes the negotiator and increasesthe AI's likelyhood of wanting a cease fire with xx%.

Revised Scientific Victory
I think the space race is more of a production victory rather than a science victory. Preferably, this new victory condition would revolve around making science the new world religion. One way this could work, is once you complete the tech tree, you can now use your spare science points to buy Tutors. These tutors can hold lectures in cities, which give them the double amount of employment spots in scientific buildings. Once all cities have gained this bonus, victory goes to the civ who managed to hold the most lectures, with spare science points as a tie-breaker.

Religious Victory
This already been mentioned. The new victory condition would be to make sure that one religion, but not necissarely the one you founded, becomes dominant in all cities on the map.

Economic Victory
Let's say we have this new unit called the Tycoon. These tycoons can go over to a civilization you've got at least one trade route with, and deploy corporate interest on its improvements. This boosts your yield from the trade route(s) in question with xx% per deployment. If you manage to deploy corporate interest on all foreign improvments. You can imagine Order civs not being happy about this, so they may recruit Proletariats to throw out corporate interests. Though this action would, as you could imagine, sour relationships.

 

[Gyra Solune]

Revised Diplomatic Victory
I've always thought the current popularity contest is a little bit lame for a diplomatic victory. I'd prefer if war and distrust against other cultures was the norm in each game, and to remove this norm, thus achieving true world peace, became a victory condition. This could be achived with Negotiators, which each civ recieves two of if the "Recruit Negotiators" resolution passes in WC. They go to a currently in war foreign civ and perform the negotiate peace action, which consumes the negotiator and increasesthe AI's likelyhood of wanting a cease fire with xx%.

Revised Scientific Victory
I think the space race is more of a production victory rather than a science victory. Preferably, this new victory condition would revolve around making science the new world religion. One way this could work, is once you complete the tech tree, you can now use your spare science points to buy Tutors. These tutors can hold lectures in cities, which give them the double amount of employment spots in scientific buildings. Once all cities have gained this bonus, victory goes to the civ who managed to hold the most lectures, with spare science points as a tie-breaker.

Religious Victory
This already been mentioned. The new victory condition would be to make sure that one religion, but not necissarely the one you founded, becomes dominant in all cities on the map.

Economic Victory
Let's say we have this new unit called the Tycoon. These tycoons can go over to a civilization you've got at least one trade route with, and deploy corporate interest on its improvements. This boosts your yield from the trade route(s) in question with xx% per deployment. If you manage to deploy corporate interest on all foreign improvments. You can imagine Order civs not being happy about this, so they may recruit Proletariats to throw out corporate interests. Though this action would, as you could imagine, sour relationships.

That diplomatic victory seems like it wouldn't work in a straight-up multiplayer match. You have to give actual incentive to people for them to cease war, like souring global trade route bonuses until they stop, or having their unhappiness skyrocket, or such and such.

The science process does need to be improved, yes. I suggested research projects and the like, where progression through the tech tree is initially based on simple things like "visit tiles with certain resources" or "engage in combat with x type of unit", but later on grows more complex, requiring the usage of new sorts of scientific units that can found research outposts and specialized facilities, like a ballistics testing ground or a hadron collider or such, and you have to set those facilities to perform certain functions so that your Great Scientists can visit it and fulfill the conditions for the next expensive tech. That way getting the spaceship parts is not just a waiting game, but actively requires you to invest in the scientific ongoings of your civilization.

The thing with a religious victory is that it entails that no matter what nation people are in across the world, in the end they will see their own leaders as inferior to the holiness of their faith, and view those who hold providence over their religion as the prime authority. Should you command it, your followers across the world will follow your word over the word of their politicians, and in the end the inferior faith of others will never be able to succeed if their people view someone else as more important. Thusly spreading a religion that you haven't founded ultimately means that people will view the Holy City as their supreme leader. Sure, you spreading their religion is nice and should confer benefits unto you as well, but at the end of the day you're not the one the people see as holy.

 

[Xandinho]

I always wanted to see Victory economic, accumulating a certain amount of gold

 

[DudewiththeFood]

Economic Victory

Gain 1000gpt for ten turns at least and own a copy of every luxury resource.

 

[Viregel]

I don't want Religious Victory centred around dominating the world with your religion. As a complete rip-off of the Tourism Victory, how about Pilgrimage? Basically, you need to attract more people to your Holy City than every other Holy City put together. This would only be achievable after a certain technology is reached. If you weren't going for a Religious Victory, it would be worthwhile attracting pilgrims to get gold. You could get them by having religious relics or spreading your religion, and possibly by having certain policies or beliefs. As I said, this is a rip-off of the Tourism Victory, but I think that it seems more manageable than "convert all the heathens to the true religion".

 

[Syailendra]

Economic Victory

Gain 1000gpt for ten turns at least and own a copy of every luxury resource.

this won't work, to achieve that you'll need tons of puppets all around the world, probably the way to do it is spare 1 capital intact, while you actually can puppet it.

 

[Sheershaw]

Economic Victory: Get every other civ in the world into debt

I'd also accompany this with a new Central Bank wonder that any player can build. It can be used to borrow money that would be repaid over a period of time with interest.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

That diplomatic victory seems like it wouldn't work in a straight-up multiplayer match. You have to give actual incentive to people for them to cease war, like souring global trade route bonuses until they stop, or having their unhappiness skyrocket, or such and such.

The science process does need to be improved, yes. I suggested research projects and the like, where progression through the tech tree is initially based on simple things like "visit tiles with certain resources" or "engage in combat with x type of unit", but later on grows more complex, requiring the usage of new sorts of scientific units that can found research outposts and specialized facilities, like a ballistics testing ground or a hadron collider or such, and you have to set those facilities to perform certain functions so that your Great Scientists can visit it and fulfill the conditions for the next expensive tech. That way getting the spaceship parts is not just a waiting game, but actively requires you to invest in the scientific ongoings of your civilization.

The thing with a religious victory is that it entails that no matter what nation people are in across the world, in the end they will see their own leaders as inferior to the holiness of their faith, and view those who hold providence over their religion as the prime authority. Should you command it, your followers across the world will follow your word over the word of their politicians, and in the end the inferior faith of others will never be able to succeed if their people view someone else as more important. Thusly spreading a religion that you haven't founded ultimately means that people will view the Holy City as their supreme leader. Sure, you spreading their religion is nice and should confer benefits unto you as well, but at the end of the day you're not the one the people see as holy.

I thought that the diplomatic victory should be about all civs, inlcuding you, looking over their own national interests, and strive to achieve something that benefits all mankind. The only problem is, how is an AI supposed to convince you to cease fire permanently? If someone managed to build such AI, that would be a pretty big deal.

I actually prefer the mechanics in your suggestion for scientific victory, when I read about them. Though I still stand by that the end goal shouldn't revolve around spaceships, but rather about achieving some ultimate knowledges and discovering technologies which obsoletes the old order radically. Perhaps the victory condition could be about preventing climate changes from wiping out civilization.

As for the religious victory, there are many cases in history where nations devotionally battle in the name of a foreign religion, and I thought there has to be a way to emulate that in Civ games.

If the victory conditions sound like too much of a challenge to complete before 2100 AD, why not extend the gameplay further into the future?

 

[DudewiththeFood]

this won't work, to achieve that you'll need tons of puppets all around the world, probably the way to do it is spare 1 capital intact, while you actually can puppet it.

Of course it'll work. Trade for things and ally city-states with all the money you are making as long as you don't swap them for GPT.

 

[Galgus]

Economical Victory - Found a Corporation and have at least 200 GPT funding it from all civilizations ingame (all civs ingame must contribute a GPT to the Corporation)
Expansive Victory - Control more than X cities (X depends on map size) by 2050

• Duel = 20 cities
• Tiny = 25 cities
• Small = 30 cities
• Standard = 40 cities
• Large = 50 cities
• Huge = 60 cities

Religious Victory - Have all cities in the world adopt your religion by 2050 (religions that still can founded is limited to number of civs ingame)

City spam would be a pretty lame victory condition: having a certain % of the world population in your Empire would be better for something like that.

 

[wigwam]

So do you think the addition of new VCs is a good idea? If so, what should they be?

I'll be the spoilsport who says nope, we've got all the VCs we need. I don't think a religious victory would work well with the game's current faith/religion mechanics, and, apart from thinking that an economic victory is just a bad idea, I'd say we already have one (Diplomatic). The one thing that irks me a little about the VCs now (apart from some issues with Diplomatic wins) is that Science doesn't function like the others.

The nice thing about Domination, Cultural, and Diplomatic is that—in theory (Diplomatic in its current state is a little shaky)—they're now all resistible. It's not just a race to the finish line; you can, no matter what goals you're pursuing, actively impede your opponents' progress towards any of those victories. Even the Time victory has a bit of push-and-pull to it; if the last turn is approaching, maybe you can take the leader down a peg by nuking his most Wonder-ful city and swiping it (not that you'll ever get to a Time victory if the Science victory condition is active).

Science, on the other hand, is just a race. It's a fairly complex race, I guess, combining research, production, maybe even some gold and diplomacy, but it's not a dynamic one. There's very little you can do to slow an opponent's progress towards a science win (just avoid signing RAs with tech competitors, and now, in BNW, pass Arts Funding). You can't even destroy a spaceship on the launching pad by capturing the enemy capital anymore, which means all-out annihilative war is the only way to stop somebody ahead of you (and that's not really in the spirit of the science win, is it?).

In some of the previous Civ games, the spaceship was more complex than just a checklist of six mandatory pieces; you balanced your readiness to launch against a chance of failure, the speed of the spaceship, and the number of points you'd get for launching it successfully. If somebody else launched before you, you could slap some extra engines on your ship and try to beat them to Alpha Centauri; if somebody else was going to launch before you, you could cross your fingers and launch a ship with a chance to blow up. I'd like to see some of that complexity return to the science win. Plus maybe some sabotage options for spies.

 

[Rambuchan]

City spam would be a pretty lame victory condition: having a certain % of the world population in your Empire would be better for something like that.

Agreed. The old Domination Victory from Civ III is a rock solid and sorely missed victory condition. And it's not just about have a certain % of the world's population in your empire. It's having that AND a certain % of all claimed land. Always a tension at play when you achieve one half of the VC and strive for the remainder.

The thing that would be great about having this VC in for BNW is it provides a genuine conflict of choice in the player's decision making (and that's what all strategy games are about at their core). "If I go wide for the Domination Victory, what will I sacrifice?" In the case of BNW, it'd be happiness, policies and, most painfully for such a win, techs. Perfect challenge!

 

[Gyra Solune]

Yeah, the domination victory feels a little weak right now, since the most effective way to do that involves not really being dominant, just keeping and holding a selection of centrally-located foreign cities that, were the AI so inclined, they would team up and take right back as soon as the victory was achieved.