Victory Conditions for Civ VII

[ManoftheHour333]

As famed American nuke-crackpot Douglas McArthur once said, "There is substitute for victory". And in the game of Civilization, this is true. It's one of the core game mechanics to encourage people to keep playing towards the end! While many have been saying that Civ should go in a direction of EU4 and more sim-centric games, I disagree. Part of that is that victory is what makes Civ so addictive, and, fun to play with others (Even if they are AI). Like I've said here before, Civ VI's emphasis on simming/min-maxing has made the game more single player focussed which highlights the failings of the AI moreso than if the game was better designed with multiplayers in mind (Cause then your could blame the humans for not optimizing tile yields lol). This isn't to say that a multiplayer game needs to lack complexity/ ability to min-max, but in general, victory and end goals help multiple parties psychologically towards an end goal. So rather than reforming the idea of victory being required, I wanted to think about to simplify the conditions compared to what we've seen in the past 3 iterations of Civ (But mostly 5&6 since I've played a lot more of them).

Currently, in Civ VI we have 6 wholly and almost entirely different win conditions-domination, diplomacy, science, culture/tourim, religion and score/time. While having so many options is nice, it making balancing them so many times harder! Or, it just ends the game in a boring manner as in the score victory. But then at the same time, having just 1 kind of victory like in Humankind is also weirdly boring too. What I will say is that Humankind's system of "point building" does seem to work better in the balancing department compared to the random production-based achievements of the science victory or the unable-to-personally-generate diplomatic victory points in Civ VI. There's a lot of pro and cons to having a lot or a few victory conditions and with the fanbase clamoring for another VC with economic victories, I wanted to see everyone's thoughts on what they think of victory conditions. I should mention that this was inspired after seeing a reddit post on the subject a day or two ago(Link: ). Go check it out if your interested still!

My thoughts/Ideas:
Personally, I would prefer 3 overarching but deeply interconnected victory types of which I'm calling 1) Domination, 2) Influence, 3) Unity. Domination is more traditional and conquest based while Influence and Unity both employ resources and yields to generate Influence and Unity "points" throughout the game, but more dynamically in the later ages. When I say points, I don't mean like the arbitrary "2 points gained to X Civ go brrrr" like in VI's diplomacy victory but rather as small drops in a bucket towards a bigger goal in the late game. Thematically, Influence would be that your Civ's achievements and splendor is so influential that the world is integrated into following your society's way of life. Unity would be that your Civ's achievements in facilitating a connected, peaceful, and diplomatic world allows your Civ to be "voted" as the leader of the planet. As their names suggest however the big difference would be that Influence is more internally-generated while Unity is more externally-focussed. Both Influence and Unity would utilize economics, religion, ideology (should it comes back lol), diplomacy, and most crucially-like with domination-culture and science to build towards the victory.

As a result, I would argue that culture and science should NOT be locked into any victory type-they're both needed for all three. Civ VI tried to do this with governments/policy cards giving you bonuses for science and domination victories, but I'd like to see science and culture's role in other victory types diminish. Theses two central yields should help unlock the social policies/civics and techs needed to pursue the victory conditions. I know this sounds obvious but it's just the power that pure science (i.e. the Babylon theory) has for winning just needs a nerf and needs to be split up.

OK but the new VCs...
1) Let's start with domination. Well...it's what you’d expect. In order to keep expanding you’ll need ample scientific and cultural advances though and the penalties for falling behind should be massively severe. Conquered cities (Perhaps a vassal/puppet system?) should reduce the amount of science and culture you generate without proper development so constant warring/expansion will hinder you waaaay more than in Civ VI leading to collapse. Civ VI’s system was nonexistent and it made tall play hilariously unviable. But Civ V’s happiness was rightfully horrid too…a middle ground is really needed. Either way, I don’t see anything wrong with conquering each civs’ capital as part of the win-condition so long as we get some ability to change capitals like Phoenicia…all civs should be able to do that. How I see it is that the domination condition is 2-fold. One, the dominating civ must conquer each Civ's capital (Regardless of where it's moved) at least once and to win, they must hold onto three/fourths of the capitals at the end of a turn. As I envision holding enemy cities to be a bit more challenging in this new game, this gives a bit more depth than "rocket artillery go brrr" and leads to being able to counter domination much better-especially if there is an early runaway civ that conquers a whole continent. But yeah...domination is domination.

2) Influence would be the amalgamation of our current CV as well as hints of an economic victory and religion. Tourism should return but there should be multiple ways to get it equally…natural history like National parks (I.e. making preserving land give you something opens doors), recruiting great people, and producing great works. I think that great artists/writers/musicians shouldn’t “give” a great work singularly but should build towards Civ-specific works of art or engineering. That way we can give non-written cultures more of a chance instead of making the Maori not able to gain great writers randomly. Why can't a great work be a TV show or a radio broadcast? What about a rousing speech even? Great works could be just a cool thing about a city-like perhaps a public canal system, a church, or a fountain even. They *can* also be pieces of art that need to be displayed but that shouldn’t be all of them and should not be housed in Wonders-those should be relegated to district buildings. All in all, great works as generated through culture and GPP should help gain tourism and thus a big component of Influence.

Another way to gain Influence would be economically. While gold is more of a means towards an end, controlling important areas of commerce and luxury resources should have huge benefits for building Influence. A well placed trade hub between two continents or a canal/mountain pass should not only generate loads of gold through some kind of trade route taxing system, but should in-game, make your currency and culture more accessible and accrue Influence over time. That way, control of resources and trade nodes (Which should be generated/denoted on the map) actually and actively helps towards a victory condition. As a side note, luxury and stretgic resources should be able to be “upgraded” (Or removed for gods sake) into late-game forms. Iron mines should become processing plants, horse stables/pastures can become racetracks, and these new improvements should get bonuses based on adjacent districts, cities, or improvements to help resources better scale with game time. Additionally these new improvements can help add a little bit to the Civ’s Influence-continuing to make resources valuable while furthering that VC too.

Finally, religion should also build Influence; specifically in how many cities and population units are adhering to that Civ’s faith. I like that all Civ’s get an eternal pantheon in Civ VI but they should all get a religion too; the big difference would be on whether the player wants to spread the religion. Religion should give HUGE benefits but also destabilize civs that don’t use certain governments (That’s another whole concept…). For example, a divine monarchy/theocracy can give great domination and production bonuses, but is weak towards not faithful empires. A merchant republic/oligarchy might create a weaker state/give less bonuses but creates more room for religious diversity. To that end, the end goal of religion should not be to get rid of all others but to just convert citizens passively or actively since more citizens and cities under that religion builds Influence for your Civ throughout the game. I think by not separating out religion and religious units into the game, religion can be something that everyone needs to care about and work around-creating more dynamic gameplay towards the Influence VC. However religion can also help with another VC…

3) Unity would replace the sorry excuse for the current diplomatic victory (With bits of culture thrown in the mix) and would work similarly to generating Influence. To gain Unity, you need to control the world congress/council for a long period of time. Controlling the world congress would be, like Civ V, only available Renaissance era beyond and would start with the person who first discovers all of the other Civs. From there, votes would be given out based on each players’ Influence relative to their continent to start, but what gives people power could change each game based on what’s popular. Religious civs could get more votes/ Unitary power with one global decree, or, perhaps Peaceful Civs could get more if certain proposals pass. But even if your Civ is small and lacks a wide religion or territorial presence, you should be able to compete in more competitions like Olympics, World’s Fair, Economic forums and the like to gain huge amounts of Unitary power. Better yet, success in these competitions should come with more voting power on the world council, allowing to garmer more support towards your Civ winning a Unity victory. However, there could just as well be some overlap with economic Influence points as controlling major trade hubs and cities could, in the late game, provide Unity power as well. The same could be with a resolution that creates a worldwide currency based on trade nodes and resources controlled+improved. Hell, you could even make an argument that domination Civs could gain more unity power through their conquest of so many cultures-perhaps having multicultural cities and cities of many different origin Civs should help accrue Unity points in the late game! So I think there is a lot of flexibility here to make a more diplomatic-themed victory that hinges on interacting with other Civs (As opposed to Influence which is more internal "sim"-happy).

I hope I was clear in all this but I'm mainly just imagining three different victory conditions that all utilize production, growth, faith, gold, and strategy to win as opposed to generating science and culture. It's not radically different to what we have now (i.e. you need production to build spaceports etc.) but I think by decoupling culture from CV and science from SV specifically, those yields can more directly help you get higher yields in other departments which *actually* fuel your victory in the game. I also think that fewer VCs gives more opportunity to "tall" or weakened Civs as time and situations changing could benefit them; at the very least, it encourages strategic use and forethought of land over just "have lots of tile to have lots of districts brrr".

Anyways...thanks for coming to my TED talk and please fill out the poll! I'd be interesting to see what you all think of VCs : )

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I wouldn't mind if most of the victory conditions such as Domination, Science, Culture and Diplomacy came back, though the latter two can somewhat change.

As for the Religious Victory I'd like to swap it out for an Economic Victory. Considering I'd like to bring Monopolies and Corporations back I think it would be interesting if in order to win an Economic Vicory you would have to control over half of the world's resources/corporations.

I'd then make religion and faith as a second condition towards winning a culture victory. The first part would be the normal tourism part. The other half would revolve around having a majority of your cities under your religion.

 

[ManoftheHour333]

I wouldn't mind if most of the victory conditions such as Domination, Science, Culture and Diplomacy came back, though the latter two can somewhat change.

As for the Religious Victory I'd like to swap it out for an Economic Victory. Considering I'd like to bring Monopolies and Corporations back I think it would be interesting if in order to win an Economic Vicory you would have to control over half of the world's resources/corporations.

I'd then make religion and faith as a second condition towards winning a culture victory. The first part would be the normal tourism part. The other half would revolve around having a majority of your cities under your religion.

Interesting! For the longest time I was in the camp of wanting an economic victory as well (As my favorite civs across the games have always been economically-focussed ones like Portugal) but the more I thought about it, it would just get "eaten away" by the others. If the goal for economic victory is to control (assumingly) an set amount of corporations and resources, then how would this differ compared to domination? I mean you could design a way that forces players to trade or "buy" resources in order to satisfy this condition, but I can't think of any way that would work in a non-single player game. Players never trade luxuries anyway...they especially wouldn't if it incurs a bonus towards another players VC. So the other option is to just brute force the victory by conquest which is repetitive.

That's why I think that there should be a heavy economic focus for the "internal" victory and the "external" sim-type VCs I propose. Controlling a variety of resources, having many international trade routes, controlling areas of high trade activity, and improving multiple copies/abundant resources into late game improvements like industries and "upgrades" all would build up the non-domination victories. By this system, you *could* win an economic victory by controlling a bunch of trade nodes and improving/developing resources, but it would be expressed as a more general "Influence" victory. The same could be said about someone focussing only on GPP, religion, or science. But by not making these discrete, it additionally gives credence towards Civs that want to do "a little of everything" too. Essentially, it opens up how you can achieve that victory entirely instead of forcing you to complete increasingly-mundane objectives. Like it'll start out fun to conquer all of the corporations/ gain all resources but by the end of the game, it'll get tedious to get that last city with crabs or whatever. This bit was moreso aimed at how an EV could be incorporated into a mega-victory along with tourism and science but economics could also play a role in the external/Unity VC I imagine too. By the same control of resources+trade nodes but in addition to financing wars and getting your currency adopted by the whole world, economic conditions would build massively towards a wholly separate VC in what would be a much deeper+complex way than just building/conquering a bunch of resources. And while we have been talking about the EV since it's the most interesting, religion would operate essentially the same way; as you develop you religion you'd get closer to winning both of the two sim victories over just one set of arbitrary goals for that type. I just think it gives people options and makes each game more dynamic and memorable since the conditions to win aren't necessarily all known and expected.


Oh and I also agree that M&C should straight up me implemented somehow into base Civ VII. Best game mode and really the only positive upgrade in Civ VI's treatment of economic activities. I don't know what cargo ships did to Firaxis but it hurts lol

 

[civviefan]

Best ideas re victory I have read. Firaxis please take note!

 

[Henri Christophe]

I most of the times I go for domination victory, but in my last game play I win a religious victory, because I'm was unnable to defeat Shaka, so I converted him and conquer all other civs.
In Civ5 I won some times a cultural victory, but in Civ6 I don't understand well how it's work and can't have this kind of victory.
I like the concept of science victory, despite I never achieve this before win a domination victory.
By the way, this game should allow us to have more than one victory per game, I would like to see what happens in a scientific victory, but I can't not attack if my army is technological more advanced than my foe.
I also don't understand how works the diplomatic victory and I can't wonder how should be a economic victory, you need to do +1000 gold per turn?

 

[Buktu]

I think more victory conditions are a good thing. The more victory conditions there are the more you can vary your playstyle from game to game. If there are just a few and they are deeply connected as well I see the risk of getting forced into a specific, repetitive gameplan every game.
It would even be cool if we had multiple ways of winning a specific victory. We already kinda have a lite version of this for CV since you have alot of options to gain tourists. For domination it would be a cool idea to be able to vassalize or absorb other countries and have a more diplomatic way of winning this way. This could kinda be another way of winning by diplomacy instead of just focus on getting points. For SV you could be able to save the earth from destruction (global warming or any future era crisis for example) or leave it first (so the already existing way) to win and so on.

 

[ManoftheHour333]

I most of the times I go for domination victory, but in my last game play I win a religious victory, because I'm was unnable to defeat Shaka, so I converted him and conquer all other civs.
In Civ5 I won some times a cultural victory, but in Civ6 I don't understand well how it's work and can't have this kind of victory.
I like the concept of science victory, despite I never achieve this before win a domination victory.
By the way, this game should allow us to have more than one victory per game, I would like to see what happens in a scientific victory, but I can't not attack if my army is technological more advanced than my foe.
I also don't understand how works the diplomatic victory and I can't wonder how should be a economic victory, you need to do +1000 gold per turn?

That's the point of what I'm trying to say. All of these victory types are available but people always seem to favor domination or science since they are optimally so much better. Some of that is just how the Civ VI engine works but there is also only rare conditions (Like you're shaka situation) where other victories may be better.

What I'm proposing is to do away with individual science, culture, diplomacy, and score victories and combine them into 2 victories that incorporate these elements in them (Domination remains the same just slightly nerfed in the late game). In a sense, you could still focus entirely on religion to win the game, but that victory would be technically one of 2 victory conditions that religion helps you win. How you do this would be through how you build up your religion in this theoretical scenario-by focussing on projecting you religion and converting the world, you'd win a Unity victory (Which would facilitate more diplomatic and cultural choices/buildings/etc.) while by improving and integrating religion into all of your cities (i.e. more inquisition) you'd generate more Influence to win a victory of that type.

This system is great because it allows people to win by really going hard in one direction, but, also making more divided playstyles viable. If science, economics, and culture/tourism all build towards one victory type, you don't have to overly-specialize and civ designs themselves don't have to be so narrow-minded towards one VC. It's just sounds so much better IMO.

 

[ManoftheHour333]

I think more victory conditions are a good thing. The more victory conditions there are the more you can vary your playstyle from game to game. If there are just a few and they are deeply connected as well I see the risk of getting forced into a specific, repetitive gameplan every game.
It would even be cool if we had multiple ways of winning a specific victory. We already kinda have a lite version of this for CV since you have alot of options to gain tourists. For domination it would be a cool idea to be able to vassalize or absorb other countries and have a more diplomatic way of winning this way. This could kinda be another way of winning by diplomacy instead of just focus on getting points. For SV you could be able to save the earth from destruction (global warming or any future era crisis for example) or leave it first (so the already existing way) to win and so on.

I used to totally agree with you and wanted a lot more win conditions. But...over time I've come to see that different VCs really doesn't change how I play. Having to complete a bunch of objectives that don't change each game is the definition of repetitive. Plus, some VCs are just simply better/easier to complete than the others. Science, diplomatic, and score/time can all be easily played in the same optimized way which is terribly dull. Culture victory though has multiple paths towards gaining tourism-national parks (reliant on faith and land), great works (reliant on GPP and wonders/buildings), relics, and more. As a result, CV has always been my favorite because since there are multiple, different pathways to getting the victory, it truly does make each game more different. The point is just to say that the number of win conditions doesn't necessarily matter as much in comparison to the variety in which you can get to those win conditions.

And as a result, having just a few win conditions but having those be made up of all of the other vital aspects of building a civilization diversifies the ways in which you play the game and ironically give you way more options to get to a win condition. This isn't to say that having all of these different aspects (diplomacy, science, economics, etc.) be their own VC can't create more diversity in how you achieve them but the more of them there are, the harder it is for the devs to balance them while keeping them fresh. It also allows for Civs to have more general abilities that don't entirely gear them towards one VC which I would prefer as playing a civ the same way is also repetitive IMO. Just some thoughts.

 

[rocksinmypath]

This is really nice to see, because I had a strikingly similar vision to what you're proposing with influence. I've even been calling it influence myself, although I don't know if I ever mentioned that on this forum. I think it makes sense to lean into culture victory, since it's the most comprehensive subsystem in Civ 6. There are many different flavours of culture victory including great work-based, appeal-based, religious (albeit quite weak), wonder-based (also weak), science-focused with Biosphere, etc. An influence system will help expand this and tie together what currently exist in the game as disparate subsystems. You've already mentioned how religion should just be seen as a way of generating influence. I have another example. In Civ 6, you only need to build spaceports if you want a science victory, and once you're set on that path, there's very little variability in what you need to do to achieve your goal, so it doesn't really make sense that science victory exists as a subsystem on its own. When we look at the spaceport as a mean for collecting influence, there are more things to do with it. Space technology can be used to improve telecommunication, allowing cultural products from your civilization to propagate more effectively. (They sort of touch on this with the Satellite Broadcast policy card.) You can invent a whole new genre of tourism in space tourism. You can send people out to space to mine and bring home rare materials that you can monopolize at least until other players catch up technologically. There are other types of late-game infrastructure like railway and airports that can also benefit similarly in an influence framework. Overall, I'm a big fan of the idea of having every little thing you do in the game contribute to your victory in a small way that adds up over the course of the game because it allows you to pursue victory in many different ways.

I'd go as far as to say that even domination victory should go in favour of an influence system. One thing I strongly disagree with you is that how long I play a game is an indication of how much I'm enjoying it. I can't be the only person who keeps playing long after a game stopped being interesting just to see out the game. Having to continue to play to satisfy the domination condition (or pretty much any other VC for that matter) is rarely fun. Re-interpreting conquest as one of many things that contribute to your victory will help remove that aspect of domination. Within the influence framework, you'd only do as much conquest as it rewards you, in terms of how much more influence it helps you generate. And there are some interesting implications of re-interpreting conquest this way. Obviously, when you seize another civilization's city, its influence-generating infrastructure should generate influence for you. But when the populace is disloyal to you and don't identify as part of your people, the city will be less efficient in generating influence for you and may even continue to generate influence for the civilization it originally belonged to. To change this, you'll need to try assimilate the new citizens into your empire, and I think there's potential for something interesting that goes deeper than the current loyalty mechanism.

You could argue that the domination condition isn't any more tedious than the culture condition, and until very recently, I would've strongly agreed with that sentiment, which is why I've recently been heavily leaning in favour of a more sandbox-style Civ without any victory condition. Now, I'm not so sure. Yesterday, I was bored and created my own world wonder tier list. I found out that a lot of the late-game wonders, including ones that I thought were very powerful were mediocre at best. I figured even in a very favourable scenario, it would easily take over 20 turns for Ruhr Valley to pay itself off. On the other hand, Pyramids can pay themselves off the turn you complete them and continue to provide you ridiculous amounts of value throughout the rest of the game. I mean, I had a hunch that a lot of the late-game infrastructure wasn't very strong, but I didn't realize it was that bad until I crunched the numbers. I'm now starting to think that the reason certain win conditions (i.e. science and culture) feel tedious is mostly just balancing. The game allows you to progress fast too early and tries to stop snowballing later in the game, when it shouldn't. Early-game infrastructure should be less powerful, late-game infrastructure should be more powerful, and overflow mechanism should change so that you can complete multiple techs or civics at the end of each turn if you're generating enough science or culture. Culture victory, especially, because it's a game of collecting many tiny points, I think can become much less tedious with these changes. If I'm generating 3000 culture per turn, I should just be able to whiz through the civic tree to Environmentalism to get that 25% tourism boost. Why does the game need to make me stop at every civic? Domination is different because how do you accelerate capturing cities? Getting stronger units can help to an extent, but if your enemies are scattered around the map, your best bet would be the just fight on multiple fronts at the same time. That might reduce the turn count, but not so much the number of moves you have to get through to win the game.

 

[criZp]

To me, domination victory is the only "real" victory, even if I practically never bother with domination (civ combat doesn't appeal super much to me). The reason being that conquest is the only victory that involve actual objects on the game map, while the other victories are all exclusively based on these "points" you accumulate in a "victory tab", which are not at all reflected on the game map. (I'm not counting religion victory because that's just domination light)

 

[Henri Christophe]

To me, domination victory is the only "real" victory, even if I practically never bother with domination (civ combat doesn't appeal super much to me). The reason being that conquest is the only victory that involve actual objects on the game map, while the other victories are all exclusively based on these "points" you accumulate in a "victory tab", which are not at all reflected on the game map. (I'm not counting religion victory because that's just domination light)

I agree on you, domination is the victory mode for this game.
In Civ 5, when I pushed for a cultural victory, I don't build almost any army. Just the necessary to kill barbarians. And I may be attacked by any other civ easily, sometime I was safe, but I was conquer one time playing as Ramsés II of Egypt by the turks. I was using the habillity of building monuments and tottally forget the army. So, that's why, since then I always push for a domination victory, you don't need to pay attention if a wonder will be build in time, the enemy build it for you, you take it for then later.

 

[ManoftheHour333]

This is really nice to see, because I had a strikingly similar vision to what you're proposing with influence. I've even been calling it influence myself, although I don't know if I ever mentioned that on this forum. I think it makes sense to lean into culture victory, since it's the most comprehensive subsystem in Civ 6. There are many different flavours of culture victory including great work-based, appeal-based, religious (albeit quite weak), wonder-based (also weak), science-focused with Biosphere, etc. An influence system will help expand this and tie together what currently exist in the game as disparate subsystems. You've already mentioned how religion should just be seen as a way of generating influence. I have another example. In Civ 6, you only need to build spaceports if you want a science victory, and once you're set on that path, there's very little variability in what you need to do to achieve your goal, so it doesn't really make sense that science victory exists as a subsystem on its own. When we look at the spaceport as a mean for collecting influence, there are more things to do with it. Space technology can be used to improve telecommunication, allowing cultural products from your civilization to propagate more effectively. (They sort of touch on this with the Satellite Broadcast policy card.) You can invent a whole new genre of tourism in space tourism. You can send people out to space to mine and bring home rare materials that you can monopolize at least until other players catch up technologically. There are other types of late-game infrastructure like railway and airports that can also benefit similarly in an influence framework. Overall, I'm a big fan of the idea of having every little thing you do in the game contribute to your victory in a small way that adds up over the course of the game because it allows you to pursue victory in many different ways.

I'd go as far as to say that even domination victory should go in favour of an influence system. One thing I strongly disagree with you is that how long I play a game is an indication of how much I'm enjoying it. I can't be the only person who keeps playing long after a game stopped being interesting just to see out the game. Having to continue to play to satisfy the domination condition (or pretty much any other VC for that matter) is rarely fun. Re-interpreting conquest as one of many things that contribute to your victory will help remove that aspect of domination. Within the influence framework, you'd only do as much conquest as it rewards you, in terms of how much more influence it helps you generate. And there are some interesting implications of re-interpreting conquest this way. Obviously, when you seize another civilization's city, its influence-generating infrastructure should generate influence for you. But when the populace is disloyal to you and don't identify as part of your people, the city will be less efficient in generating influence for you and may even continue to generate influence for the civilization it originally belonged to. To change this, you'll need to try assimilate the new citizens into your empire, and I think there's potential for something interesting that goes deeper than the current loyalty mechanism.

You could argue that the domination condition isn't any more tedious than the culture condition, and until very recently, I would've strongly agreed with that sentiment, which is why I've recently been heavily leaning in favour of a more sandbox-style Civ without any victory condition. Now, I'm not so sure. Yesterday, I was bored and created my own world wonder tier list. I found out that a lot of the late-game wonders, including ones that I thought were very powerful were mediocre at best. I figured even in a very favourable scenario, it would easily take over 20 turns for Ruhr Valley to pay itself off. On the other hand, Pyramids can pay themselves off the turn you complete them and continue to provide you ridiculous amounts of value throughout the rest of the game. I mean, I had a hunch that a lot of the late-game infrastructure wasn't very strong, but I didn't realize it was that bad until I crunched the numbers. I'm now starting to think that the reason certain win conditions (i.e. science and culture) feel tedious is mostly just balancing. The game allows you to progress fast too early and tries to stop snowballing later in the game, when it shouldn't. Early-game infrastructure should be less powerful, late-game infrastructure should be more powerful, and overflow mechanism should change so that you can complete multiple techs or civics at the end of each turn if you're generating enough science or culture. Culture victory, especially, because it's a game of collecting many tiny points, I think can become much less tedious with these changes. If I'm generating 3000 culture per turn, I should just be able to whiz through the civic tree to Environmentalism to get that 25% tourism boost. Why does the game need to make me stop at every civic? Domination is different because how do you accelerate capturing cities? Getting stronger units can help to an extent, but if your enemies are scattered around the map, your best bet would be the just fight on multiple fronts at the same time. That might reduce the turn count, but not so much the number of moves you have to get through to win the game.

Good to hear another person in the court of fewer but more "complete" is superior! And yeah a lot of this was influenced by how the CV is just by far the most interesting in the game.

I 100% agree that science should help with both my Influence and Unity win conditions. Satellite Broadcasts and Space Tourism would fit easily into allowing scientific progress to help towards the Influence victory but I was even thinking that in the later eras, just being the first to discover technologies could give you an Influence boost too since, at least in recent history, states that are on the forefront of new techs (i.e. think the US, USSR, and China) have become massively influential from their technological prowess. However, scientific advances can also help towards an Unity/"more external" victory. I think that certain governmental policies in the late game should be tied to the tech tree (i.e. green power ideology, globalization, etc.) and adopting those could give you Unity points. More drastically, global projects should be heavily science-focussed; I think that Civs that help develop the ISS or fight pandemics should need high science outputs to do so-it shouldn't just be based on production alone! Building loads of space-themed buildings should garner Unity points as well. In general, science to me has always been the laziest and most boring VC so I'd like to see it finally dissolved and built up into another couple ones-escaping Earth shouldn't be a VC it should be a losing condition lmao

I wish I could go on more about domination VC since what you mentioned was fascinating (And I don't totally agree) but I got to go. What I will say is that while Civ always has to reform itself, there are some traditions that bring players back...and conquering the world is one of them. So I would argue that the tradition of the domination victory the "most complete" VC should make it remain regardless of iteration...but that doesn't mean it can't be more complex! Like I was saying, I would propose that holding onto territories should be a lot harder in Civ VII which'll make it tough to keep large continuous empires together (Assuming we don't get a cool vassal/colony system which would be ideal to me). I could also see "defectors" arise in your military if you don't have a lot of great generals, are generating too much unhappiness etc., or aren't making sufficient gold. Imagine the split second changes to strategy if a bunch of your units just defected and began fighting among themselves while you were in the middle of a war...frustrating for sure, but interesting as hell and histroricall accurate! Well I gtg for real now but thanks for the chat!

 

[Buktu]

I used to totally agree with you and wanted a lot more win conditions. But...over time I've come to see that different VCs really doesn't change how I play. Having to complete a bunch of objectives that don't change each game is the definition of repetitive. Plus, some VCs are just simply better/easier to complete than the others. Science, diplomatic, and score/time can all be easily played in the same optimized way which is terribly dull. Culture victory though has multiple paths towards gaining tourism-national parks (reliant on faith and land), great works (reliant on GPP and wonders/buildings), relics, and more. As a result, CV has always been my favorite because since there are multiple, different pathways to getting the victory, it truly does make each game more different. The point is just to say that the number of win conditions doesn't necessarily matter as much in comparison to the variety in which you can get to those win conditions.

And as a result, having just a few win conditions but having those be made up of all of the other vital aspects of building a civilization diversifies the ways in which you play the game and ironically give you way more options to get to a win condition. This isn't to say that having all of these different aspects (diplomacy, science, economics, etc.) be their own VC can't create more diversity in how you achieve them but the more of them there are, the harder it is for the devs to balance them while keeping them fresh. It also allows for Civs to have more general abilities that don't entirely gear them towards one VC which I would prefer as playing a civ the same way is also repetitive IMO. Just some thoughts.

Isn't getting enough Unity/Influence every single game repetitive too? Sure there might be different paths to achieve those but in the end you were just hunting for the same achievements/yields again. Where is the difference of 2 VCs with 3 pathes to get there each and 6 VCs with one path to get there each? As I already mentioned I like the idea of having multiple pathes to every victory additional to having lots of VCs in the first place. Sure at some point that would be repetitive as well but in the end every game is repetitive at some point. Some get to that point faster and some slower. In the end the more option you have to win the more time it takes to get repetitive. Well at least if you try to vary your playstyle from time to time - but if you dont then it does not matter if you have 1, 10 or 1000 VCs since you will be going for the same VC and the same path anyway.

I also strongly disagree with the next point. If you need every feature of the game to win any VC you will have to build everything every game. Doesnt everything every game just give you exactly one option to play the game? Isnt that way worse than to specialize in just one to three of many every game?
I agree that it is hard to balance VCs. But why do they need to be 100% balanced (apart from MP obviously) anyway? Ofc the devs should try to do balance them as good as possible. But in the end why does it matter if I can win a game 10 or 20 turns faster if I take another VC when I still win with another VC? Also different pathes to the same VC need to be balanced as well. And imo unbalanced pathes would be even worse than unbalanced VCs. Because if you play for the fastest win times possible as lots of players here do you can compare times for every VC on its own easily. But it would get alot harder for different pathes if multiple sources contribute to a win there. So in the end players who want to compete with win times which are most likely the players who spend lots of time playing the game and would be forced to play the most optimal path anyway.

Imo civs specialzing on one VCs isnt a bad thing in general. Sure if you only play one civ over and over and over again it will be boring quite soon. But therefore there are lots of civs in the game. And even with lots of different VCs you can still design generalists civs. Look at Rome, Germany, Japan and similar civs. These civs are great and important for learning the game. But once you played a few thousand hours you might want some specialized civs just to change your experience alot. So imo there should be a good mix of generalist and specialzed civs in every game.

 

[ManoftheHour333]

Isn't getting enough Unity/Influence every single game repetitive too? Sure there might be different paths to achieve those but in the end you were just hunting for the same achievements/yields again. Where is the difference of 2 VCs with 3 pathes to get there each and 6 VCs with one path to get there each? As I already mentioned I like the idea of having multiple pathes to every victory additional to having lots of VCs in the first place. Sure at some point that would be repetitive as well but in the end every game is repetitive at some point. Some get to that point faster and some slower. In the end the more option you have to win the more time it takes to get repetitive. Well at least if you try to vary your playstyle from time to time - but if you dont then it does not matter if you have 1, 10 or 1000 VCs since you will be going for the same VC and the same path anyway.

I also strongly disagree with the next point. If you need every feature of the game to win any VC you will have to build everything every game. Doesnt everything every game just give you exactly one option to play the game? Isnt that way worse than to specialize in just one to three of many every game?
I agree that it is hard to balance VCs. But why do they need to be 100% balanced (apart from MP obviously) anyway? Ofc the devs should try to do balance them as good as possible. But in the end why does it matter if I can win a game 10 or 20 turns faster if I take another VC when I still win with another VC? Also different pathes to the same VC need to be balanced as well. And imo unbalanced pathes would be even worse than unbalanced VCs. Because if you play for the fastest win times possible as lots of players here do you can compare times for every VC on its own easily. But it would get alot harder for different pathes if multiple sources contribute to a win there. So in the end players who want to compete with win times which are most likely the players who spend lots of time playing the game and would be forced to play the most optimal path anyway.

Imo civs specialzing on one VCs isnt a bad thing in general. Sure if you only play one civ over and over and over again it will be boring quite soon. But therefore there are lots of civs in the game. And even with lots of different VCs you can still design generalists civs. Look at Rome, Germany, Japan and similar civs. These civs are great and important for learning the game. But once you played a few thousand hours you might want some specialized civs just to change your experience alot. So imo there should be a good mix of generalist and specialzed civs in every game.

I suppose I could get behind having a lot of victory conditions IF they all had many paths to get there. However, I see that is very unlikely based on where we're at with Civ right now. If they make all those paths, it would just become a mess of systems that would lead to more late-game bloat (Which is what Civ VI feels to me now), or, to streamline all those victories we'd get even more basic objectives (Think science and diplomatic victories in VI). In the end while it's possible to do, I just still think multiple victories being implemented creates a much more likely case that some of them will be boring and mundane, or as we'll get to, overpowered. And in the end, just choosing to not go for a victory type is still a net loss for Firaxis since you had to make all these systems and conditions to win only for people to never use them. In over 1k hours of Civ VI I have never gotten a religious or diplomatic victory since those VCs are just so boring and repetitive in structure. And to that end, it's why a lot of religious Civs were/are bottom tier in both viability and in how many people play them.

The other thing is that with fewer conditions, people are more or less going for the same things but can use different paths. What I mean by this is that you don't have to lurch to change your path to something like religion if the economic victory you've been building towards isn't as attainable. In this example, faith could still help you towards one of the encompassing victories I described and you could transition more gracefully. It'd also help with "mid-game quitting" as one player pulls too far ahead; while this would still happen, there are just other paths to get to the same goal...and I think there's more strategy (Both internally through optimization of one's civ and diplomatically) in how to come ahead in a different way by using the same yields than by just pursuing an entirely different victory. Especially if those victories aren't balanced...

I would also counter-disagree that a balanced VC is much, much worse than an unbalanced way to a VC. In one case, you just don't utilize any part of that VC because it doesn't matter to your game while in the other, that aspect is just something you don't focus on. The most obvious example of this is religion in Civ VI. Holy hell, I barely ever go for religion since it's almost pointless unless you're a) Russia/Byzantium, or b) going for the RV. As a result, in most of my games I disregard those systems in place entirely which is both a waste of development of those systems, and not historically accurate. Religion, like it or not, has played a massive role in Civilization and to see it untouched except in very specific instances is absolutely absurd. The same could easily be applied to diplomacy and diplomatic victory points. What's the point of the WC if you're barely going to interact with it unless you go for one specific VC? Civ V did this much better with the World Congress giving certain civs culture/tourism bonuses, religious bonuses, and science bonuses but Civ VI's separation of these victories was such a disappointment...one of the many reasons diplomatic stuff suffered in VI despite some steps forward like with CBs. But that's another argument entirely...the point is that I would rather have to interact with most of the systems, at least in a minimal part, then disregard them completely and as we've seen, having a bunch of VC would push players in that direction.

Eh I also disagree on the specialist civs. I don't hate them but I just never use them so...why make so many of them? I think that civs that force you to play the game a liiiiittle bit differently are ok (i.e. the Maori, Inca, Portugal) but ones that are just so tailored to one victory are the most bland Civs. The generalist Civs you mentioned like Japan and Germany are people's favorites since they give people lots of options and modes to victory. You don't see people clamoring for Sweden, Zulu, or Babylon as their favorite since they're more specialized. Hmm, it's almost as if having more general goals of development are preferred and would make for more varied and interesting games? Maybe if VCs could reflect this...

But in the end preference is preference. Maybe it's just end-of-lifecycle slumps but Civ VI is just so linear and I think the specificity of victories and civs around that play a large part in making games less story-centric than in previous iterations. But I respect your own thoughts as well!

 

[Buktu]

I suppose I could get behind having a lot of victory conditions IF they all had many paths to get there. However, I see that is very unlikely based on where we're at with Civ right now. If they make all those paths, it would just become a mess of systems that would lead to more late-game bloat (Which is what Civ VI feels to me now), or, to streamline all those victories we'd get even more basic objectives (Think science and diplomatic victories in VI). In the end while it's possible to do, I just still think multiple victories being implemented creates a much more likely case that some of them will be boring and mundane, or as we'll get to, overpowered. And in the end, just choosing to not go for a victory type is still a net loss for Firaxis since you had to make all these systems and conditions to win only for people to never use them. In over 1k hours of Civ VI I have never gotten a religious or diplomatic victory since those VCs are just so boring and repetitive in structure. And to that end, it's why a lot of religious Civs were/are bottom tier in both viability and in how many people play them.

The other thing is that with fewer conditions, people are more or less going for the same things but can use different paths. What I mean by this is that you don't have to lurch to change your path to something like religion if the economic victory you've been building towards isn't as attainable. In this example, faith could still help you towards one of the encompassing victories I described and you could transition more gracefully. It'd also help with "mid-game quitting" as one player pulls too far ahead; while this would still happen, there are just other paths to get to the same goal...and I think there's more strategy (Both internally through optimization of one's civ and diplomatically) in how to come ahead in a different way by using the same yields than by just pursuing an entirely different victory. Especially if those victories aren't balanced...

I would also counter-disagree that a balanced VC is much, much worse than an unbalanced way to a VC. In one case, you just don't utilize any part of that VC because it doesn't matter to your game while in the other, that aspect is just something you don't focus on. The most obvious example of this is religion in Civ VI. Holy hell, I barely ever go for religion since it's almost pointless unless you're a) Russia/Byzantium, or b) going for the RV. As a result, in most of my games I disregard those systems in place entirely which is both a waste of development of those systems, and not historically accurate. Religion, like it or not, has played a massive role in Civilization and to see it untouched except in very specific instances is absolutely absurd. The same could easily be applied to diplomacy and diplomatic victory points. What's the point of the WC if you're barely going to interact with it unless you go for one specific VC? Civ V did this much better with the World Congress giving certain civs culture/tourism bonuses, religious bonuses, and science bonuses but Civ VI's separation of these victories was such a disappointment...one of the many reasons diplomatic stuff suffered in VI despite some steps forward like with CBs. But that's another argument entirely...the point is that I would rather have to interact with most of the systems, at least in a minimal part, then disregard them completely and as we've seen, having a bunch of VC would push players in that direction.

Eh I also disagree on the specialist civs. I don't hate them but I just never use them so...why make so many of them? I think that civs that force you to play the game a liiiiittle bit differently are ok (i.e. the Maori, Inca, Portugal) but ones that are just so tailored to one victory are the most bland Civs. The generalist Civs you mentioned like Japan and Germany are people's favorites since they give people lots of options and modes to victory. You don't see people clamoring for Sweden, Zulu, or Babylon as their favorite since they're more specialized. Hmm, it's almost as if having more general goals of development are preferred and would make for more varied and interesting games? Maybe if VCs could reflect this...

But in the end preference is preference. Maybe it's just end-of-lifecycle slumps but Civ VI is just so linear and I think the specificity of victories and civs around that play a large part in making games less story-centric than in previous iterations. But I respect your own thoughts as well!

As I understood the initial survey it was not about what we think is realistic but what we would like to see. I agree that multiple paths to all victories are unlikely but they would still be my preferred option.
I would not agree that not choosing a specific VC is a total net loss for FX.
First of all not every player is the same. So even if you personally dislike RVs and DCs (which I myself want to change for VII as well) and don’t go for them they still might be another players favourite VCs which the go for in most of their games.
Second of all you still need to defend against every VC if you want to win in the end. Sure most of the time the AI is too dump to win anyway but hopefully that changes again in VII. And even now there are games where this weaker AI get close to winning and you need to actively defend that. Also let’s not forget MP where the AI is not a factor at all.
Third of all even with not going for a specific VC you can still use at least some of their related mechanics. Getting culture bombs from the world congress resolution or aid from other players after a disaster is nice for example. Getting a religion to buy your campus buildings with faith or have an additional source of loyalty when you conquer the world is not too bad either.

Paths close to another are a difficult topic. Ofc it would be cool to be able to have a good and easily obtainable back up plan if you f**k up or get f**ked up. On the other hand not being able to fulfil plan a should be a drawback and not something to fix in just a turn or two. Also the question arises if you can call those paths different paths when you can switch between them in the blink of an eye.
Can someone who can easily be caught again using another path be called runaway in the first place? Also if paths are so close that you can switch between them easily why should someone who gets far ahead not take a few turns to also invest in the other paths and deny any catch up that way? Then again if it is not easy to switch paths there is not much difference to different VCs again. Also the question of balance becomes important here as well. If you can consistently catch up or even top a runaway using another path isn’t this other path overpowered? In conclusion I doubt that victory paths instead of VC will be a solution for mid game quitting and runaways.
Strategy wise I prefer different VCs alot because in theory it is more difficult to defend different VCs than different paths. So you not only need a good strategy to win the game but you also need to plan more defenses strategically. Look at the current CV for example. Someone who tries a CV with great works will not only have high tourism but he will also have a high culture output in general making a CV hard for everyone else just by playing for his victory condition. However he does not have a build in defense against SVs so he needs something like spies to defend that as well. He also doesn’t have a build in defense against a diplomatic victory so he needs to control lots of cs to generate favour himself and so on.

This and some things I mentioned earlier tie in neatly to your next point as well. If you personally chose to ignore parts of the game you get in trouble if the rest of the game fails to prevent another players victory by that VC. Also even if you don’t actively push for a VC it does not mean that every mechanic of that VC can’t be used at all. Plus ofc different players have different preferences so again something you don’t use might be used by other players every game.
Also wouldn’t these deeply connected VCs also require you to go for religion and diplomacy as well even if you didn’t like the mechanic? So wouldn’t it be better the way it is where it is easier to ignore the parts of the game you don’t like?
That being said I’d agree that religion and diplomacy, especially the world congress, could use some love in the next iteration of Civ.

I agree that civ design is nearly 100% personal preference. But I am not quite sure if victory design would change a lot in that regard since specialized Civs would change from being good in one VC to being good in one path. For example we can look at the culture civs we have in VI. The Maori specialize in a terrain CV while Brazil is more focused on great works and China is going for wonders.
I don’t know if Germany, Japan and other generalist civs are favourites because they are generalist. I can imagine some other reasons as well. I think lots of people like a civ they are related to like living in that country, having ancestors there or simply learning a lot about that culture in school. Also the later the development cycle is the less generalist and the more specialist civs come out. So players who only own the base game and thus have less options to play specialist civs will more likely have a generalist one as their favourite.
Just for a bit of variety my preference here is a good mix of generalists and specialists.

 

[GeneralZIft]

I don't like the idea of completely overhauling Civ's victory conditions. But here are my personal choices:

Score
Domination
Cultural (Civ 5 style > Civ 6 style)
Science (Just classic Mars landing or whatever)

Controversials:
Religious (If we have this it needs a complete overhaul to how religion works. I love the idea of religious focused Civ's and the idea of religion playing major role. It just needs some kind of intelligent redesign, personally not sure how)

Economic (My personal suggestion is: if you own the majority of stock of a resource you have an economic bonus. If you have own all of it and researched some tech, you can have a Monopoly for more bonus. If you own 50% of all resources then you become an economic powerhouse everyone relies on so it's like you've won. Basis of economic victory.)

Diplomatic (This one needs to be paired with a good diplomacy system. So not Civ6. If they manage to knock it out the park with Civ relations and United Nations and so on in Civ 7, this one could be on the board. But, I'm not sure if I enjoy the Civ 5 version of it. It was basically economic victory anyway but you buy out the city states. So I'm not sure, needs more development or to be mutually exclusive to economic.)

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Interesting! For the longest time I was in the camp of wanting an economic victory as well (As my favorite civs across the games have always been economically-focussed ones like Portugal) but the more I thought about it, it would just get "eaten away" by the others. If the goal for economic victory is to control (assumingly) an set amount of corporations and resources, then how would this differ compared to domination? I mean you could design a way that forces players to trade or "buy" resources in order to satisfy this condition, but I can't think of any way that would work in a non-single player game. Players never trade luxuries anyway...they especially wouldn't if it incurs a bonus towards another players VC. So the other option is to just brute force the victory by conquest which is repetitive.

That's understandable. Somehow I think it would be interesting if there was a global market to where prices of resources shifted up and down or there was a bidding system. It could incorporate Stock Exchanges and give them something to do.

Something else I thought of is if it is to replace religious victory, instead of products giving tourism like it did in Civ 6, what if there was a way to spread your corporation to another civ? That way the first civ to effectively make a global corporation would win without having it to be similar to a domination victory.

Controversials:
Religious (If we have this it needs a complete overhaul to how religion works. I love the idea of religious focused Civ's and the idea of religion playing major role. It just needs some kind of intelligent redesign, personally not sure how)

Considering religion was a big part of the cultures of civilizations throughout history I'd just incorporate religious conversion into part of the cultural victory. Converting other civs could effectively end up making them "lose their culture" and they would have to convert their cities back to their religion Not to mention that religious tourism is already a thing.

 

[ManoftheHour333]

Considering religion was a big part of the cultures of civilizations throughout history I'd just incorporate religious conversion into part of the cultural victory. Converting other civs could effectively end up making them "lose their culture" and they would have to convert their cities back to their religion Not to mention that religious tourism is already a thing.

I agree that religion is too important to just have it not matter at all and one of the big reasons few people don't like RV is due to it being so separate from everything. Apart from pantheons, you have to REALLY go out of your way to even try to get a religion due to great prophet points. In previous iterations (Civ V moreso comes to mind), religion was important for conferring general bonuses and as a result, it didn't require you to divert all this production early game. It was automatic and streamlined...and while there is an arguement that Civ VI's complex religion system and RV is a positive, it's just such a side tangent that many players (Including myself) only go religion for hokey work ethic strats or when playing Arabia.

That's why if VCs were at least a little more generalized you could actually have a religion despite trying to work towards other objectives. And if religion isn't going in your favor, just pivot to another aspect of a generalized VC (i.e. science, culture, economics). That way, your game is just more dynamic and varied instead of chugging towards the same old goals.

In terms of making RV part of the CV...I partially disagree. Theoretically I agree but I don't think religion needs to only help with one other VC...it can help your culture if you choose certain policies/buildings perhaps but it should just be another option to help in the cultural realm of a VC. If it becomes a requirements then we go down the path to linearity which is where we mostly are with the current VCs IMO

 

[ManoftheHour333]

I don't like the idea of completely overhauling Civ's victory conditions. But here are my personal choices:

Score
Domination
Cultural (Civ 5 style > Civ 6 style)
Science (Just classic Mars landing or whatever)

Controversials:
Religious (If we have this it needs a complete overhaul to how religion works. I love the idea of religious focused Civ's and the idea of religion playing major role. It just needs some kind of intelligent redesign, personally not sure how)

Economic (My personal suggestion is: if you own the majority of stock of a resource you have an economic bonus. If you have own all of it and researched some tech, you can have a Monopoly for more bonus. If you own 50% of all resources then you become an economic powerhouse everyone relies on so it's like you've won. Basis of economic victory.)

Diplomatic (This one needs to be paired with a good diplomacy system. So not Civ6. If they manage to knock it out the park with Civ relations and United Nations and so on in Civ 7, this one could be on the board. But, I'm not sure if I enjoy the Civ 5 version of it. It was basically economic victory anyway but you buy out the city states. So I'm not sure, needs more development or to be mutually exclusive to economic.)

What did you mean Civ V CV over Civ VI CV? While I'm not one to disagree that Civ V edges out VI in a bunch of other ways, the CV was the only one that I'd say was expanded in VI for the better. The multiple pathways (Great works/people, resorts/NPs, religious tourism) was what largely inspired my own Civ VII ideas...they're also very similar in nature with tourism (Unless you mean prior to BNW?) so I'm confused there

But on "overhauling" VCs, agree to disagree. I just think that combining them into broader strokes opens up way more avenues and avoids certain VCs (*cough, cough* SCIENCE) from becoming to OP/unbalanced. It also would really help with the game being so linear...particularly in the late game since there is just more to potentially do that avoids you having to waste production+time on a whole separate VC.

I think that religion, economic, and diplomatic VC can be baked into the few VCs even you outlined. Instead of creating a bunch of linear requirements to win they can just provide bonuses along the way to achieving the bigger picture...I just personally think it'd be more fun.

 

[GeneralZIft]

Culture Victory in Civ 5 involved reaching cultural domination over your opponents. It was easy to understand (Tourism vs. Culture) and easy to track (literally just a meter.
Civ 6 Culture Victory's domestic vs international tourists is just confusing as factors keep changing you have no idea how well you are really doing.

On overhauling VCs. Sorry, but it's a terrible idea. You've made the Victory Conditions in your post extremely broad and vague.
The classic VCs are simplistic. Science victory is literally - reach X science goal first. Domination victory is literally - get all the capitals.

I feel like the simplistic nature of Civilization series as a whole flies over people's heads. Gents. Stop trying to make it complicated and confusing.
The reason why Civ has so many fans is because it's easy to understand at first glance.

Finally, yeah, I am not 100% on Religion, Economic or Diplomatic.
I couldn't really care less what they picked in the end, as long as it has a logical goal to reach and allows players to play around.