Brainstorming Thread: Cultural Victory vs Other Victories

[CrazyG]

This is part of Legen's point. If you sweeten the deal on the cultural specialists the governor will work them more. Also with the side benefit of more raw defensive culture

The governor currently doesn't work musicians at 5 , so I'm not sure he'll work a writer at 4

 

[Stalker0]

- Further weaken late game % modifiers. Stuff like the 50% boost vs less happy civs in Order

I think this one is a red herring. I remember CrazyG talking about a recent game where he is winning CV before he is even building Hotels. I don't think the late game % multipliers is what is creating the super fast CV problem.

 

[CrazyG]

Here's an idea. CoreTableEntries.sql has the following entry:
-- Adds a trait that boosts the value of historic event tourism. 1 = 10%, 2 = 20%, etc.
ALTER TABLE Traits ADD COLUMN 'EventTourismBoost' INTEGER DEFAULT 0;

EDIT: This doesn't work.

 

[CrazyG]

I think this one is a red herring. I remember CrazyG talking about a recent game where he is winning CV before he is even building Hotels. I don't think the late game % multipliers is what is creating the super fast CV problem.

If you mean that Poland game, I did have hotels. And in hindsight, that quest to coup CS was a big reason I was so strong that game.

 

[pineappledan]

One thing that hasn't been discussed much is this:

What's the end goal?​

I think there is a general acceptance that ~60% of victories being won via 1 of 5 possible victory types seems off, but is there a proportion of games CV ought to be winning? Ultimately we have determined that this is too many CVs... because it just is.
Personally I think that if CV were roughly half of all victories, I would consider this issue solved, but what are other people's thoughts?

How much are other people wanting CV's win rate to go down by?
Alternatively, how much are you wanting some other VC, like science, to go up by?

 

[CppMaster]

I think there is a general acceptance that ~60% of victories being won via 1 of 5 possible victory types seems off, but is there a proportion of games CV ought to be winning? Ultimately we have determined that this is too many CVs... because it just is.
Personally I think that if CV were roughly half of all victories, I would consider this issue solved, but what are other people's thoughts?

So from 60% to 50%? That's not a lot. 30% Would make sense imho

 

[ma_kuh]

TL;DR:

1. I think it's a lot more complicated than just CV win rate compared to other win types.
2. Equal distribution of victory types only makes sense if there's an equal distribution of civs geared towards each victory.
3. I think some DomVs might be hidden behind other victory types just because, as many have noted, actually completing a DomV can be tedious, and other victory types (specifically CV and DiploV) also get easier when you have fewer enemies, so they "accidentally" trigger first; this seems natural and fine.

I'm pretty curious what win types each civ "naturally" aims for, from both a player perspective and from the AI's. If 60% of the current civs just have kits that work for CVs, then it's not really a problem with the win condition, right? So I'd want to answer that question as we continue trying to hammer away at CVs generally. The high variance in CV timers I think strongly speaks to the fact that whether a CV is slow or fast has too much to do with game lineup, and not enough to do with the time it takes to complete each victory type. Also there's been an assumption that there's an equal distribution of civs that cater to all the win types, but I don't think that's been shown to be the case at all. And it gets even harder if you consider civs like Korea, who arguably have kits that could gear towards a choice of wins; does the AI gravitate towards one win type with those civs? Do they win more SVs than CVs, if/when they do win? Can we start classifying civs based on their victory flavors, and compare that to their actual win rates with each victory type? Final random thought, if we ran the AI simulation games with only CVs allowed, I wonder what the numbers would say about civ win rates. Same for SV and DiploV (DomV probably ends up with a lot of Time victories instead, but could still be interesting).

I remember an anecdote of a game where two CV contenders were in the end game, trying to become influential with each other. But the third super-power, a warmonger, started to make headway against the other CV player, and when they fell, the Dom player lost almost by default, because they had no defense against the remaining CV. They literally had no tools to beat two CV players in the end game, because when it gets down to 1:1, if you don't also have huge culture, you don't beat CV. That's a pretty big red-flag in terms of victory type rock-paper-scissors dynamics.

Outside of CVs, I'm still interested in whether DomVs are conspicuously absent just because other win types happen first, even for the Dom player. CVs and DiploVs get easier once you conquer a chunk of the world, so maybe what might ultimately be DomVs (or TimeVs) end up looking like CVs. I don't think we have stats that can help us understand if that's the case. One way to get some insight there would be to include the number of foreign cities/capitals each civ has at the end of the game, in addition to who won and their scores. That would tell us how close warmongers are getting, rather than the flat stat of "they aren't winning".

 

[youngsteve]

So from 60% to 50%? That's not a lot. 30% Would make sense imho

In an ideal world each victory type would have a 20% chance, including time, but that is not really feasable so could live with around 30% as you say. At the moment it is ridiclous the way CV is so easy compared to the rest.

 

[youngsteve]

I think one way to deal with CV being so succesful is not so much by dealing with the ways civs/player obtain Tourism, but for civs to actually deal with other players running away with this victory. Usually AI only gets involved when a player/AI is getting close to victory, like having influence with all other civs & rushing towards gaining sufficient tenets. By this time, it is usually much to late as the civ is running away. Player obviously tries to do something before then, but it can be difficult if civ is far away or on another continent & are playing a peaceful game. They need to take action earlier before the civs are on a roll. That would likely slow them down.

 

[Solic]

One thing that hasn't been discussed much is this:

What's the end goal?​

I think there is a general acceptance that ~60% of victories being won via 1 of 5 possible victory types seems off, but is there a proportion of games CV ought to be winning? Ultimately we have determined that this is too many CVs... because it just is.
Personally I think that if CV were roughly half of all victories, I would consider this issue solved, but what are other people's thoughts?

How much are other people wanting CV's win rate to go down by?
Alternatively, how much are you wanting some other VC, like science, to go up by?

I'd say about 40% CV would mean it's mission accomplished here. Domination victory is something that I'm fine with AI not being able to utilize to its completion (albeit they should definitely be able to take over a full continent for instance plus making inroads on the next continent for a domination game that is going well for them). That would leave a preferably equal proportion of DV/SV/CV at 33%, so 40% is an acceptable upswing for me. As it stands, I'm just really bored of SV/DV only being accomplished by me actively not finishing a CV. It makes a lot of civs that are not specialized for CV feel like I'm gimping myself and it just doesn't feel good for variety's sake. I like to shake up my victory focus each game. I really want CV to go down, since it's been top dog for like 2 years now and do not have a strong opinion on SV/DV being equally well tuned, so I'm fine if either of them would take the top spotlight for a bit.

 

[bonniepbilly]

What are your typical and fastest timing for each victory type? I just had a (peaceful) DV which I think was fastest (t325 on immortal) than all my CV.

 

[pineappledan]

I think @ma_kuh has a good approach. We shouldn’t be aiming for parity when the civs don’t all have parity for victory biases. Based on the AI game feedback, it also appears that the civs with science bonuses are getting more CVs than they are getting SVs, probably because of wonder access and other tech advantages translating into culture advantages.

 

[CrazyG]

I think 50% of games going to CV would be fine. Personally I think time should be uncommon (at least for mid to high difficutlies), at least for games on higher difficulties. Its understandable if no one can get enough votes or tourism, but the AI should be getting spaceships within 400 turns.

I remember an anecdote of a game where two CV contenders were in the end game, trying to become influential with each other. But the third super-power, a warmonger, started to make headway against the other CV player, and when they fell, the Dom player lost almost by default, because they had no defense against the remaining CV. They literally had no tools to beat two CV players in the end game, because when it gets down to 1:1, if you don't also have huge culture, you don't beat CV. That's a pretty big red-flag in terms of victory type rock-paper-scissors dynamics.

An observation from my most recent game:

Indonesia had the strongest culture and was the holdout, resisting my tourism the longest. At some point he conquered China, and he annexed several cities. His empire was still overall happy, but his boredom exploded. Prior I had a fluctuating 0-4% bonus for boredom in his empire, but after the war I had a +22% modifier for it. He also reached enough cities that I got +10% tourism for 'empire size' after his conquests.

In short you are spot on, the more a civ conquers, the more tourism they will receive.

 

[azum4roll]

A feature that throws the balance here I want to highlight is: The quest to coup a city state.

This is causing massive increases in the number of great people born throughout a game, making them born earlier, generating a lot of historic events and culture. It also indirectly boosts culture by allowing you to work culture specialists forever (even if you never touch a merchant specialist, you can have 6 or 7 in a game). There is already a proposal to nerf this by 75%, and I considering a counter proposal to nerf it more (I would change the reward to something other than great people points)

It won't be this easy when the coup proposals are passed.

So you have to meet two goals:
1. Tourism is influential over everyone
2. You have 2 tier 3 ideological tenets, meaning you have 27 total social policies.

Which do players typically reach first? I'll note that the 2nd goal can be reached a lot earlier than all techs, (or even the tech to unlock the UN), can be reached in my experience.

Definitely the second for me. I typically start dipping into one of the policy trees because I run out of good tenets to take.


There's actually a super easy way to stop a CV. Something that everybody seems to forget is that you need to be Content with your ideology to build the CEP. Passing World Ideology on a different ideology from the CV contender's automatically makes them NOT content because of how ideological pressure works. We just need to teach the AI to use that.

 

[pineappledan]

Want to get back on here and post some thoughts.

I suggest that instead of looking at % of total victory types, we focus on pushing cultural victories later. The proportion of other VCs relative to CV will shake out to a new equilibrium, and we determine if we are "okay" with this new VC balance.
If we prioritize X% of all victories should be type Y then I think we will de-prioritize the actual gameplay, and start making arbitrary rule changes that sacrifice fun gameplay for metrics.

To start, I think we should target pushing CVs back by 10 turns.

Specific Ideas for slowing down tourism:

• reduce/remove the from buildings (eg. Arena)
• lower the on GWs from 3 to 2
• split up and increase the number of dedicated CV-related buildings, creating more burden for CVs. Pattern more of the CV buildings after Hotels, which are not worth the cost to a civ that isn't pursuing a CV
• decrease or remove the % tourism modifiers from Technologies like Radio
• Remove the GPPs from CS quests. This will reduce the number of historic events in the game
• Decrease the instant from historic events

 

[rkkn]

I think tourism should mostly be removed from lategame sources. Since while I do want CV to be slower, I also do not want it to just not exist until the end of the game.

though, on the other hand, tourism as more-than-just-victory-points is not in a great spot. I tried a game where I aimed to get big tourism as early as possible, and it was not very fun. so I guess it doesn't really matter

 

[rsc2a]

I just modded my files to gate the Citizen Earth Protocol behind the Internet tech after winning a CV before flight. Interested to see how that changes things.

What I'd like to do is gate it based on era, but I don't see that option.

 

[cidk2000]

Culture Victory is the easiest and Quickest IMO Just completed a poland game and posted in the 3.04 thread putting CEP to much later is a grand idea

 

[pineappledan]

Moving the CEP back merely makes it more similar to an SV. If the solution we arrive at for balancing them is to homogenize them then as far as I’m concerned we have already failed.

We should focus on making dominant status harder and slower to attain.

 

[cidk2000]

if I can get a 300 turn culture victory but a 470 turn science victory theres something very wrong, im all for making the culture victory harder, it perhaps need moving both the CEP and nerfing tourism, Diplomatic Victory is much later too, surely the victory conditions should be within 20 turns of each other not 200!