Cultural Victory should definitely be refined; let's discuss some suggestions

[bumpyglint]

Many players have raised concerns about Cultural Victory in Civ VII, which currently feels like the weakest victory type. The key problems are:

• Culture is irrelevant – Despite being a "Cultural" victory, culture itself has no impact. Instead, success depends on mass-producing explorers and museums. Additionally, artifacts are globally visible once discovered, including those from the "Hegemony" Civic, meaning high culture provides no real advantage.
• It's easily rushed and unstoppable – Explorers cannot be killed, even during wartime, making it impossible to block an opponent’s progress. While some have suggested making explorers killable, this would likely break multiplayer balance and be unmanageable for AI in single-player.
• Heavy RNG factor – Random events (obtained while overbuilding) grant large numbers of artifacts, leading to inconsistent and unpredictable victory paths.
• AI mismanages explorers – The AI frequently sends swarms of explorers to the same locations, despite gaining no advantage from doing so. This is likely a bug that should be fixed.

Basically, Cultural Victory boils down to spamming explorers and hoping for conveniently placed artifacts or lucky events, while culture itself plays no meaningful role. Also, I think I can sort of understand why all the artifacts discovered by one single player are immediately revealed to everyone else: the point is that otherwise that player would have for some turns an incredible edge on "stealing" all the artifacts on the map, leaving nothing to anyone else even before they can even think to try to stop you, but still it's not a good, realistic or funny mechanic.

To improve Cultural Victory, changes should focus on:

• Making culture matter
• Reducing reliance on RNG (this is subjective, and related only to my last suggestion)

Here are my main suggestions:

• Limit the number of explorers per player, tied to civic progression --> Instead of encouraging an immediate explorer spam, players should have a capped number of explorers based on civics unlocked. For example, one explorer could be available after discovering Natural History (with no need to build it, similar to the first merchant), with more unlocked through later civics. This would make culture more valuable (more culture = more civics = more explorer), smooth out artifact accumulation reducing the related micromanagement (no more 10 explorer per time,leaving them unused for many turn and then sending them everywhere all together again after Hegemony) and give a more realistic advancement in this legacy path (similar to the increase in economic/ scientific victories)
• Give an advantage to the first player reaching Hegemony --> Currently, Hegemony provides no real edge but simply "unlocks" the possibility to win culturally (which is often "unlocked" by a stupid AI that can't win this wasy). A simple fix would be granting one extra explorer slot to the first civilization that achieves it (or simply giving an explorer to everyone reaching it, basically making it "just" another civic with the +1 max explorer)
• Reduce or remove RNG from artifact discovery --> Random events granting artifacts should be minimized or made deterministic (one possible deterministic system: after every X overbuilds, the player receives always EXACTLY one artifact).

Obviously the number of artifacts necessary to win should be adjusted based on these new rules.

I think these changes would make Cultural Victory more balanced, rewarding, and aligned with its theme. While it shouldn't just be a "civic completion race" (too similar to Science Victory), incentivizing culture and reducing randomness/ micromanagement would be a step in the right direction. Additionally, this would definitely reduce the "explorer rush" that can bring you to an easy victory in the first 40 turns of modern age.

What do you think? Any further ideas?

 

[evonannoredars]

I think with some tweaking (mainly non-global artefact pools and reveal), the system would be good enough as is. I like a little rng when it comes to artefacts from overbuilding, but I do think it would benefit from other ways to get them. Culture tree abilities for restoration projects for wonders (+ them visually decaying per era) that yield artefacts and recovering your relics from previous ages to become artefacts would tie in the previous culture paths in nicely and make culture itself more important.

 

[Apathmia]

Culture does play an important part. High culture in exploration means in modern you can unlock natural history quickly. There is a large advantage to being the player that makes that first research of artifacts on a continent because it allows you to buy your explorers in cities near dig sites ensuring you cap it. Same goes for hegemony. The other factor that highlights the importance of culture is you need to display the artifacts so having access to those buildings and wonders is needed. Lastly is the world fair that is priced according to your dedication to culture legacy paths.

All that being said all your points are valid and the whole thing can be improved. I think the biggest improvement is making explorers able to be destroyed as well as requiring open borders (or war status) for them to enter and dig. This encourages strategic settling, diplomacy, and show of force to make sure you have the access to sites on each continent. It also gives a counter play to other players looking to stop a culture victory.

 

[moondog385]

Possible solutions:

Rather than collecting 15 artifacts, you achieve a Culture Victory in the Modern Age by accumulating Tourism Points, so it works similarly to the Economic Victory. Artifacts, wonders, parks, and possibly Great Works if they return could all factor in.

• civs that are ideologically opposed to you could ban your explorers from entering their borders for a set number of turns or a high influence cost
• amount of wonders built definitely needs to be a factor in cultural victory post-antiquity. Wonders are more likely to attract tourists than artifacts
• bring back naturalists to make parks on your unimproved tiles

 

[Cymsdale]

Keep Tourism dead in its grave where it belongs.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Keep Tourism dead in its grave where it belongs.

Interesting. I never really liked tourism in V and VI but I was just thinking this is the first Civ game where tourism might make some sense. If tourism is introduced in modern, and you can start generating it from wonders and relics (i.e. it's directly correlated to previous legacy paths), modern could be about adding to and amplifying that tourism output. This approach would make it feel more coherent, and you could easily add different types of great work to Exploration, so it's not purely a relic fest.

 

[chazzycat]

I feel that it's pretty likely that the current culture victory is just a placeholder until they add another age. The world fair just works much better as an industrial era milestone IMO.

 

[ydejin]

Limit the number of explorers per player, tied to civic progression

I really like this suggestion. It would make culture output actually matter and would reduce Explorer Spam.

 

[Cymsdale]

Interesting. I never really liked tourism in V and VI but I was just thinking this is the first Civ game where tourism might make some sense. If tourism is introduced in modern, and you can start generating it from wonders and relics (i.e. it's directly correlated to previous legacy paths), modern could be about adding to and amplifying that tourism output. This approach would make it feel more coherent, and you could easily add different types of great work to Exploration, so it's not purely a relic fest.

Ok I'll be fair. Tourism as a general concept isn't bad, but it would have to look nothing like what it was in previous. The worst part of it in Civ 6 was it had zero impact outside of the victory condition. You either won with tourism or tourism was 100% useless.

 

[UWHabs]

I don't hate the race for relics as an option, but yeah, the current option is obviously lacking. Here's what I would say:
-In each city with a museum, you generate a new explorer once every X turns, like a treasure fleet, depending on that city's culture output. So, say it takes 250 culture for each new explorer. If the city generates 25 culture per turn, you get a new one every 10 turns. If the city generates 250, you get one per turn. (maybe increasing costs for each museum)
-When generated, that explorer can recover one artifact. There are a number of "free" artifact locations that you are told of immediately. These include one per each ancient era wonder you constructed, as well as one per exploration era relic (where possible the actual location they were generated, but it could be within a few tiles).
-You could still have some free relics by narrative events or in the civics tree if you wanted
-You can also "expend" an explorer on a museum (or university?) to reveal the location of additional relics. Maybe if you want a little competitive nature, those could "unlock" the location of opponent relics that you can go steal from them.
-Obviously all the balance (explorers single use? Multiple charge? Victory requirements?)

A system like that would capture multiple benefits:
-The more wonders/relics you generate in the earlier eras, the more free ones you have available before you need to use up charges to find other ones.
-The more culture you generate, the faster you get explorers. Now, granted, if you build 10 museums as soon as you unlock them, you can sort of buy your way to a mass amount of explorers
I'd still want some more boosts as you go through the civics tree. But you could easily add sort of like the civ 6 GDR upgrades to them in the tree. So somewhere in the tree you get +2 movement on explorers, another spot you get +1 charge.
-Obviously you could make whatever tweaks to simplify the generation. Maybe each museum just gives you one free one when built, and there's a few civics in the tree which are like "One free explorer per museum constructed". Maybe it is just a simple one explorer every 8 turns per museum, but you balance it with those other charges or movement boosts in the tree. You could even add in other later boosts in the civics tree too - have one which gives museums an extra slot to display them, another civic which gives you one spot for each university, etc...

 

[Sagax]

Ok I'll be fair. Tourism as a general concept isn't bad, but it would have to look nothing like what it was in previous. The worst part of it in Civ 6 was it had zero impact outside of the victory condition. You either won with tourism or tourism was 100% useless.

Interesting to read this, because to me tourism never felt like a standalone one-trick yield, but rather a side effect of “main” yields. Most things in Civ 6 don’t provide just tourism, it’s almost always in combination with something else. Great Works are a source of culture, National Parks and Rock Bands are ways to spend faith, Seaside Resorts provide gold, and Wonders have non-tourist effects most of the time.

My issue with Civ 6 tourism is that they made it overly complicated for no apparent reason. I’d be satisfied if they literally copy-pasted tourism from Civ 5 and just added a few more ways to generate it. But that’s just me.

 

[ehecatzin]

Explorers being first come first serve is quite a part of the problem.

I would like at the very least, see archeologists use the narrative event system to have a few chains that can end up with an artifact, that way it would be more about "finding" the artifact instead of just clicking once, it could even consider different paths depending on weather the dig site is foreign territory, or another archeologist is present at the digging site.

 

[CivKirk64]

This has been bugging me as well as choosing to engage with it is annoying the AI just spams explorers and it doesn't seem to be tied to how well I've handled culture throughout the game.

Id suggest limiting to a few explorers per civ, unlocked slowly throughout the tree. Have the discoveries only unlock the civ that researched them, or put on a timer (you have 10 turns until the discovery is public)

Have artifacts spawn randomly , with increasing probabilities, numbers arguable but listed for scale example: Battle sites (0.01 %) < Overbuilt structures( 0.1%) < Overbuilt Culture buildings (0.30%) < Still standing structures (1.0%) < Wonders (5.0%) and also then Ancient < Exploration.

Give the various artifacts a score value, Ancient worth more than exploration, and then something like: Trinkets < Military Artifact <Sculpture/painting/Writing. Link the legacy path to accumulating score, not number of items.
If you really want to get nuts, the score of an item can be degraded if its damaged by war.

Run the spawn calculation at the start of the age, have them all hidden, then during the research phase they are discovered in order of likely hood to spawn plus proximity. So send your explorer to a university/museum have them research, then the closest readily available item unlocks, then the next most discoverable and so on.
They should take 1-3 turns or so to discover based on their spawn rate and distance, eventually you're told they can't find anything nearby at a certain point & you'll have to move them to a different museum.

Then for digging them up, make it quick for things in your own territory, medium-high for allies ,medium low for neutrals, and slow for poor diplomatic status.

With this system you are rewarded for having a bunch of wonders, and cultural buildings as you will have a higher likelihood to spawn artifacts in your territory and be able to dig them up quicker. You can finish a huge chunk of the legacy path based solely on your own merit, then use your diplomacy to speed up recovery of artifacts outside your territory.

 

[Taefin]

This has been bugging me as well as choosing to engage with it is annoying the AI just spams explorers and it doesn't seem to be tied to how well I've handled culture throughout the game.

Id suggest limiting to a few explorers per civ, unlocked slowly throughout the tree. Have the discoveries only unlock the civ that researched them, or put on a timer (you have 10 turns until the discovery is public)

Have artifacts spawn randomly , with increasing probabilities, numbers arguable but listed for scale example: Battle sites (0.01 %) < Overbuilt structures( 0.1%) < Overbuilt Culture buildings (0.30%) < Still standing structures (1.0%) < Wonders (5.0%) and also then Ancient < Exploration.

Give the various artifacts a score value, Ancient worth more than exploration, and then something like: Trinkets < Military Artifact <Sculpture/painting/Writing. Link the legacy path to accumulating score, not number of items.
If you really want to get nuts, the score of an item can be degraded if its damaged by war.

Run the spawn calculation at the start of the age, have them all hidden, then during the research phase they are discovered in order of likely hood to spawn plus proximity. So send your explorer to a university/museum have them research, then the closest readily available item unlocks, then the next most discoverable and so on.
They should take 1-3 turns or so to discover based on their spawn rate and distance, eventually you're told they can't find anything nearby at a certain point & you'll have to move them to a different museum.

Then for digging them up, make it quick for things in your own territory, medium-high for allies ,medium low for neutrals, and slow for poor diplomatic status.

With this system you are rewarded for having a bunch of wonders, and cultural buildings as you will have a higher likelihood to spawn artifacts in your territory and be able to dig them up quicker. You can finish a huge chunk of the legacy path based solely on your own merit, then use your diplomacy to speed up recovery of artifacts outside your territory.

Agree with so many ideas in this thread, and this list hits almost all them. I especially want to see explorers limited, more unlocked with culture, and them to require a lot of movement/time to get artifacts (eg return to university/museum for more research, travel to each location). I think the artifact should be revealed to other players once the dig begins, and that each turn, each explorer should have 10% chance of finding it (winner take all, maybe hostile military units reduce this to 5%, if occupying tile, or give a chance of stealing the artifact when uncovered). This would also incentivize rail networks and air commanders with the airlift feature, to get that Indiana Jones feel.

The overall goal should be to end the game nearer the end of the tech tree like the other conditions (for the same reason, I still want military to require having the highest tier bomber, to project power with the bomb).

I think a “tourism” counter (like factory resources) could help integrate great works of those are added later.

 

[Graethyenne]

I know Firaxis looks at the Forums and there are great ideas here! I want to +1 the throttled explorers (either gated by civics/techs, or one dig per explorer, or both). And LOVE the idea of wonders, prior great works, and culture buildings increasing the odds of Artifacts spawning (as well as battles and possibly wiped out/incorporated IPs). Having all of this stuff fuel a Tourism meter (rather than "display 15 artifacts") actually sounds pretty good too. And for now that meter can still unlock the Worlds Fair Wonder. Eventually that wonder could be the Modern Legacy completer, if/when we get a later age.

I actually wouldn't mind Explorer Quest Chains, though that might be a deeper down the road revision.

Great stuff folks!

 

[bumpyglint]

I don't hate the race for relics as an option, but yeah, the current option is obviously lacking. Here's what I would say:
-In each city with a museum, you generate a new explorer once every X turns, like a treasure fleet, depending on that city's culture output. So, say it takes 250 culture for each new explorer. If the city generates 25 culture per turn, you get a new one every 10 turns. If the city generates 250, you get one per turn. (maybe increasing costs for each museum)
-When generated, that explorer can recover one artifact. There are a number of "free" artifact locations that you are told of immediately. These include one per each ancient era wonder you constructed, as well as one per exploration era relic (where possible the actual location they were generated, but it could be within a few tiles).
-You could still have some free relics by narrative events or in the civics tree if you wanted
-You can also "expend" an explorer on a museum (or university?) to reveal the location of additional relics. Maybe if you want a little competitive nature, those could "unlock" the location of opponent relics that you can go steal from them.
-Obviously all the balance (explorers single use? Multiple charge? Victory requirements?)

A system like that would capture multiple benefits:
-The more wonders/relics you generate in the earlier eras, the more free ones you have available before you need to use up charges to find other ones.
-The more culture you generate, the faster you get explorers. Now, granted, if you build 10 museums as soon as you unlock them, you can sort of buy your way to a mass amount of explorers
I'd still want some more boosts as you go through the civics tree. But you could easily add sort of like the civ 6 GDR upgrades to them in the tree. So somewhere in the tree you get +2 movement on explorers, another spot you get +1 charge.
-Obviously you could make whatever tweaks to simplify the generation. Maybe each museum just gives you one free one when built, and there's a few civics in the tree which are like "One free explorer per museum constructed". Maybe it is just a simple one explorer every 8 turns per museum, but you balance it with those other charges or movement boosts in the tree. You could even add in other later boosts in the civics tree too - have one which gives museums an extra slot to display them, another civic which gives you one spot for each university, etc...

I'd like the idea of "explorer generated every X culture per turn in the city" and/or boost for the explorer in the civic tree, but I would avoid somethig like "explorer in every museum" because it would promote a wide strategy for culture (you can't build manu museum in a Tall empire, but for tall empire culture should probably be the most viable victory).

I feel that it's pretty likely that the current culture victory is just a placeholder until they add another age. The world fair just works much better as an industrial era milestone IMO.

That's my impression too, but I REALLY don't want to wait one/two year with an unbalanced and not complete game in order to pay for an espansion that can fix 25% of the victory paths

 

[Tanel]

I really like this suggestion. It would make culture output actually matter and would reduce Explorer Spam.

I also like that idea. Explorers should not be spammable and culture output should matter.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I wouldn't want mechanics which would complicate the game, especially considering Atomic Age likely to come in expansion, so by default people will play with Atomic Age victories.

As minimal, I'd reshuffle civics, so unlocking antiquity artifacts would require more than 6 of them. Also, I'd consider restrictions on how to display them. Maybe Museums should be pushed much further in the future civics (different ones from those unlocking antiquity artifacts) and early building should have only 1 slot for artifacts.

That way, achieving cultural victory would require more culture and, more important, more time to complete, making other victory types more viable.

 

[UWHabs]

I wouldn't want mechanics which would complicate the game, especially considering Atomic Age likely to come in expansion, so by default people will play with Atomic Age victories.

As minimal, I'd reshuffle civics, so unlocking antiquity artifacts would require more than 6 of them. Also, I'd consider restrictions on how to display them. Maybe Museums should be pushed much further in the future civics (different ones from those unlocking antiquity artifacts) and early building should have only 1 slot for artifacts.

That way, achieving cultural victory would require more culture and, more important, more time to complete, making other victory types more viable.

I modded my own game so that Explorers don't come until Globalization (I think? I forget, I just picked one of those mid-tier civics), and they can only be purchased in settlements with a museum, and at least in my first game, it definitely helped. I was way ahead in that one so I don't have a full picture of what a competitive version is, but at least at a glance, it definitely helped. At the very least it delayed the start of the race to the artifacts, and gives you a chance.

My next game I just hit the modern age, and my nearest neighbour is ahead in culture output coming into the age, so this will be a test. I think my plan is to give them a quick war and hopefully take out their core before they can get there.

 

[TheSpaceCowboy]

Possible solutions:

Rather than collecting 15 artifacts, you achieve a Culture Victory in the Modern Age by accumulating Tourism Points, so it works similarly to the Economic Victory. Artifacts, wonders, parks, and possibly Great Works if they return could all factor in.

I had a similar idea in a proposal I'm working on to rework all of the Victory Conditions:

Reworked World’s Fair Victory

• Instead of merely building the World’s Fair, the new victory condition would require it to have a certain amount of Tourism (which exists only for the purpose of the World’s Fair).
• Each World Wonder built in the same city as the World’s Fair would contribute a small amount of Tourism, with a significant bonus for having at least three (increased if it’s three from different Ages).
• Likewise, Great Works displayed in at the Fair would also generate a small amount of Tourism, with theming bonuses for having three of each (e.g. three Codices, three Relics, three Artifacts, etc. This bonus is increased if three of the Works come from the same Religion or civilization.
• Finally, specific Great Works of Art, Music, and Writing would return, generated by Libraries, Opera Houses, and Museums, respectively. These would likewise grant themed bonuses (e.g. for three Sculptures, three Paintings, etc).