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

[savateur]

I don't understand why people are so confident there's going to be a 4th age, enough to think it's not worth reworking current victory conditions. Maybe I'm naive, but it seems way more likely that they tried a 4th age and discarded the idea in testing than that they left assets for a huge idea like that at like 5% development.

So I think that puts me squarely on the "Please don't bring back tourism" bandwagon. It was the worst idea in V and VI, once you have the generation, the game just becomes a Next Turn simulator. It's so refreshing that the legacy paths aren't, for the most part, inventing new currencies. Totally agree with limiting Explorer access, with spreading artifact generation more, and other ideas here. But in 99% of games, you're not closely fighting over victory at the end of the Modern era. Having a tourism counter AFTER the World Fair is like bringing back light years of travel to the science victory. In one in a hundred games, it let's you swipe a victory and in the other ninety nine, it's just an extra fifteen turns where nothing interesting happens.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

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

• leading to inconsistent and unpredictable victory paths.

To me this is a feature not a bug, Civ VII needs more variety in the victory paths.

 

[UWHabs]

I don't understand why people are so confident there's going to be a 4th age, enough to think it's not worth reworking current victory conditions. Maybe I'm naive, but it seems way more likely that they tried a 4th age and discarded the idea in testing than that they left assets for a huge idea like that at like 5% development.

So I think that puts me squarely on the "Please don't bring back tourism" bandwagon. It was the worst idea in V and VI, once you have the generation, the game just becomes a Next Turn simulator. It's so refreshing that the legacy paths aren't, for the most part, inventing new currencies. Totally agree with limiting Explorer access, with spreading artifact generation more, and other ideas here. But in 99% of games, you're not closely fighting over victory at the end of the Modern era. Having a tourism counter AFTER the World Fair is like bringing back light years of travel to the science victory. In one in a hundred games, it let's you swipe a victory and in the other ninety nine, it's just an extra fifteen turns where nothing interesting happens.

Plus, one of the explicit aims of the new victories is to make sure that for each victory, there's a set "completion" step. So yeah, technically you're just hitting end turn waiting for the project to wind down, but there's still a defined end. It's not just waiting for a magic counter that seems to go up and down at random towards the end of the game.

 

[IceCold1906]

I like the Idea of tourism in the modern age and generation points from it. Was not a fan of it in Civ6 but it can work in this. Especially, with the idea of culture wars..ie using influence to negatively impact another's civ tourist. Truthfully, that would be cool for the factory points as well. Imagine spending influence points to start a Strike at an opposing Civ's factories for a few turns.

 

[IceCold1906]

Also to piggy back off of this Idea. Much like the Economic path with almost require you to have different type of factoris in your cities..ie a city that specializes in coffee..etc. Imagine grabbing tourism points from specialized cities. For example one city is known a religous hub, the other a musical hub, art, them parks...etc.

 

[GeneralZift]

Tourism in Civ5 was very easy to understand and had use outside of Culture Victory. Civ6 tourism was the opposite and it has gave a bad name for Tourism. It's not really a bad concept, it's a simple meter that you can cut via many means - the great firewall, ideological differences, closing the borders, cutting trade.
In Civ6, you could also reach Enlightenment to cut religious tourism.
In both games you could increase your own culture to combat it.

So I'd prefer a mechanic that has counterplay than one without any counterplay. And simpler and more generic is better because it means you have many ways to get to Victory rather than just spamming Explorers.

 

[wesplaysciv]

I really enjoyed Civ 6 tourism. It was complex but that made it quite fun, IMO, as it created more things to do / consider, including the monopolies concept from the pass. I also like the memes that I saw (e.g. Taylor Swift concert in Japan absolutely rocking - US cultural victory) and thought that the concept kind of made sense. Certainly it's more meaningful than collecting a bunch of artifacts, although perhaps that was more important in the industrial age.

Sorry if this was discussed, but is culture currently bugged? It ony takes a single Civ's explorer to research the artifacts and then every civ can see it? That is what it feels like. And also, a tile can produce multiple artifacts as long as different civs start digging at the same time or before the artifact is dug up?

 

[UWHabs]

I really enjoyed Civ 6 tourism. It was complex but that made it quite fun, IMO, as it created more things to do / consider, including the monopolies concept from the pass. I also like the memes that I saw (e.g. Taylor Swift concert in Japan absolutely rocking - US cultural victory) and thought that the concept kind of made sense. Certainly it's more meaningful than collecting a bunch of artifacts, although perhaps that was more important in the industrial age.

Sorry if this was discussed, but is culture currently bugged? It ony takes a single Civ's explorer to research the artifacts and then every civ can see it? That is what it feels like. And also, a tile can produce multiple artifacts as long as different civs start digging at the same time or before the artifact is dug up?

Whether those last points are bugs or intended behavior, I believe that is the case.

And yeah, I didn't mind the civ 6 tourism. Sure, if you wanted to know exactly when your counter would roll to the next value, or anything like that, it was a pain. But basically to me it was "load up on culture/tourism, make your number as big as possible, and if you have to send a Rock Band to someone, send it to the 2nd place person." I think the big problem is their timer was just constantly broken. It's like those old Windows download boxes. 3 minutes remaining. 4 hours remaining, 55 seconds. 54 seconds. 5 minutes 28 seconds. 43 seconds. 42 seconds....

 

[GeneralZift]

Whether those last points are bugs or intended behavior, I believe that is the case.

And yeah, I didn't mind the civ 6 tourism. Sure, if you wanted to know exactly when your counter would roll to the next value, or anything like that, it was a pain. But basically to me it was "load up on culture/tourism, make your number as big as possible, and if you have to send a Rock Band to someone, send it to the 2nd place person." I think the big problem is their timer was just constantly broken. It's like those old Windows download boxes. 3 minutes remaining. 4 hours remaining, 55 seconds. 54 seconds. 5 minutes 28 seconds. 43 seconds. 42 seconds....

My main issue is those Rock Bands were like cultural Missionaries except even micro managed

 

[bbbt]

I just finished my first game of Civ 7, and yeah cultural victory is way too easy. I didn't even hit the golden age for culture in the exploration era, but hit the economic one in both, yet got culture victory before factories were barely up.

I'd agree I'd like a more varied cultural victory (closer to 6), but for immediate tweaks to the current cultural victory:

1. Simplest: Move Natural History (and hegemony) back in the civics tree. Why is it available immediately, while say factories (critical for the economic victory) only appear halfway through the tech tree? This also makes your cultural output more important.
2. Hegemony shouldn't reveal artifacts for everyone.
3. If they want to gatekeep artifact release further, could have portions only release with other civic steps

I'm not sure I'm super keen on ways of limiting artifact collection that create more micro - ie one explorer per artifact or the like.

 

[stealth_nsk]

In my last finished game on Viceroy I didn't dig distant lands at all and dug only one continent for antiquity artifacts before filling the meter. There were so many artifacts from narrative events and overbuilding.

 

[Noam Braumsky]

I am playing my very first cultural game on deity in the modern age. Am I understanding that, since we have collectively dug up every artifact in the world (barely 50 turns in), I am now expected to overbuild in all my cities and pray that I hit enough extra artifacts from random events? I'm a bit blown away at how much worse the culture victory compares to the other modern age victories. I would have played my early turns with much more focus in spamming explorers if I realized the game was bottlenecked by a static number of artifact spots.

Does anyone know if conquering foreign cities with artifacts in museums/wonders will keep the artifacts after being taken?

 

[marius_kaparius]

My random late night thoughts/ideas:
- Hegemony too easy to beeline
- need to have more artifacts but also require more artifacts found to trigger the next phase
- more things need to interact with explorers, maybe attacking them with military units generates an interactive event where they need to escape?
- maybe the cultural victory should play into the history in layers more where you need to dig up and curate artifacts from your ancient/exploration Civ and you get boosts from any unique buildings you retained
-shipwrecks with a later unlock need to make a comeback, this could also slow down the victory if tuned right
-instead of treasure ships what about luxury trains and ship cruises to generate tourism
-geographic society makes me think the culture victory should involve some natural wonders

 

[tman2000]

Tourism would be better fit for Age 4 IMO.

Let's stick with the artifacts.

I think you need to do diplomatic endeavors that give access to universities and let you dig in foreign lands. Universities/museums have 10 tile range for finding ruins and don't always. The endeavor also reveals where the other civ has found dig sites. Otherwise, you have to pay money to "locals" for information which lead you to rural spots to pay more money to other locals until finally you uncover a dig site.

If a civ won't give permission to dig, then your site can be attacked. In this case, you can pay locals just before you dig to spawn a few partisans that might distract the other player.

This kind of thing. And these actions and their costs are available in different civics. So it's not just "exploration age civ" but different actions that overcome obstacles.

Also, very very late in the civics tree there's pop art or modern art which lets you pay gold towards obtaining a great work through radio or opera house. Artifacts are simply cultural boosts that get you 75% of the way there.

Ideally if the railroad worked better you could block rails with units to prevent the use of rail stations, but this also blocks trade and prevents a player from removing relics from that city so you can capture relics militarily.

 

[tman2000]

Artifacts should spawn in the same territory where wars happened or where civ borders were in earlier ages. There would be a map layer to show this information because people know what the borders of Rome and Persia were today.

If you "pay locals" or "check for ruins" in these parts of the map layer, you're more likely to find something. You can share where you've checked already with other civs as a diplomatic measure. The map layers are what you earn with the civic unlocks.

Like I said universities can check all tiles within a given radius.

 

[theadder]

Oh god. Not tourism again.

 

[JaeChunDaeSung]

This may be a WILD idea, but what if civilian units could be captured, but not used? Instead of them flipflopping to your side by force, they're treated as 'leverage', i.e. hostages. This would force players (human or AI) to the negotiation table and be put under pressure to either guarantee their return, or have them just locked up, or even offed?

I admit this is unorthodox, but is it any worse than in past games where they were forcibly flipped or just outright destroyed? Being the captor can have diplomatic consequences, and returning them or simply not killing them will undo the immediate ramifications.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I just got up from Viceroy to Sovereign and suddenly, cultural victory is not as cheesy. I was totally focused on it, but AIs were able to unearth a lot of artifact before I got to the sites with their army of explorers. I managed to gather enough artifacts, but it was not so early and I actually managed to win economical victory before building World Fair.

I suspect higher difficulty levels are even more punishing, so any changes to cultural victory should not be just "let's make it longer". Something more nuanced is needed.

 

[rocksinmypath]

Since the end goal of the culture path is to host the World's Fair, it would be fitting if the victory condition required you to build a city that deserves to host it. The point would be to complete several remarkable projects in a single city. +1 point for having a Modern wonder. Additional +1 if the city also has a wonder from each of the previous ages. +1 point for having a quarter that generates at least x amount of some particular yield (1 point per yield type).

 

[civlateintothenights]

I actually liked Civ 4's Cultural victory where you just stockpiled points in 3 cities. Combined with these cities being juggernauts for their ability to culturally expand and take over AI cities (which would solve AI forward settling), it felt rewarding and fluid.

Also, because of its simplicity, the AI could easily challenge for this victory as well. Having all of these varied mechanics - great works, digging for artifacts, whatever - every extra mechanic and feature limits the ability of the AI to compete.