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

[Taefin]

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.

I only won culture on lower difficulties. Once I started playing on deity, I gave culture an honest go once (previously just built a few explorers to mess with AI) the same game as I was aiming for (and achieved) my first economic victory. I had 13 artifacts before all spots were excavated, missing a few by 1-2 turns, and I declined an artifact in an event after feeling like I wasn’t likely to get anywhere near 15. Game ended on turn ~55.

 

[Morgawr]

Haven’t read the full thread yet but 100% agree CV NEEDS URGENT ATTENTION; pasting my thoughts from another thread:

Just finished my first Civ 7 deity game by T57, CV. Assuming you have a good base from the Exploration age, it's way too easy to laser focus on buying explorers from turn 1 and hoarde 15 artifacts (I had 25+ by the end, and 16 explorers 4 per continent). The designers must make artifacts more scarce otherwise this assymetry makes other victories (and 70% of modern age) irreleavant.

(Exact same problem with missionaries and RV in Civ 6. Typically won RV during industrial - in my 1000s hours of Civ 6 play I rarely entered modern era lol)

History repeats itself - devs always make the cultural/religious path easiest and soonest, but the balance is WAY off this time. Like 10-20 turns sooner vs other victories would be OK but it just comes TOO QUICKLY atm

 

[sixty4half]

You should only get 1 continents worth of artifacts each time you study, not the entire worlds. Doesn't mean you need a Museum on each continent, but maybe that should increase/decrease the study time depending on how far away you are.

 

[theadder]

You should only get 1 continents worth of artifacts each time you study, not the entire worlds. Doesn't mean you need a Museum on each continent, but maybe that should increase/decrease the study time depending on how far away you are.

How does the studying work now? I find this entire mechanic mystifying.

 

[Morgawr]

As soon as one civ sends an explorer to a museum/library on a continent, ALL civs immediately know all artifact locations on that continent. This usually happens simultaneously for all 4 continents so everything is unlocked very early in the first 10-20 turns. Then the game turns into the Amazing Race, everyone rushing to all those locations with as many explorers as they can afford

 

[tman2000]

The explorer is thematically appropriate but the rat race as a cultural victory isn't. Thinking on my ideas yesterday, I have a better idea of how the progress will work.

Think of like an escape room or a puzzle, thematically the tomb traps that Indiana Jones would have to solve, the clues on a Stele leading to a map. The rivers which shifted over time and a namesake church that means "Place where the old rivers used to meet".

Rather than have an actual puzzle, just create obstacles for explorers that are narrative and thematically representative of them solving clues to get to the artifact. I'll show some steps here:

1. Obtain maps of exploration age civilizations, including their borders and where famous battles were fought (or cities were razed). This is a civic you have to unlock.
2. As a map layer, go to the zones which might contain relics from a battle. Dig around until you find a clue.
3. Clues point you to a city, giving you a list of leads. Go to a bank to pay money. An amphitheater to pay culture. City hall influence. Do 2/5 of any such payment in that city to randomly get enough leads.
4. A site is highlighted on the map. Based on which civics you have researched, a narrative event happens when you "open the tomb" (etc.)
5. Complete the narrative event, collect the artifact. Below is a list of these narrative events to show how they interface with gameplay. Researching up the civic tree gives access to options that fit your abilities better, and high up the civic tree you get a more involved/dramatic version of the minigame for antiquity relics. What I'll list below is for antiquity, the exploration age relics will be a bit less involved.
6. High high up the civics tree is a way to slot factory resources into a department store, then pay gold to run a radio ad campaign, which represents advertisers funding media. This will spawn special modern age artifacts like pop art or record albums. This is meant to pick up the 14th and 15th artifacts if you are just shy.
7. One leader will have the ability to do an archeological exchange diplomatic action, which lets you visit foreign universities to find sites directly.
8. You may always use your own universities to find sites within your own territory, including if you capture new settlements. This skips steps 1-4, and modifies step 5.

Narrative events once you "open the tomb"

• Stir up local patriots - partisan units spawn and your explorer can now be apprehended and expelled by that civ, so hopefully the partisans keep the civ's units busy before they can capture your explorer. This only works if the home civ has very few military units around OR if you're at war and can fend off their military units to protect your explorer. That civ can also use any unit to capture the artifact after you "open the tomb" while your explorer still has a dig countdown.
• Cultural exchange with peasants - Spend culture in a set of rural improvements nearby, and at the last one you'll be given the artifact.
• Cargo cult - Choose a factory working a resource and stop its yields for 10 turns.
• "It's a key" - Forfeit one artifact from that same ancient civ for a dice roll to get 0-2 new artifacts. If it's 0-1 artifacts, you at least get +1000 culture.
• Restore heritage, honor the gods - Decline to take the artifact, in exchange for a randomized boost at some point within 15 turns (things like +20 combat boost three attacks in a row, or receiving 1000 gold).

 

[pjotroos]

It feels like they had half a system in place, honestly, with the explorers running research in the universities and museums.

The key issue is that the artifacts are a limited, global resource, and that the process of discovering them is not linked to culture. The way I'd change it is - you need a museum to run the research. Once the museum is in place, you unlock a project to look for artifacts. The project costs culture, instead of production, and the cost scales, same as with settlers. If a city is using its culture that way, it's not contributing it to your totals used for civics. Once the research is done, it spawns one artifact somewhere on the map, that's only visible to you (don't mind if it's permanently, or for x turns). You still benefit from having explorers spread over the map - you grab them quicker - but the artifacts themselves are effectively infinite. You can then tune the culture costs so that discovering 15 is about as time-consuming as researching the full tech tree.

ETA: an alternative would be making it so a museum only finds an artifact on its own continent, and costs are separate per continent. That way, exploration age colonies are rewarded, and conquering colonies with museums is viable counterplay to slow things down.

 

[sixty4half]

I have been thinking about this and at first I was in the camp of "this will be fixed when we get the 4th Age" but now I'm thinking; Even if this is not the "real" CV, this Legacy Path is going to rush us thru the Modern Age due to the way it currently works.

So I hope they do make some adjustments that aren't just increasing the number of artifacts needed. It really does need more reliance on the Culture Yield than just "reach Hegemony"