Yzman
Deity
Just got it tonight roughly same time as my military victory so seems better balanced.
Culture victory changes - thoughts?
- Thread starter chazzycat
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Barbarian King
Prince
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Yes. In my game before last, I was dawdling after having conquered the requisite cities because I wanted to play more before the end and I accidentally let time run out before completing Operation Ivy, but I still won because I had acquired the most legacy points.
It's definitely better balanced now, but I still had enough artifacts at around 50 turns into the modern age, while I took 80 to win science victory. I got 10 artifacts from digs, 3 from overbuilding, and 2 from CS, so I didn't have to wait for future civics. I still think the change is good: less artifacts, no simultaneous digging, and artifacts at natural wonders all felt good.
That said, I still think the modern era forces to play in a too specific way to run for victory. I consider the freedom you have in the first two eras a big strength of 7: you can play nicely in many different ways and don't already optimize your strategy for a specific victory, as you would have for the civ 6 cultural or religious victory, for example. There are many different strategies, beelines, and build orders viable. But in modern age, you still need too follow a path rather strictly. Want a culture win? Don't waste time on researching your civ-specific civics, get hegemony asap. Want to win economy? Beeline railroads and factories, and save up loads of money for factories. Granted, domination has a bit more freedom, as getting an ideology is a priority, but not the end all in which you need to invest all your resources (you wait for the AIs to get theirs anyway). And science victory also has more flexibility, but that's mostly because you cannot do much to speed it up (besides investing in science and buying the two required structures), and it takes very long anyway.
That said, I still think the modern era forces to play in a too specific way to run for victory. I consider the freedom you have in the first two eras a big strength of 7: you can play nicely in many different ways and don't already optimize your strategy for a specific victory, as you would have for the civ 6 cultural or religious victory, for example. There are many different strategies, beelines, and build orders viable. But in modern age, you still need too follow a path rather strictly. Want a culture win? Don't waste time on researching your civ-specific civics, get hegemony asap. Want to win economy? Beeline railroads and factories, and save up loads of money for factories. Granted, domination has a bit more freedom, as getting an ideology is a priority, but not the end all in which you need to invest all your resources (you wait for the AIs to get theirs anyway). And science victory also has more flexibility, but that's mostly because you cannot do much to speed it up (besides investing in science and buying the two required structures), and it takes very long anyway.
stealth_nsk
Deity
Before the patch, each civilization was able to start excavation on the same tile until it was excavated, each getting artifacts. It was fixed in 1.0.1
aelf
Ashen One
I want to say it's better. It certainly feels better during the initial rush for artifacts. But I have no idea how some of the changes are supposed to work. I can't dig up artifacts at natural wonders. I can't research at universities to get more artifacts. Maybe I need Hegemony to do these things?
You need the natural history mastery for this.
You should be able to research at universities. However, I made the mistake to overbuild one, and it is not longer possible there once you started this process. Maybe you made the same mistake?
Just finished my first post-patch culture play through last night. I gave up before the end, because I was bored and clearly not going to make it (spent too long fighting off almost all the other civs who attacked me because I was winning).
As with all previous civs, culture victory just feels way too passive to me. Too much sitting and waiting. Conquest is still the one I find most engaging/challenging because of the need to plan when and where to attack next, how much of a technological edge to get before going on the warpath, how much war weariness you can endure, etc. None of the other paths seem as active.
I would like each victory to feel a bit more as if it involves hard choices; e.g
Building museums will boost culture but penalise other paths more than it does (harms economy and/or public opinion, maybe?). Some technologies should boost your exploration/digging speed (e.g. steam engines). And it ought to be possible to interrupt other players efforts more directly (maybe spies could sabotage rival's dog sites, or you could even risk war by capturing enemy explorers, or closing your borders to them)? Anything to make it more active.
A final thing (which is probably my single biggest gripe of the game), is it feels really hard to keep tabs on what your opponents are up to. I'd like better mechanisms for gathering info, e.g. merchants bring back news in the first ages, diplomats and missionaries in Exploration, spies in the Modern, etc. could also be an addition to culture element (e.g. building radio stations boosts culture, but inevitably informs those in broadcast range of how advanced your technology is getting).
I love the new graphics and am happy with the changes to civilization type, eras, etc., but the game mostly feels too thin (like the dumbed down mobile versions).
As with all previous civs, culture victory just feels way too passive to me. Too much sitting and waiting. Conquest is still the one I find most engaging/challenging because of the need to plan when and where to attack next, how much of a technological edge to get before going on the warpath, how much war weariness you can endure, etc. None of the other paths seem as active.
I would like each victory to feel a bit more as if it involves hard choices; e.g
Building museums will boost culture but penalise other paths more than it does (harms economy and/or public opinion, maybe?). Some technologies should boost your exploration/digging speed (e.g. steam engines). And it ought to be possible to interrupt other players efforts more directly (maybe spies could sabotage rival's dog sites, or you could even risk war by capturing enemy explorers, or closing your borders to them)? Anything to make it more active.
A final thing (which is probably my single biggest gripe of the game), is it feels really hard to keep tabs on what your opponents are up to. I'd like better mechanisms for gathering info, e.g. merchants bring back news in the first ages, diplomats and missionaries in Exploration, spies in the Modern, etc. could also be an addition to culture element (e.g. building radio stations boosts culture, but inevitably informs those in broadcast range of how advanced your technology is getting).
I love the new graphics and am happy with the changes to civilization type, eras, etc., but the game mostly feels too thin (like the dumbed down mobile versions).
They probably need to slow all of them down
(adjust the numbers, add things in later that let you speed it up)
ie Military
1 point per town taken with opposing ideology
1 point per city taken with no ideology (while you have one)
3 points per city taken with opposing ideology
It definitely could, I am a bit disappointed with the Crises, etc. at not hitting the snowball harder (there could even be rubber bandedness/difficulty level factors to it to prevent the downsides)
Leucarum
Deity
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I almost always turn crises off in single player. While I like the idea, I find that when they are impactful it is usually because they hurt the AI. The era transitions do most of the rubber banding, but a lot carries over... Once you get your head around it, snowballing is easy to do.
That’s why the difficulty level should also be involved…
higher difficulty: Crises are harder for humans and easier on AI
and
Anti-snowballing…big civs take it harder
Pistol90
Prince
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2017
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- 438
But culture victory in CIV7 (as many other things) is such downgrade from culture victory in CIV6 which was one of the best.
Tourism should be main focus for culture victory, it was great idea.
One of problems of CIV7 is they are changing things which are good and needs no changes ....
Tourism should be main focus for culture victory, it was great idea.
One of problems of CIV7 is they are changing things which are good and needs no changes ....
stealth_nsk
Deity
That's quite controversial take. For many people (myself included) tourism is something which should be burned out from civ games forever.
Culture victory in civ 6 looked fun and had some engaging aspects, but in the end it was either:
- full focus on religion from turn 1 to win it fast or
- massive slog into a very late game that is decided by who has the best faith output to spam rock bands
A change was necessary imho. And what they did now (focus on winning starts after 2/3 of the game) was the right idea. Of course, it's not 'there' yet and it requires flashing out or alternatives, but the main concept to make it less of a grind (or that it determines the whole game) worked out nicely.
I didn't mind the tourism victory in 6, but I can see how it would be annoying for some. And while the complications and logic around it were actually pretty cunning in a lot of ways, it either just turned into hitting enter a lot, spamming rock bands, buying up the great artists, or some other stuff along those lines. Never mind the completely broken Monopoly mode multipliers.
I haven't had a chance to play with the changes, but at least they will reward going through the culture tree. In many ways, it seems like it's not far off from the science victory, which is effectively spam science to get deep in the tree and then build a couple wonders/projects. It's not the most elaborate change, but it's something.
Yes, these layers are missing and that's a shame (to some extent). Some are rather hidden and not that important, but are there, e.g., the amount of wonders in antiquity and relics in exploration speed up the final project for victory. It's a small benefit, but it is there. As I said above, I think culture victory needs to be fleshed out more and requires an alternatives to artifacts , but I think it is nice that your own past isn't overvalued for it. Hardly any of the countries that "won" the artifacts race or hosted the world's fair in the real world did so because of what they achieved before the 1600s.
But as I said, while many systems worked into it in 6, it came down to religion mostly (OP relics, faith for rock bands and national park). If you didn't focus on religion and faith output from the beginning, it became really, really dull - at least to me. Slowly grinding your tourism per turn over the AI's culture per turn output with all these things (and improvements) took long enough already, and then you still had to wait until you matched their total culture output of the whole game. In my opinion, this 'catch up to everything that some else has done throughout the whole game' is a flawed concept, regardless of the amount of tools you throw at it. 'You need to become the #1 tourism country in the world' is a fine concept and goal, but 'You need to become the #1 tourism country in regards to what everybody has ever achieved and regardless of how much tourism they have now' is a very strange concept. I need to make up for all these people that flocked to Rome and Egypt over 1000 years in antiquity as well? And everybody that went on grand tour throughout different European countries from 1600-1914? Why can't I just have the most tourists now compared to the other contemporary countries and win. It's totally understandable to me why someone would just stop at the moment they overtook the best AI's culture per turn output and not wait for an additional 50 turns or engage with the rock band lottery. And what surely didn't help was that there wasn't much to do in 6 in the late game despite waiting or waging wars, which were both made much worse by rather long turn times.
Sorry for the rant! But I really dislike late game civ 6. It's for me clearly the worst in the series in that regard.
Leucarum
Deity
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I am saying this with full love for Civ7, I am very addicted and love it... but thus far I think for me it has the worst late game I've played in a Civ game. It's still just clicking till you win, but...
1) You are very pigeonholed into how you play down specific routes, and those routes are nowhere near equal. Millitary is much worse. Culture and Economy are quicker than Science (usually).
2) While in theory what you did before matters to how fast your projects complete, in practice just get more production for the same effect - the game to that point just depends on how well you set up your snowball.
3) You play almost every civ the same way in the modern era, beelining X, and usually ignoring their unique features because it's a race. This would be less bad, but civ switching means we've effectively got 1/3 less civs than advertised.
Antiquity is almost perfect, exploration is way better than I expected, but modern is bad, and if I wasn't trying to unlock momentos I'd probably stop every game at exploration.
1) You are very pigeonholed into how you play down specific routes, and those routes are nowhere near equal. Millitary is much worse. Culture and Economy are quicker than Science (usually).
2) While in theory what you did before matters to how fast your projects complete, in practice just get more production for the same effect - the game to that point just depends on how well you set up your snowball.
3) You play almost every civ the same way in the modern era, beelining X, and usually ignoring their unique features because it's a race. This would be less bad, but civ switching means we've effectively got 1/3 less civs than advertised.
Antiquity is almost perfect, exploration is way better than I expected, but modern is bad, and if I wasn't trying to unlock momentos I'd probably stop every game at exploration.
Agreed on the critique. It's a shame that you are forced to play in a specific way and can't enjoy your civs. But at least it ends faster and 3/4 victories feel more engaging than cultural victory in 6 to me
I think 1) and 3) is why it would be nice to change the third era to a 'normal' one, i.e., one that is played until you reach 100% age progress and has a crisis (World wars, Spanish flue, Stock market crash) at 70%. Then, you switch to the Atomic Age, which isn't a fully fledged age (no new civs and just one tier of buildings and units), but basically a ~ 30 turn race to victory in which you try to finish quickly while you have options to hinder the others.
Leucarum
Deity
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I could get behind a victory mini-game for the atomic era. I suspect the modern age would need a few tweaks to turn it into a normal age, but I think it'd be for the best. As long as no new civs are added in any other age as it would probably bring back problem #3.
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