How many victories are enough?

[KokeenoPokameso]

Reading the various forms people, including me, are always talking about adding new victories to the game. Faith Victory, Espionage victory, Economic Victory and an Environmental victory.

My question is How many victories are enough? How many is too many? what are the problems, if any, with having too many victories?

As far as I can tell more victories the better, adds more variety to the game.

 

[Resident Mario]

Environmental victory? The whole nation becomes a group of tree-happy hipsters?

No, I think what's there now is enough.

 

[CivCube]

As the game near-forces you to choose a victory early on, it's probably too self-contained to allow more victories.

 

[KokeenoPokameso]

As the game near-forces you to choose a victory early on, it's probably too self-contained to allow more victories.

"too self-contained"? I'm not sure what you mean.

 

[BobDole]

I think there's enough. For one, you have to balance them so that one victory isn't much easier than the others..adding more just makes that harder to do. Secondly, they already need to fix the economic...err...diplomatic victory, (which they're trying to do for G&K, but it remains to be seen if it'll work) so the last thing we need are more victory types at the moment.

 

[Tabarnak]

They can add the ''clueless'' victory...



Oops sry. It's for AI only

 

[PhilBowles]

The victory types are (and ideally should be) generally closely-tied to which tech path you select, of which there are broadly four - the Sailing tech path ultimately leads to Globalisation and the UN (Diplomatic Victory), the Pottery path is dominated by culture techs like Acoustics and Theology, the Mining path contains most of the important militaristic techs (except Archery) for Domination - and Science appropriately requires the maximum amount of overlap between tech paths to reach the Apollo Program. New victory conditions require their own tech paths; a religion-specific tech path would be doable if the culture techs/buildings were separated from faith. An economic one isn't really doable because the small subset of 'economic' techs are too tightly-integrated into the existing tech tree.

 

[CoolLizy]

Nine. Nine victory types seem about right.

 

[Ajuga]

In vanilla Civilization V the diplomatic victory is pretty much an economic victory because the only way to get their favor without going to war with other CS is spamming money gifts.
With the addition of espionage, new missions and multiple missions at the same time in order to get city state influence we can conclude that a diplomatic victory is more about diplomatic relations than spamming money. (I believe that money gifts are weaker too.)

So the old diplomatic (economic) victory is now a complete diplomatic victory so I believe that an economic victory should be in the game.
This will mostly involve having good trade relations with other civs. Relying on wide empires in order to get a lot of resources without starting wars. Simply getting a huge amount of money wont work, but surely some people that played Civ4 have some ideas as to how an economic victory can go.

I also tend to feel that a religious victory is nice. Converting a huge portion of the world to your religion which would mean that it's the earliest possible victory. (With religions being less important in the industrial era.)
It should be possible to go on religious crusades. Wars done by religious units that wont annex or puppet a city but simply change it's religion. Once changed the city wont attack the religious units of that specific religion. It will also not add 'warmonger' no matter how many crusades you do.

But those are the only two victories I can think of that would work in Civilization V.
More victory types isn't bad, you just need to make sure that they are fun to do. It would add some much needed variation as domination, science, culture and CS money spam victories have been done a lot.

 

[PhilBowles]

In vanilla Civilization V the diplomatic victory is pretty much an economic victory because the only way to get their favor without going to war with other CS is spamming money gifts.
With the addition of espionage, new missions and multiple missions at the same time in order to get city state influence we can conclude that a diplomatic victory is more about diplomatic relations than spamming money. (I believe that money gifts are weaker too.)

So the old diplomatic (economic) victory is now a complete diplomatic victory so I believe that an economic victory should be in the game.
This will mostly involve having good trade relations with other civs. Relying on wide empires in order to get a lot of resources without starting wars. Simply getting a huge amount of money wont work, but surely some people that played Civ4 have some ideas as to how an economic victory can go.

I'm looking forward to the changes to diplo victory, but the 'economic victory' argument for the current system is a misnomer. A diplo victory in Civ V certainly involves economic favour - but then so did the diplo victories in previous civs if played diplomatically; you were just bribing other civs instead of city-states. And in neither case is it exclusive. Yes, you'll get some CS favour by buying the CSes - but chances are you'll get some early credit killing barbarians, gain incidental favour from GP, Wonder and Natural Wonder quests CSes offer - and yes, probably occasionally from capturing a CS one of the others wants you to destroy, but there's certainly no need to wipe them all out. Since there is almost always competition for CS favour with other civs, and sometimes warfare that will prevent you buying votes, you'll also likely be forced to earn votes through conquest at some stage.

This is, in fact, what I like about the diplo victory - it promotes more varied play than the other victory conditions, and will generally require a good mix of science, policies, money generation and conflict to pull off unless you just want to save cash until you can buy all the CSes at the very end of the game.

 

[KokeenoPokameso]

Wow. I'm surprised at some of the reactions here. The over whelming agreements is that we have enough victory condition or that there is room for just one or two victory conditions.

First I do agree that victory conditions (VC) need to be well thought out and balanced to make them interesting. So new victory conditions should come out slowly.

I'm not sure why VC need to be tied to branches of the tec tree. There are many aspects to Civ V (social policy, city infrastructure, unit movement etc). In late game you should definitely should have multiple VC open to the play but I don't see why all VC should be open to people. I think it would be more interesting if early to mid game choices should may some VC more achievable and other VC not.

 

[Ajuga]

I'm looking forward to the changes to diplo victory, but the 'economic victory' argument for the current system is a misnomer. A diplo victory in Civ V certainly involves economic favour - but then so did the diplo victories in previous civs if played diplomatically; you were just bribing other civs instead of city-states. And in neither case is it exclusive. Yes, you'll get some CS favour by buying the CSes - but chances are you'll get some early credit killing barbarians, gain incidental favour from GP, Wonder and Natural Wonder quests CSes offer - and yes, probably occasionally from capturing a CS one of the others wants you to destroy, but there's certainly no need to wipe them all out. Since there is almost always competition for CS favour with other civs, and sometimes warfare that will prevent you buying votes, you'll also likely be forced to earn votes through conquest at some stage.

This is, in fact, what I like about the diplo victory - it promotes more varied play than the other victory conditions, and will generally require a good mix of science, policies, money generation and conflict to pull off unless you just want to save cash until you can buy all the CSes at the very end of the game.

I agree that the diplomatic victory right now promotes more variation in how you play. When it comes down to science or culture you pretty much follow the same steps and with domination the differences in how you play are only marginal.
The expansion does add more factors in which one can win a diplomatic victory, one that counts more on espionage and cs missions instead of simply bribing them. Having a strong economy wont ensure a diplomatic win anymore. (It will most likely end up my favorite victory now.)

I would like to see this more though. I believe that adding a pure scientific CS would be nice to add a bit more variance in the science department. Though I don't believe we get that in this expansion. (Sadly.)

At the same time I believe that a religious victory would be nice as it involves the entire world. (Disclaimer: Just another idea I'm throwing out there in the next paragraph.) In order to win you convert about 90% of the cities on the map to your religion and build a special religious wonder only available once you have reached a certain age in your capital. You can try to have it spread naturally, make it easier to spread using special units or fight religious wars to puppet/annex cities that will help you spread your religion or go on crusades with special units that only convert cities and don't puppet/annex them. These units would be bought with religion, can't take cities and when used won't give you warmonger.

- It's a victory that involves the entire world, pretty much like domination and diplomacy (culture and tech are pretty much victories that don't involve other civs that much).
- It's a victory that can be won in multiple ways, both through domination, crusades, simply boosting your religion enough by means of buildings and or city states, sending out emissaries or perhaps have diplomatic means.
- It's a victory that can be done in the beginning, just like domination. Yet unlike domination it gets harder the more time progresses.



Now I'm just brainstorming and throwing out ideas.
I mean, if it's done like this, surely some extra victory conditions would be nice?

 

[PhilBowles]

Wow. I'm surprised at some of the reactions here. The over whelming agreements is that we have enough victory condition or that there is room for just one or two victory conditions.

First I do agree that victory conditions (VC) need to be well thought out and balanced to make them interesting. So new victory conditions should come out slowly.

I'm not sure why VC need to be tied to branches of the tec tree. There are many aspects to Civ V (social policy, city infrastructure, unit movement etc). In late game you should definitely should have multiple VC open to the play but I don't see why all VC should be open to people. I think it would be more interesting if early to mid game choices should may some VC more achievable and other VC not.

This is already the case to a large degree. If you don't commit to domination early on larger maps (or even on smaller maps when you end up facing multiple high-tech opponents if you haven't focused on early domination) you'll have trouble winning that way; at the very least you'll have a much harder time. Culture has to be selected early because it requires a tech path that rushes key Wonders and maximises early development of culture buildings. Diplomatic and science victories are more forgiving, but you still have to commit to diplomacy before the Industrial era if you're going to get to and build the United Nations. You can decide to go for science late, but only if you haven't already committed to a specific tech path that will make it hard to shift focus to the Apollo Program. To summarise:

Culture: Forces early focus towards this condition to be achievable; key Wonders (including the Oracle and Sydney) either give no bonus if captured rather than built, others (like Sistine Chapel) become substantially less effective if not built ASAP.

Domination: Favours early selection; achievable if focused on late, but becomes progressively more difficult.

Diplomatic: Achievable at any stage, but delayed possibly substantially without a mid-game focus on the Navigation path. Likely to be difficult without selection of specific wonders such as Macchu Picchu in the mid-game, making this the optimal time to settle on this condition.

Science: Generally achievable late, but optimal is the famous GL-HS-PT route (which is however used with other VCs) in the early-mid game.

I agree that the diplomatic victory right now promotes more variation in how you play. When it comes down to science or culture you pretty much follow the same steps and with domination the differences in how you play are only marginal.
The expansion does add more factors in which one can win a diplomatic victory, one that counts more on espionage and cs missions instead of simply bribing them. Having a strong economy wont ensure a diplomatic win anymore. (It will most likely end up my favorite victory now.)

Yes, I'm looking forward to this - economics still plays a part but can't dominate, and espionage will add a new element to the mix.

I would like to see this more though. I believe that adding a pure scientific CS would be nice to add a bit more variance in the science department. Though I don't believe we get that in this expansion. (Sadly.)

As it is the tech tree's too short and tech advances too readily-achievable for this to be balanced; also it would intrude on the Patronage policy which gives a science bonus for CS alliances.

At the same time I believe that a religious victory would be nice as it involves the entire world. (Disclaimer: Just another idea I'm throwing out there in the next paragraph.) In order to win you convert about 90% of the cities on the map to your religion and build a special religious wonder only available once you have reached a certain age in your capital. You can try to have it spread naturally, make it easier to spread using special units or fight religious wars to puppet/annex cities that will help you spread your religion or go on crusades with special units that only convert cities and don't puppet/annex them. These units would be bought with religion, can't take cities and when used won't give you warmonger.

I'd favour something I suggested a while ago: a Crusade project. It's not a new victory condition, however while a Crusade is ongoing you only need to capture the capitals of civs that don't share your religion to win the game. The victorious civ is the one that initiated the Crusade, assuming that no infidel civs are in control of their capitals by the time the Crusade expires. Any individual Crusade will be time-limited, and only one Crusade can be declared on behalf of a particular religion at a time.

This ultimately has much the same effect as your proposal, since if you convert 90% of the other civs, you have to capture very few capitals. Essentially it's a way of varying the way you can secure a domination victory, since as you say there are currently only minor differences. It will also mean you have a project to complete for Domination, as you do for the other conditions.

 

[Titanis Walleri]

I think that the espionage and environmental victories are taking it too far. I'm not really interested in a faith victory but I would love to see an economic victory. In civ rev, thay have an economic victory that requires you to attain a certain amount of and then build the world bank. In my opinion, civ rev is just dumbed down civ, so they could replace the "world bank" with like the IMF.

 

[Peng Qi]

There's a collectible card game based on the Legend of Five Rings tabletop RPG that has about a half dozen ways to win the game. The end result is that it's highly unlikely that you'll have a means in your deck by which to delay your opponent's path to victory, and it simply becomes a race between the two of you to whoever wins his way first. It's not very fun.

Each victory mode should have a method by which one can actively hamper or interfere with his opponents that does not significantly damage one's own path to victory. I think that's the key; too many ways to win could ultimately be anti-fun.

 

[etipton3]

Nine. Nine victory types seem about right.

I thought 12, but i guess not

 

[PhilBowles]

There's a collectible card game based on the Legend of Five Rings tabletop RPG that has about a half dozen ways to win the game. The end result is that it's highly unlikely that you'll have a means in your deck by which to delay your opponent's path to victory, and it simply becomes a race between the two of you to whoever wins his way first. It's not very fun.

Each victory mode should have a method by which one can actively hamper or interfere with his opponents that does not significantly damage one's own path to victory. I think that's the key; too many ways to win could ultimately be anti-fun.

This has always been a problem in Civ, however many victory conditions you have, since the only sanctions the game really provides to prevent other people winning are (a) winning earlier, or (b) going to war. Civ 4's addition of culture victory made specific Wonders important to that victory condition, but if your opponent does get the key Wonder, you're back to the only option being to destroy the culture city (or, in Civ V, the city building the Utopia Project). There is no way other than war or teching faster yourself to defeat someone going for science victory, and obviously war is the only way to win domination.

Civ V is another advance in this direction by adding CSes, which promote interaction and are needed for a diplomatic victory - one civ has to have each vote, and they can be removed. The UN vote could be swayed in earlier games by bribing/allying/destroying civs to vote for you/against your rival, but you could win a diplo victory just by having a majority population, without needing to interact directly with the rest of the world.

 

[CoolLizy]

Civ 4's addition of culture victory made specific Wonders important to that victory condition, but if your opponent does get the key Wonder, you're back to the only option being to destroy the culture city (or, in Civ V, the city building the Utopia Project).

Actually, the Cultural Victory was added way back in Civ III.

 

[KokeenoPokameso]

There's a collectible card game based on the Legend of Five Rings tabletop RPG that has about a half dozen ways to win the game. The end result is that it's highly unlikely that you'll have a means in your deck by which to delay your opponent's path to victory, and it simply becomes a race between the two of you to whoever wins his way first. It's not very fun.

Each victory mode should have a method by which one can actively hamper or interfere with his opponents that does not significantly damage one's own path to victory. I think that's the key; too many ways to win could ultimately be anti-fun.

Well that's definitely to strongest argument against too many victory condition. Still like the other poster said beyond military action their really isn't much to do to stand in your opponents reaching victory. Maybe espionage can be used to sabotage a cities building project or their current research project.

 

[Nevyn]

The correct answer is: 42