How would you adjust the culture victory in Civ VII

[moysturfurmer]

I’m generally a fan of how the culture game works in Civ VII, but it’s definitely not perfect. Miles better than V’s Utopia Project at least. I’m curious what the community thinks can be done for it in the next game, by the time the last expansion is released.

Personally I’d want them to retain a lot of its core features while expanding on some of its end game concepts.

I’d like to see a Cinema building that lets you slot in Great Writing and a Great Music to form a Film. Films would generate twice the amount of the combined resources of the Great Writing and Great Music and generate amenities/happiness. Films stop existing once either Great Work are removed from the Cinema.

A Hollywood wonder (built on mountains, have river, desert, hills, grassland and a Cinema) in your city) that lets you combine Great Writing and Great Music to form a Film like the Cinema would. It would also unlock the project “Create Blockbuster” which would generate two copies of the Blockbuster great work. This great work would function in the same way as a luxury and could also be slotted into cinemas to generate bonus resources for the owner and offensive culture/tourism for the creator. This could be done multiple times.

Rock Bands would be broken down into multiple types of Pop Musicians. Rock Bands would function in a similar way, and be the main way of generating offensive culture. Folk Duos would be the defensive version of Rock Bands, and would generate loyalty in your cities and increase war weariness in civs at war with you. DJs would be a science victory focused Pop Musician and would generate science and culture every time they perform. Popstars would be a growth focused pop musician that would generate food in cities they perform in (because of people getting hot and bothered by the likes of Madonna and Justin Bieber or what have you, this one’s a stretch, but mechanically it makes sense). Pop Musicians would have a fixed amount of charges, but could be increased with the Motown/Abbey Road wonder. They would also be built with culture, not faith. This would all be a means of giving musician units a purpose beyond winning culture victory.

Keep the interaction between corporations and offensive culture, as a way to represent the influence of mass market goods’ role in cultural hegemony, but maybe tweak the values a bit. Corporations should produce finished goods though, and not trade in raw materials, but that’s just window dressing tbh.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

These were some ideas that I had that I would have liked to see in Civ 6, but could be used for Civ 7 if culture acts sort of the same.

Similar to you I'd like to see a late game building that worked well with music and writing. I do think a Cinema might come to late though and I think another alternative could be an Opera House in the Industrial Era.

I'd personally want corporations and monopolies to tie into a new economic victory but I'm not too sure on how to do that. Instead I'd like religious victory to be folded in as a criteria to culture victory as well. That is not only have the most visiting tourists to your civilization, but also have your religion be the dominant religion in your civ as well. I could definitely see this being the offensive part of the culture victory where converting another player can stop them from achieving a culture victory.

Considering how religion and culture is linked to many different civilizations I don't see this as a problem.

I'd also like some form of ethnicity mechanic where each citizen is assigned a certain ethnicity. The dominant ethnicity in a city might determine where the visiting tourists might come from. If the Chinese end up conquering a Vietnamese city and it stays like that for the rest of the game there's a good chance that the majority ethnic group will remain Vietnamese. Late game that might make it to where that city attracts mostly Vietnamese tourists.

 

[moysturfurmer]

Ooh yeah immigration and a breakdown of ethnic populations is something I’ve been hoping for. Personally I think it’d be cool if certain governments/ideology (“Open Borders” Policy, Representative Democracy, Melting Pot ideology etc) allowed a civ to create another civ’s Unique Infrastructure in a city where immigrant population reaches a certain threshold (say 25% or 2 pop or something). It could also play into the tourism mechanic where the foreign improvements generate a certain amount of tourism for the original civ too.

 

[jsciv69]

Harmony in diversity.
The World we live in is more multi-cultured than ever before. The next Civ installment should reflect this.
Religion
Instead of focusing on dominance of a particular religion. The emphasis should be on religious diversity. The Civ that can house the most religious diversity gets a big bonus toward a Culture Victory.
Immigration
This can be a key component toward a Culture win. By attracting more citizens from different Civs.

 

[Zaarin]

Honestly, I feel like BNW had the culture victory formula down pretty well; bringing that back would satisfy me. Civ6's looks similar on paper, but in practice it feels much more...empty?

Instead of focusing on dominance of a particular religion. The emphasis should be on religious diversity. The Civ that can house the most religious diversity gets a big bonus toward a Culture Victory.

There is a compelling argument that interactions among cultures create a more vibrant culture (using culture here because often religious diversity is an expression of cultural diversity), but at the same time this ignores the fact that Medieval Islam and Medieval Christianity both sustained flourishing cultures in religiously monolithic settings (more true of Christianity than Islam, as in the Middle East Judaism, Christianity, and other religions remained very visible minorities with prominent positions in society, whereas in Christian Europe the only visible religious minority was the Jews, who were mostly excluded from general society). I'd rather see religious victory gone entirely, neither an independent entity nor a direct contribution to culture victory, but rather something that may help towards any victory and have stronger diplomatic implications.

I'd also add that if the current design of the religion system is Abrahamic-centric, this design would be Eastern/secular-centric. I've pointed to the CK3 religion system as a good example, and I'll do it again here. It is possible to find a balance.

 

[moysturfurmer]

Honestly, I feel like BNW had the culture victory formula down pretty well; bringing that back would satisfy me. Civ6's looks similar on paper, but in practice it feels much more...empty?


There is a compelling argument that interactions among cultures create a more vibrant culture (using culture here because often religious diversity is an expression of cultural diversity), but at the same time this ignores the fact that Medieval Islam and Medieval Christianity both sustained flourishing cultures in religiously monolithic settings (more true of Christianity than Islam, as in the Middle East Judaism, Christianity, and other religions remained very visible minorities with prominent positions in society, whereas in Christian Europe the only visible religious minority was the Jews, who were mostly excluded from general society). I'd rather see religious victory gone entirely, neither an independent entity nor a direct contribution to culture victory, but rather something that may help towards any victory and have stronger diplomatic implications.

I'd also add that if the current design of the religion system is Abrahamic-centric, this design would be Eastern/secular-centric. I've pointed to the CK3 religion system as a good example, and I'll do it again here. It is possible to find a balance.

I’m not opposed to a Religious Victory, but yeah it’d have to change for sure. Could be fun if the Utopia Project/Spaceship equivalent for it was some kind of Messiah unit that you can only faith build if you meet whatever requirements the victory would need. At least then it would feel a little more “active” than just waiting for numbers to tick up.

But more importantly what I wanna see out of religion in VI is a reflection of Schisms/Offshoot Religions. Like being able to found “American Buddhism” if you, as America, have Arabia’s Buddhism in your city. The game already differentiate between follower and founder beliefs, so there’s already room for a mechanic where Offshoot religions can Keep Founder beliefs for the adopter and let you choose new follower beliefs.

 

[Xandinho]

I think the best way for you to culturally dominate other civs should be through your generation of culture and not tourism. I don't like the current Civ6 formula where you desperately care about culture in the first half of the game while in the second half you only have to worry about tourism because, once you get the key wonders and key governments, you won't need more a high generation of culture.
Dominating culturally through culture makes more sense than tourism, imo.

Obviously tourism would continue to be important for cultural victory, but as one of the modifiers of cultural dissemination. The tourist modifier would go from 0% (no tourism generation) to 50% (the most you can get, generating eg 2000 tourism per turn). You'd get tourism in much the same way as today in Civ6, with the difference that now hotels and airports would play an important role in this.

Religion would also be an important modifier. You'd have 50% to 75% culture in civilizations that follow the same religion you founded, depending on how many cities that follow your religion. This is big, I know, but since religion and culture are so closely related, it must be big. Obviously civs who follow different religions would give a big negative modifier: -50% culture to them.
For tourism not be important only for a cultural victory, hotels could turn part of that city's tourism generation into gold per turn.

The trade route modifier would be based on how many routes you have with that civ. For example, +5% culture for each trade route to that civ.

Being at war would give a negative modifier of -50%, peace or neutral would have no modifier, and cultural allies a modifier of +25%.

Different governments would give a negative modifier of -25%, while same government a positive modifier of +15%.

Media censorship is a policy you could adopt to lessen the cultural influence of other civs on you by -50%. Of course, at the expense of the general unhappiness of the population and political stability, and also not compatible with Democracy government.

Also, after researching telecomunications, you'd have +50% more culture in civilizations that also researched telecomunications.

On more ways to get culture and tourism, I think it'd be nice to have a filmmaker as a civil unit that would transform great works of writting into movies, and this kind of great work could be exhibited in Cinemas.
I think the game could have a civil unit of scribe that would record historical moments and create written works.
I also like the idea of breaking rock bands into pop stars and whatever. However, I think they should act automatically, not manually, it's pretty tedious to be controlling those rock bands all over the place. Another thing, they must be bought by gold, it doesn't make sense for them to be bought by faith.
Corporations should also play an important role in cultural dissemination at the end of the game.

Honestly, I feel like BNW had the culture victory formula down pretty well; bringing that back would satisfy me. Civ6's looks similar on paper, but in practice it feels much more...empty?

I think it's because great works there were more important, while at Civ6 they were nerfed to favor things like rock bands, seaside resorts and national parks. And also because tourism there was more fun, whereas in the Civ6 there isn't much impact from culturally dominating another civ.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I’m not opposed to a Religious Victory, but yeah it’d have to change for sure. Could be fun if the Utopia Project/Spaceship equivalent for it was some kind of Messiah unit that you can only faith build if you meet whatever requirements the victory would need. At least then it would feel a little more “active” than just waiting for numbers to tick up.

Convert enough followers to fund your megachurch?
Anyway a "messiah" unit probably won't happen and I really only see it as a religious GDR equivalent that I don't think the game needs.
I agree that there needs to be some sort of incentive for religious conversion and would like that to integrate that somehow in the culture victory.

Corporations should also play an important role in cultural dissemination at the end of the game.

I mentioned this somewhere else but I think it would be cool if they revamped corporations to not just include resources and products. Founding an entertainment/mass media corporation would certainly help towards attracting tourists to your civilization.

 

[dagriggstar]

I think they should be trying to remove tourism as its just an extra yield that doesn't really add anything to the game.

Quite some time ago I wrote about a culture victory based on civ V where you win if you have adopted every ideological tenet every other civ has. Wasn't popular at the time but I still like it.......

 

[Leucarum]

I think Culture's biggest problem in Civ6 is that it is opaque compared to the other victory types. You can explain the others in a small sentence:

"Conquer the other capitals"
"Convert the other civs to your religion"
"Amass 20 diplomatic victory points"
"Complete an exoplanet expedition"

Try doing that for Culture... The wiki went with "Attract more visiting tourists to your civilization than any other civilization has domestic tourists at home." It's complex and yet I still think that's a pretty good attempt to distill it...

 

[Krajzen]

If we were to go for more realistic approach then tourism really shouldn't matter at all in game like this, because
a) The large scale of it has arrived only in late twentieth century
b) Honestly it's quite unimportant thing on the scale of global empires and politics, it kind of collides with gravitas too

"Cultural influence across history" is more about language, religion, customs, literature, art, architecture, forms of government, institutions, philosophy... Which are also things that accumulate with time. In civ it's just shallow pop culture notion of tourism, and cultural domination is basically absent for most of the game, only to decide a (very abstract) "victory" in the very end.

 

[Zaarin]

a) The large scale of it has arrived only in late twentieth century

The pilgrimage industry, which is a similar idea, was booming in the Late Middle Ages in both Europe and the Middle East--so much so that it caused concern among many churchmen that miracles and saints were being commercially exploited. Toning down the excesses of saint veneration and abolishing many pilgrimage sites were major focuses of the Council of Trent. Even so, you're right that the pilgrimage industry can't compare with the modern tourist industry and is a poor metric of culture victory.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

The pilgrimage industry, which is a similar idea, was booming in the Late Middle Ages in both Europe and the Middle East--so much so that it caused concern among many churchmen that miracles and saints were being commercially exploited. Toning down the excesses of saint veneration and abolishing many pilgrimage sites were major focuses of the Council of Trent. Even so, you're right that the pilgrimage industry can't compare with the modern tourist industry and is a poor metric of culture victory.

Makes me wonder if tourism should theoretically be considered an economic victory instead with a culture victory being something entirely different?
Or maybe just outright call it tourism victory that combines aspects of culture, economics, and religion.