Reworking the Victories

[Abaxial]

Culture is the most fun but at the same time the culture victory progress screen is absolutely unintelligible. This turn you’re 10 turns from winning. Next turn you’re 85 turns from winning. The next turn there’s no countdown at all - and you’re none the wiser about what has actually changed in those three turns.

AFAIK it's a trying bug that has never been fixed. Also, you will get a message that you are dominant over all civs except one, when this is palpably not true.

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

This would make a ton of sense and could be really straightforward - airports make it easier for foreign visitors to arrive, so cities with airports get a +15% modifier to tourism (and cities within 6 tiles get a non-stackable 5% boost).

Plus, this incorporation of air travel into tourism would make a lot more sense than the current implemenation, where as soon as your civilization makes a single, non-commercial, rickety plane, suddenly people from across the globe can travel on plane to reach your civ.

Tying in airports/aerodromes to tourism would be great, but I also fear it would signify how little technological progression there is in the game, in terms of aviation and transportation.

 

[MrRadar]

Culture is the most fun but at the same time the culture victory progress screen is absolutely unintelligible. This turn you’re 10 turns from winning. Next turn you’re 85 turns from winning. The next turn there’s no countdown at all - and you’re none the wiser about what has actually changed in those three turns.

AFAIK it's a trying bug that has never been fixed.

It is not a bug, I think that the game just shows you the evaluation based on a momentous snapshot of your tourism and your rival's cultural values, rather than taking into account the average trend.

Let's say, one turn was very successful for your rockbands, they generated a lot of tourism, and the game shows you "10 turns to victory" assuming you will produce the same amount of tourism every turn from that point on. But next turn those rockbands travel, get upgraded and so on and they do not play concerts, so your tourism returns to average per turn values, and the game now calculates evaluation based on this lower tourism values and shows you "85 turns to victory". Next turn again, your rockbands still are travelling or otherwise prevented from playing, but now your biggest rival increased their own culture generation considerably - maybe they've just built a powerful wonder or slotted in some culture boosting cards, so that now they're running away with domestic tourism faster than you're gaining on them with your tourism, based on that turn's values. So now the game has nothing to show, you're beyond the reach of a CV. Both variables are bound to change every turn, so hence constantly changing victory projection.

I haven't gone into game files or done anything of the sort to come up with this explanation, but it seems most likely judging from the observed behaviour.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

You get two categories to vote in, but eventually get the third option which adds or removes 2 DVPs. Because I'm close to a DioVic, they're all uniting against me, voting to remove 2 points from me.

You can vote against yourself and get a point for being right though

I'm generally ok with this condition but it is kind of strange that there is an incentive (particularly towards the end) to rush full-speed toward the capital cities and not bother with the rest of the empire.

Indeed, and you only need to hold onto all the capitals for one turn, the game doesn't care if they will all flip in 3 turns!

ScoV - what's the point of waiting to turn 500?

It's a way to end the game when no one has won, so changing it wouldn't make much sense.

 

[LMT]

Culture
I have two problems with this one. First, it's always mysterious to me just how close I am to a CV. I don't know. Maybe it's because I haven't always gone for these in the past so I don't have a good feel for that, but something is always unclear to me about exactly what I need to do in order to catch up to other civs for this victory.

The second issue I have is that it really isn't a cultural victory. As others have said, it's a tourism victory. That seems odd to me. If you look at a dominant culture in the world today--the US--it has little to do with the foreign tourists it attracts. It has to do with the prevalence of the English language around the world, which in turn has to do with US military and economic power since WWII and the entertainment industry. And related to economics, the US dollar is the most widely held foreign reserve currency--that helps as well.

But none of these things has anything to do with foreign tourists. Think about it. Would anyone consider French culture the dominant culture in the world today? I don't think so, even though France has the most foreign tourists. I'd like Civ VII to start moving away from tourism as a measure of cultural dominance.

Diplomacy
The most bothersome aspect of this victory is that for a lot of the DV points, you need to be a follower, not a leader. I'm specifically talking about "voting with the crowd" at the WC. A diplomatic leader gets the crowd to vote their way (through a variety of means, like military & economic pressure, appeal to common goals/histories, etc.). I kind of liked how you could buy votes in other versions of Civ, though that could be abused. But getting points for going with the flow? That's silly.

Score
I don't think I've won this yet in Civ VI. Regardless, score does not seem related to how good of a game I played. Its basically a measure of how many cities you have. My highest score in Civ VI is with Frealanor...in a loss!

Not sure if there's a better way to do it. Maybe a rank average of your place in each victory type at turn 500?

 

[AnonymousSpeed]

I think they should get rid of victory types entirely, actually.

Instead of taking the same approach to beating every civilization in the game, you beat every civilization in the game by whatever means you desire. Some civilizations you submit to your culture and religion, some civilizations you render economically dependent on you, and some civilizations you force into vassalage using your military. Being a warring autocracy is now compatible with having a best bud that you hang out with for the whole game, so long as you can render that civilization reliant on yours somehow.

 

[Linklite]

...ScoV - what's the point of waiting to turn 500? It would be better to have a moving target, like having a score more than twice (or 3x) the score of your next rival.

I don't think Score Victory is intended as a Victory at all, in the same sense as the others. I think (and view it as) a mercy killing - "You're obviously unable to reach dominance, so we'll cut the pain here and just pronounce the most dominant player the winner". It can also serve as a time limit to put pressure on you. When viewed that way, it makes sense thebwau it is set.

To be honest, it feels a little redundant as a Victory in and of itself - it's a slightly different version of a CV. Build lots of stuff and you're golden.

 

[Linklite]

You can vote against yourself and get a point for being right though .

Never even occurred to me!

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I don't expect these changes to happen to Civ 6 though for Civ VII I can see this:

Culture Victory- To achieve a culture victory you must meet both of these criteria:
1. Found a religion and your religion must be dominant in at least a majority of your cities.
2. Have more visiting tourists to your civilization than other civilizations have domestic tourism (current victory condition)

Considering religion plays a part in many of civilizations culture I'd be fine with implementing a form of religious victory into culture. That means one way to combat culture victory is by spreading your religion to other civilizations.
That can make room for a potential Economic Victory in the future.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I'm not sure how to fix it, but for starters, there absolutely needs to be a way for you to submit your own resolutions to the world congress.

Go back to the Civ IV system - every so often you elect one Leader as Secretary General, they then get to choose the agenda for votes for the next X sessions. Voting for SG depends on population, vassals will always vote for their suzerain - that would work well with the City States.

 

[Josephias]

Sorry if I repeat something, as i had no time to read trough all the topic, last days, but I wanted to give my two cents. I'll make a difference if looking to Civ VII or keeping in Civ VI, as for Civ VII the idea is quite "revolutionary" - just remove half of the victories (well, not remove, but merge). For Civ VI, one of my main desires is, if they do a new pass, they focus in victories, so I'll look for arrangements in the ones I think are quite boring/unbalanced.

So, if we are looking at CIV VII:

Just keep two victories: Miliary Domination, and Cultural Domination (or, which is the same, "warmonger" and "peaceful" victories). In original Civ games (Civ I, Civ II), you had Scientific and Military, and Scientific was there because it was the "peaceful" way to win the game. Then, additional victories (cultural, diplomatic,...) were added when more mechanics were added to the game, but indeed, what we are looking there are different ways to make your civ win without wiping out the opposition. As more victories are added, it is inevitable some of the old ones (scientific), or some of the quickly implemented ones (diplo in civ VI, clultural in Civ V vanilla feel just bland), while - actually - they are part of the same thing: making your civ win by outgrowing, and not conquering, opposition.

So, what is the proposal? As cultural victory is, since Civ V BNW, the most evolved version of the peaceful victories, keep it, and make all other non-war victories contribute to it: religious dominance? >> increased cultural pressure (it already is!); space race (/scientific) achievement >> tourism (or "fame"*) boosts; economic dominance (if you add it) >> increased cultural pressure (as already implemented in monopolies & corporations, but with a sensible formula), diplomatic victories >> tourism boosts (indeed, if you like more the diplomatic victory, you could keep the "leader of the world" layer, with tourism/fame* being an important factors in how many votes you get for this position.

Note that I'm renaming "tourism" to "fame", as I think it is one of the things Humankind got right - naming which is the factor that will make your civ win peacefully: it is not bermuda-wearing shrimp-skinned people, but actually people in other civs that care more about yours than theirs



Ok, now let's keep in CIV VI. Of course, dismantling the victories is not an option so, ¿what can be done otherwise?:

Score: that one is easy: balance the pace/lenght of the game. In civ V, score victory was quite common (at least for me), because you barely had time to push the other victories, specially the late peaceful ones (science, culture), so you might end with a Score victory. It felt like a "consolation price" result, but I think it was a great effect indeed. You won the non-specific victory, meaning you could have won another victory, but were not fast enough. Now, in Civ VI, probably due to yield creep, we have T<200 victories... and T<400 victories for the AI, over a 500 turn limit. It clearly shows either the turns should be lowered, the yields decreased, or the costs increased to balance it out (AI's should be normally wining, if any in the 450-500 turn range. And players should have it really hard to complete a game in less than half the turns).

Cultural: As commented above, probably the most fleshed out and the one requiring less change. Some things that could be used to improve (actually to enhance and increase the involvement during the game), could be),

• Additional "early" rock bands (poets, bards or troubadors in classical / middle ages; storytellers or teather companies in industrial-modern), which less of a tourism impact (as said for score victory above, whe do not want yield creep), but maybe with influence in other systems (espionage, loyalty, diplo favours).
• More and more artists and works of art (reduce yields, but make the theming game something everyone can play at).
• Theming for literature and music (in other threads I already specified the details, but summing it up: both amphiteater and broadcast station should be able to store writing and music, and some combinations of writing+music would theme).
• (edit) Also, as commented by other posters, increasing the involvement of airports in tourism victory is a must

Domination: Fine as it is. Some commented about population and land percentage, and I say I agree with the concept but I think, with the introduction of the loyalty system, this requieremet is more or less introduced as you probably will not be able to held capitols without conquering or razing surrounding cities (and razing feels OK for domination). It also makes the victory not drag to long once you have 1/2 of the world conquered.
I would balance, however, GDR's. They are helpful to make the victory not drag to long, but also not very funny (essentialy an all-purpose unit) and less funny if you are in the opposite end. Make several tipes of late game juggernauts with rock-paper-scissors relationsip and different achilles heels and it could work better. Domination "fun" is the unit interaction. Some examples of what can be added:

• maybe an EMP-pulse missile unit can disable GDRs and other units (and city attacks) for some turns, but have no other effects;
• quick and cheap hit and run swarm-type units can be implemented, dealing important damage to bigger units, and resistant to any type of movement block (zoc, the previously said EMP), but on the other hand, being glass canons destroyed in one hit.
• also hard-to-destroy hovering fortresses might be included, really resistant and hitting everything around, but doing reduced damage and slow to move. (This is, more targets per turn, but not being able to one-shot kill anything)

Religion: I find it OK. Altough I'd agree it is mainly apostle spam and thunderbolt fights, I don't find it is so bad in that sense. It has some strategy (how many apostle packs, which promotions...) altough I would agree it ends up being dull.

• A thing that could help is to differentiate and enhance other units (mainly gurus and inquisitors, so apostles are not the do-all unit). Give them their own promotion tree, even split some of the apostle promotions to them (you'll probably use inquisitors if they were the only ones to get the debater promotion, don't you ?). Make each unit class focused in one thing, and Add the option to re-charge (maybe with faith cost) so units don't become useless when all charges are use us, and then you would be able to allow a promotion tree on the religious units, making it a bit of more role-play.
• To integrate better with other systems, you could make some of these propotions "power-ups" for worship buildings, so religious unit mission would be not only spreading/defending the religion, but also increasing the benefits you get from them. (in example, a "prior" promotion Guru will passively double the yields of workship buildings in a 6-tile radius, or a "nunciature" promoted Apostle in foreign land will increase the yields you get from founder beliefs out of the cities of that civ).

Diplomatic (voted for rework): IMHO, it is curently too bland and to easy, and world congress mechanic is half-developed. Altough diplo favour mechanic is not at bad, I'll echo Civ V congress felt much better, mainly because you had control on what was proposed and discussed. I have already explained my view on how to rework it in other thread, so I'll just sum up here:

• Generate different "world congress offices" players can be voted for (maybe you can make it you even need to "appoint" your governors - I wont stop them from being used on the map, but it could be interesting you can't opt to an office if you don't have the appropriate governor - so, you won't be able to take the lead of the "blue helmets" without a promoted Victor, or the "UNESCO"-like office without Pingala...
• Player helding one office will have office-appropriate resolutions and control office-appropiate emergencies. Keeping on office will depend on proposed resolutions and emergencie's success.
• If emergencies/resolutions fail, another player can push a vote to get the office for himself. Participation on previous emergencies (points gained) /proposals (favour spent voting for or against) will help him getting the position.
• You would need to held a majority of the "UN" offices to call for a "world leader vote" on yourself. The more offices you have, the lower treshold you need to win the resolution (and the game).

Science (voted for rework): I'll say I even hate this victory more than diplomatic. I'll concede it is more fun to play for, but IMHO, it is horrible to play against (at least in huge maps, were you can't cover all the spaceports available). I think it needs more risk and ways to fight against it. Just building X projects does not work for me.

• Earlier, I considered a "spaceship control" mini-game, were you had to direct your spaceship to avoid black holes and gravitational fields (via the late laser shoots) in order to reach a safe destination (you could also try to re-direct and hamper the progress of an adversary spaceship). However, that would be maybe too gamey and isolated from the main game.
• Lately, I have tought of making you fight for the orbital control of the earth, in order to ensure your "space victory". This is, you will not need only to launch the exoplanet expedition, but maintain a system of satellites/space bases to support contact and ensure the success the expedition. The system would require more satellites/bases with earlier techs, and requirements might be reduced with late techs. And you would be able to disable (parts of) the opponent systems with some techs/projects (or maybe even conquering land bases or power sources) . Under certain tresholds, mission will slow down, and even halt. And, if the system reaches minimal dimensions, there will be an increasing chance of "losing" the mission and having to start over (eg. +1% to +5% chance to lose the mission for each turn with a non-operative support system).

Edit:
- added note about airpors in CV.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Cultural: As commented above, probably the most fleshed out and the one requiring less change. Some things that could be used to improve (actually to enhance and increase the involvement during the game), could be),

• Additional "early" rock bands (poets, bards or troubadors in classical / middle ages; storytellers or teather companies in industrial-modern), which less of a tourism impact (as said for score victory above, whe do not want yield creep), but maybe with influence in other systems (espionage, loyalty, diplo favours).
• More and more artists and works of art (reduce yields, but make the theming game something everyone can play at).
• Theming for literature and music (in other threads I already specified the details, but summing it up: both amphiteater and broadcast station should be able to store writing and music, and some combinations of writing+music would theme).
• (edit) Also, as commented by other posters, increasing the involvement of airports in tourism victory is a must

Honestly I like the idea of say a poet unit early game, which could unlock in the Classical Era (unlocks at Drama and Poetry of course), a composer mid game (at Opera and Ballet), and a Rock Band similar to how it is now.
A poet would would have to travel to another civilizations theater square with at least Great work of writing to perform (amphitheater), while a composer would need at least a Great work of music.
I have also advocated for a separate Opera House building, which could hold both writing and music and mutually exclusive to the Broadcast Center, and this could easily be needed for the composer unit instead.
Broadcast Centers could be used for Rock Bands, primarily, instead.

 

[Linklite]

Just finished an RV on the new Mediterranean map. I think that they need to reevaluate that. Despite being on a large map (I usually play standard, so two more civs than usual), and I got my second best time. Only time I've done faster was a CV when M&C first came out, and that was with a smaller map - although I doubt having two extra civs would have made much if a difference.

I think either collapsing it in to the CV or expanding it are the two options.

Merging with CV

I could see this working, and thematically it makes sense. CV is quite complex and is already set up in a sense to absorb other mechanics. On the other hand, it is already by far the most complex Victory and do we really want to add to that? If anything, I think the other Victories need fleshing out, being given multiple routes to achieve them like the CV already has.

Perhaps as part of that, you can change your religion, combine it with other religions that you've met, and the choice to do that or not would have pros and cons.

Expanding RV

The other option is to flesh out the RV. I'm not entirely sure how to go forward with that. I think you'd have to add entirely new mechanics to avoid it becoming simply a CV 2.0, building certain Wonders etc. Perhaps there are mechanics where civs can block or at least restrict religions in their territories. There can be certain things you can do to unblock them or work around the blocks.

I think there should be alternate methods of winning rather than just proselytising. Perhaps, the synergy mechanic I talked about earlier could be an alternative - as you incorporate other religions, that increases your religious reach and so you can get an RV that way.

I think what makes the CV so popular (or at least, why I like it) is its diversity and the many methods you can use - Wonders, Culture farming, Rock Bands, Relics and so forth. The problem with the other Victories is that they're very railroaded. The SV is just a race down the tech tree and then doing a few fixed projects. The RV is send missionaries out and convert everyone. DipV is Suzerain every CS you can and and debates, plus build those fixed Wonders. And Dom has two modes, slaughter everyone and loyalty flip - although the second isn't generally practical on a large scale. I think itnwould be really good if they developed the other Victories to be as deep as the CV.