[GS] Should Diplomatic Victory be the only Victory?

[acluewithout]

The Diplomatic Victory and Diplomatic Favour / World Congress need a bit of tweaking. But they’re really solid ideas.

Basically, you win DV Points via voting, and then as you get close to victory your opponents can vote you down (which you can resist through Diplomatic Favour) but you can also close the gap via building a particular wonder(s), unlocking certain late game civics / techs or winning competitions.

What if the other victory types just got combined into the Diplomatic Point system?

So, eg

- Each of the Victory Types basically get changed into a way to earn DV points.

- You get 1 point for each capital you conquer or empire where your religion is the majority religion. If someone takes back their capital or reinstates their religion, then you lose these points.

- You get say 6 points once you have foreign tourists of X and so long as you have the highest tourism (so if you lose your lead, someone else will have those 6 points).

- You also get 2 points for the moon landing (or 1 if you’re not the first) and another 6 if you complete the exo planet mission (4 if you’re not the first).

- Diplomatic Victory etc. would otherwise stay the same, although maybe with some tweaking (eg maybe WC sessions need to happen more often in later eras, stuff like that).

I think the advantage of rolling all the other victories into the Diplo Victory is that:

- All the previous victory types would no longer be “knock out blows”. Sure, winning a "Culture Victory" would almost win you the game. But you’d have to keep you eye on other things to, like WC voting.

- It would also let you combine victory types - so yeah, you might get a “Culture Victory”, but to win the game you might also need to capture a couple of capitals (so, sort of a Dom victory too).

- There would also now be a way to challenge a Civ that’s about to win, because you could with the other Civs vote to reduce their DV Points.

I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days, and it just seemed to me like such an obvious direction for FXS to take the game. I think it would need some balancing, but the result would be maybe a more dynamic race to victory.

What do people think?

 

[gallowsCalibrator]

This actually sounds pretty interesting! I'd be more than happy to give it a shot if possible, too. I do like seperate victories as it stands, but this would definitely make an intriguing rule-set to try. Would the points needed to win still be 10 points?

 

[acluewithout]

I think what points the various old VCs are worth and or total points needed would need a lot of tweaking.

I think a good model for what I’m suggesting is Catan, where you have to get (I think) 9 or 10 victory points, which you mostly get by getting towns and cities down on the map, but there are other ways to grab points eg by competing for who had the biggest army or has built the longest road (with those points moving between whoever is the lead with those).

But my wider point is that I wonder if this is where FXS are going with the current victory conditions anyway. It just seems like sort of a next logical step now there’s a Diplomatic Victory. Balancing all the point values and goal would be tricky, but it’s not otherwise all that big a change... and it would make it easier to introduce other Victory types, eg Economic Victories. You could actually give different Victory types different values too, so maybe Culture Victory or Science Victory gets you a heap of points, but an Economic Victory would only get you a relatively small amount of points.

 

[The Kingmaker]

I’m thinking about a “Test of Time” victory. Suppose no one wins any of the other conditions. It could evaluate your accomplishments in all the other areas, science, religion, culture, etc., and declare whether your legacy stands the test of time.
Suppose you didn’t make it to Mars, but you still made it to the moon. Or you didn’t conquer everyone’s capital, but you did conquer half the globe. Those are no small feats.

Basically, it would be like a more sophisticated score victory.

Let the old score victory apply if no one excels at anything.

 

[gallowsCalibrator]

@Kingmaker- That sounds like just a better version of score victory in general, really. So I'm down! Also!

Yeah, the comparison to Catan seems apt. Y'know, with a system like this in place, they could even expand / interconnect the different 'paths' in more ways, too! More things to do with spaceports or tourism and such; something I do think the base game needs, but here, even more so. ;P

 

[PhoenicianGold]

This style of scoring would be very consistent with a lot of German style worker placement games.

On the one hand, it could open up play to some "hybrid" strategies, rather than encouraging players to overspecialize into effectively glass cannon strategies, as the current meta leans.

On the other hand, it reduces long term "options" to a singular score counter. And a fairly esoteric idea of "winning history" at that. If improperly balanced, it could make the game more easily optimized and even less varied.

I'm actually leaning toward this being worth exploring, though. I think allowing wins to be multifaceted would validate a lot of playstyles that are currently suboptimal. I think it would make redundancies or inefficiencies less punishing and more likely to be valuable if spun correctly. I think even more importantly it would make it easier to pivot instead of starting a new game.

And I think most importantly it would make multiplayer games more engaging and fair to noobs or casuals because it would take a lot of steam out of snowballing, where every increment along any axis (generally) adds to each players' score. And in any mode, it would allow you to read and respond with more versatility to the particular civ spread you are up against.

At the very least I think implementing a single victory point system for multiplayer would make the game much more accessible. Both for casuals and for hardcore fans alike, since it counterbalances "deck screwing" from map generation quite a bit.

Victories would more frequently feel random or coming out of nowhere, but I don't think much moreso than the current model. I mean, the victory conditions as it stands are pretty arbitrary to me. X times more tourists? X percent population religious? Just the original capitals? I think I ultimately would prefer a streamlined "total score" option. I don't resent the specific victory win conditions because they could make for fun themed games, but using all the victory conditions at once but only in parallel does feel like some missed potential.

As I've typed through this, I've made up my mind. If well-balanced, I'm completely for it.

 

[Dark-Light]

They should add a economic victory. Achieved by setting up foriegn banks and getting other nations to swap to your dollar. Once everyone is using your money and you have a central bank in all foriegn states you win. Also must have a large set amount of money in your treasury at the beginning of your turn to win.

 

[The Kingmaker]

They should add a economic victory. Achieved by setting up foriegn banks and getting other nations to swap to your dollar. Once everyone is using your money and you have a central bank in all foriegn states you win. Also must have a large set amount of money in your treasury at the beginning of your turn to win.

Ready to go for XP3!

 

[Ivan Hunger]

Seems like a good idea for an option or alternate game mode, but overly complicated as currently described. It would be much simpler and more intuitive to just use the numeric victory progress already presented on the victory screens.

Here's what I'm imagining. Each player has a victory percentage. The following criteria would modify that victory percentage:

Each space race project (launch earth satellite, launch moon landing, mars colony, and exoplanet expedition) would award +20%. Reaching the exoplanet would also award +20%.

+X%, where X = (the tourists currently attracted to your empire) ÷ (the tourists you need in your empire to win culture victory) × 100

+Y%, where Y = (the number of original capitals in your empire) ÷ (the total number of original capitals in the game) × 100

+Z%, where Z = (the number of empires converted to your religion) ÷ (the number of empires still in the game) × 100

And finally, +10% for each diplomatic victory point you currently have.

I think it would be very important to give the player the option to set what percentage actually achieves victory when setting up the map. For example, a player may decide to make victory require 150%, effectively one full victory condition and half of another. Or they might set the requirement to 200%, forcing an empire to achieve the equivalent of two full victory conditions before they can win the game. If they wanted to really encourage generalization, they could even set it to 250%, which would be the equivalent of one half of every single victory type.

 

[Casworon]

I think that a victory point mechanic is an obvious direction for 4x games to go so i am completely up for this change.

Interestingly even when played with the current game rules it is a nerf to wide and warmonger play which is currently very powerful in civ vi.

Anyone know if its possible to mod the victory conditions so we can all give this Victory Point mode a test?

 

[Uberfrog]

This is an interesting idea with a misleading title. There would no longer be a "Diplomatic Victory", just a victory that is earned by accruing a number of victory points. This is similar to how many boardgames work (Catan, Carcassone, etc). It's something I'd like a future Civ game to consider, as it would make the game more competitive and shorter games more viable.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

Seems like a good idea for an option or alternate game mode, but overly complicated as currently described. It would be much simpler and more intuitive to just use the numeric victory progress already presented on the victory screens.

Here's what I'm imagining. Each player has a victory percentage. The following criteria would modify that victory percentage:

Each space race project (launch earth satellite, launch moon landing, mars colony, and exoplanet expedition) would award +20%. Reaching the exoplanet would also award +20%.

+X%, where X = (the tourists currently attracted to your empire) ÷ (the tourists you need in your empire to win culture victory) × 100

+Y%, where Y = (the number of original capitals in your empire) ÷ (the total number of original capitals in the game) × 100

+Z%, where Z = (the number of empires converted to your religion) ÷ (the number of empires still in the game) × 100

And finally, +10% for each diplomatic victory point you currently have.

I think it would be very important to give the player the option to set what percentage actually achieves victory when setting up the map. For example, a player may decide to make victory require 150%, effectively one full victory condition and half of another. Or they might set the requirement to 200%, forcing an empire to achieve the equivalent of two full victory conditions before they can win the game. If they wanted to really encourage generalization, they could even set it to 250%, which would be the equivalent of one half of every single victory type.

I like this. Very simple to understand. Each victory is judged as a part of the whole map/tech. The only thing I would want to change would be to make the science victory a little more interesting than just complete five projects, but that is a complaint about the science victory itself and not this new system.

With the climate change features I would imagine a sustainability score could/should be implemented instead of the exoplanet race, which is really more of a sci-fi "peace out" solution compared to the other victories that impliedly concede that Earth is all there ever will be. It could entail a rebalancing of carbon and energy, perhaps even enough to compensate for the other civs' emissions, in a similar way to foreign and domestic tourism. Idunno, I'm just throwing ideas around because science is the least interesting and fun victory in civ atm.

 

[The Kingmaker]

There should be multiple benchmarks that are each scored separately from beginning to end.

Find a cure for cancer? Check.
Solve global warming? Check.
Put a man on the moon? Check.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

There should be multiple benchmarks that are each scored separately from beginning to end.

Find a cure for cancer? Check.
Solve global warming? Check.
Put a man on the moon? Check.

I could support this. A science tech tree with several branches. Biochemistry. Ecology/materials science. Astrophysics.

Could include theory of everything for mathematics/philosophy.

And technological singularity for computer science.

That would bring us to five science achievements to meet the same 20 criteria.

I'm going to presume 'cure for cancer" encompasses other things like solving AIDs and genetic disorders. I'm sure some of the mechanisms behind one would inform others, especially since CRISPR seems to have a lot of potential.

 

[gallowsCalibrator]

More Science stuff would be sweet lategame! Here's a few thoughts for the space side of things...

-Every project could, like the exoplanet mission, have a travel time that laser stations could accelerate; laser stations could also make projects more effective too.

-Exoplanet expedition could still provide points towards victory, or just give big chunks of favor, perhaps. Mars colony could act as a source of science points, and could enable more projects to develop your Mars colony further- increasing its science yield, making it provide diplomatic favor, stuff along those lines.

-More things to do with satellites would be cool too! Communication satellites that improve your tourism, military satellites of some kind, etc. One especially cool thing could be power-beaming satellites; you'd build one and choose one / some of your cities to benefit from it, where it'd provide a big chunk of CO2 free energy?

 

[The Kingmaker]

I'm going to presume 'cure for cancer" encompasses other things like solving AIDs and genetic disorders. I'm sure some of the mechanisms behind one would inform others, especially since CRISPR seems to have a lot of potential.

Sure, it could be whatever you’d want. I just invoked Cure for Cancer because it was actually a wonder in Civ2.

 

[acluewithout]

A random thought on this topic.

Even if FXS didn't just have one victory type, there is another cool change they could make...

How about, from the Modern Era onwards, you get +1 Diplomatic Victory Point for each other Victory Condition you are leading on?

So, you're ahead on a Culture Victory, then you get +1 DV Point. If someone overtakes you, then you lose your +1 DVP and the new leader gets it. In case of a tie, the point remains with whoever got there first.

I think this would improve the game immensely. In one stroke, you'd make all the other Victory Types (including Cultural Victories and Tourism) have a wider significance; and you'd also provide players with a way to grab a few extra DVPs when it gets hard to get votes for those in the late game. If it was too overpowered, you could maybe not have this apply to Dom Victories, or even just have it apply to Science and Cultural Victories (given people often complain landing on the moon and tourism don't seem to really do much...).