[GS] Should it be possible to achieve victory without ever using victory-specific districts?

[MrRadar]

The thread about Campus-less science victory got me thinking, if such a thing should be possible at all? Let's look, how things are.

Diplomatic and Score victories are a special case, so let's leave them out, the remaining four victories all have a specific district that is or can be directly associated with that VC.

Also, let's talk standard map settings – standard size, speed, 8 civs total, 12 CS, no cheesed up business, on the hardest difficulty – Deity.

Under such conditions Religious Victory is impossible without building at least one Holy Site – after some restarts and a lot of luck you may get to build Stonehenge and found a religion, but all other religious Wonders giving a few free religious units require a Holy Site or its buildings, so no way to have more missionaries and apostles, and passive spread from one city won't cut it. In my opinion, everything is sensible here, RV is a model pupil in this regard.

Cultural Victory without Theatre Districts is a bit different thing. It may also seem impossible or nigh on impossible, but World Wonders, walls, seaside and ski resorts, national parks, certain great people open up some avenues. Still, it would be very difficult and slow, and probably impossible in case of cultural AI present on the map, unless you make your cultural victory mostly military. Still the situation with the CV and it's shaky feasibility w/o TD seems sufficiently reasonable. CV is somewhere about A-.

Domination Victory without Encampments, is, alas, very much possible. Aside from generation of GGs for some help to speed things up, DomV is perfectly feasible without ever using an Encampment, and that is… outrageous, I think. Without specialised army buildings for training and military thought there should not be any proper army possible. A mere city w/o an encampment should only be able to produce some early militia, slingers, scouts, and some forms of city garrison or territorial troops later. But certainly not trained and battle ready troops. Encampment and its buildings should unlock the option to build more and more sorts of troops in that city, gunpowder units should also require an IZ and a workshop, and mechanised troops – factory coverage. D, back to year 1.

Science Victory without Campus Districts, is, again, no big problem, and achievable within reasonable time. There will be plenty of dubious eureka moments, then some blokes will sip some tea, watch thermal fissures steam, listen very carefully what merchants from foreign parts talk in their trading posts, then sum everything up with their peer citizens at a pub over a pint, and the course to the nearest habitable star system will be readily plotted. And those citizens don't even need to be overly prone to aggression and pillaging. F, back to the nursery.

This is probably the first Civ instalment where you can win science on the highest difficulty, maintaining high degrees of peace and without a single piece of science infrastructure. Now this is a real scandal, if there was one.

Civs 1-4 had commerce and sliders, allowing you to direct where your nation's efforts were going. Probably that was a better system, which maybe was worth keeping; it only needed more tinkering to solve rounding issues and binary research, if it was such a problem. Now flat yields from all sources allow for such hardly believable situations.

Maybe it would be better to bring back the idea of commerce for the science and replace the current science yields by, let's say, raw "data", a fraction of which could be processed by general population, but you'd need science infrastructure and specialists to actually process it more efficiently into "science" yield, which would allow you to move further in the tech tree? And for that advance to be efficient in more and more progressive eras, you'd need higher and higher level buildings and coverage (why Universities don’t have 6 tile coverage like other T2 buildings?). That way even if you get lots of data yields, they wouldn't take you far without appropriate infrastructure and people to interpret it. And no space programs for sure, if you neglect to build science labs and well powered factories.

 

[lotrmith]

I don't know why you consider this a bad thing. These district-less wins are extreme fringe edge cases of players manipulating situations to make them possible or otherwise min-maxing and taking advantage anywhere they can against the AI (even on Deity).

 

[MrRadar]

I don't know why you consider this a bad thing. These district-less wins are extreme fringe edge cases of players manipulating situations to make them possible or otherwise min-maxing and taking advantage anywhere they can against the AI (even on Deity).

If only they were "extreme fringe edge cases of players manipulating situations to make them possible or otherwise min-maxing and taking advantage anywhere they can"! Maybe in CV case alone. Certainly not in DomV case, and believe me, I did not manipulate anything or min-maxed very much in my Peter game to get Campus-less deity SV. It was pretty ordinary game and it felt completely wrong to even get a science lead on deity, without as much as a single functioning campus in sight.

 

[lotrmith]

If only they were "extreme fringe edge cases of players manipulating situations to make them possible or otherwise min-maxing and taking advantage anywhere they can"! Maybe in CV case alone. Certainly not in DomV case, and believe me, I did not manipulate anything or min-maxed very much in my Peter game to get Campus-less deity SV. It was pretty ordinary game and it felt completely wrong to even get a science lead on deity, without as much as a single functioning campus in sight.

Dubious claims aside, I still don't understand why you consider this a bad thing.

Just because a thing is possible doesn't mean it's bad design. You're significantly crippling your own performance by attempting to achieve victory conditions without the corresponding districts with a few rare exceptions such as relic tourism spam and such.

You can win with one city. Does that mean the design of settlers and expansion needs a rehaul?

 

[Archon_Wing]

It most certainly should.

Railroading is bad and the victory districts are more or less too good at what they do.

They should be made more optional, not less.

 

[Karmah]

cultural victory relying on faith should be quite possible. the trucks of death provides quite a lot. They are some sources of cultures outside of buildings. It does feel pretty much possible. I'd wage war for pillaging early to mid game at least though if you manage to keep a couple of happy allies for your trade.

 

[MrRadar]

Dubious claims aside, I still don't understand why you consider this a bad thing.

Which claims do you find dubious? As for the bad thing, well. They unstacked the cities to encourage specialization, as I understand. But the possibility to achieve victory w/o some sorts of specialized districts, again, on the hardest level, shows that specialization is not so important. You can be very average and still prevail. I have nothing against this being normally achievable up to Prince or King. Emperor should make you sweat a bit, Immortal - sweat a lot, and to pull this off on Deity should require all your skill and also quite a bit of luck.

Just because a thing is possible doesn't mean it's bad design. You're significantly crippling your own performance by attempting to achieve victory conditions without the corresponding districts

No, nothing wrong for it to be possible on average levels. The level of crippling though is quite different for different victory conditions.

They should be made more optional, not less.

SV without a single Campus on Deity shows that Campus is kind of irrelevant. How can you make it more optional? I'm not talking about speed of victory, but a possibility as such.

cultural victory relying on faith should be quite possible. the trucks of death provides quite a lot. They are some sources of cultures outside of buildings. It does feel pretty much possible. I'd wage war for pillaging early to mid game at least though if you manage to keep a couple of happy allies for your trade.

Jeez, I completely forgot about rock bands! Of course! That is a serious hit to the grade. CV down to C. Rock bands should require at least an amphitheater to be able to form. Where else they could practice and test their skills? In a local church?

 

[lotrmith]

SV without a single Campus on Deity shows that Campus is kind of irrelevant.

I mean, the difference between having Campuses and not is astronomical. A far cry from 'irrelevant'.

 

[Troy Bruckner]

Rock bands should require at least an amphitheater to be able to form. Where else they could practice and test their skills? In a local church?

A garage?

My fastest cultural victory was with Freleanor and it was because of Kandy. I had the religion factor that tripled relics. With 4 or 5 relics it overpowered the other Civs before 500BC. I was trying to get their cities to revolt with no success too.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Well, you can't do a SV without a spaceport, which I would consider to be the SV district. There are lots of ways to get science. There's only one way to get to space.

 

[Troy Bruckner]

Well, you can't do a SV without a spaceport, which I would consider to be the SV district. There are lots of ways to get science. There's only one way to get to space.

Chopping wood?

 

[kb27787]

Religious victory without a holy site is theoretically possible with Stonehenge and religious rock...

Good luck not having your religion wiped out before you get rock bands though!

Well I guess you could theoretically refrain from founding your religion until late game (take religious settlements to found enough new cities to convert your own empire and rock the rest)

 

[Naeshar]

I don't consider deity as standard...

The only not possible is religious. However you didn't list later start games. Science victory is probably even more reliant on production than science then, but Culture can be easier without Theater Squares - National Parks are easier to get up than swiftly collecting GWAMs.

 

[Victoria]

A pure rock band cultural victory is not just possible but quite easy with such as Kupe who do not even have to chop to get it.
A Kandy or normal reliquaries cultural victory is the fastest cultural victory and requires no theaters
Equally a seaside resort or UU cultural victory can also be achieved without theaters, what I call a 'pure science' approach.

an SV without campuses is a bit gamey and does require pillaging.
an RV without at least one shrine is not really possible.

remind which districts are victory specific for diplomacy and score victories?

 

[MrRadar]

Well, you can't do a SV without a spaceport, which I would consider to be the SV district. There are lots of ways to get science. There's only one way to get to space.

Spaceport is not a real speciality district, it is just an enabling piece of infrastructure, without which you can't launch, so nothing interesting to discuss here. It is just one of the last pieces in the long chain, that science allows you to get to.

I don't consider deity as standard...

Neither do I, I only mentioned standard map settings, and deity as an extreme case. I'll reformulate my question:

should victory specific districts be inconsequential to that kind of victory to the point that even on the most extreme difficulty you could achieve that type of victory without ever using them fairly comfortably, with most civilizations.

Not as a special case, not as a feat of skill, but just taking it a hundred or so turns longer, but still without serious threat of losing at one point or another.

The main offenders now, imo, are Encampments and Campus districts.

However you didn't list later start games.

No, because they are not standard starts and you skip entire eras, where you could act.

A pure rock band cultural victory is not just possible but quite easy with such as Kupe who do not even have to chop to get it.
A Kandy or normal reliquaries cultural victory is the fastest cultural victory and requires no theaters

Those are peculiar enough cases with a select or specific civilization, which is very much OK.

an SV without campuses is a bit gamey and does require pillaging.

Well, not really, or not very much. In my Peter game I only pillaged Campus 4 times - that's what, 8-12 turns win. Was not crucial at all. No other pillaging was done. But I admit that all that settling space in 7 seas map and Peter in tundra with Dance of Aurora was just insanely good. When you're getting over 600 faith per turn, maybe rock-band based CV would also be possible.

remind which districts are victory specific for diplomacy and score victories?

Diplomatic and Score victories are a special case, so let's leave them out,

 

[Troy Bruckner]

When you're getting over 600 faith per turn, maybe rock-band based CV would also be possible.

It is very possible, but when I play Peter I find myself building everything I can to handle all of the great writers that I am spewing out. I touched on it above, but rock bands are not very effective when the computer has not built many districts and or wonders.

 

[UWHabs]

I would argue that it would be rare to win a science victory without a campus. I know personally I'd never even attempt it. I mean, if you can do it, all the better for you.

The only argument I would say is "unbalanced" would be encampments in relation to military wins. While they now increase your resource limits, the fact that you no longer need them for the whole "one copy of the resource to build unlimited copies of the unit" makes them potentially less needed than they were.

Although really, if they wanted to "require" the districts, you could simply change the spaceport to be required to be built next to a university or research lab, and for culture, it might not be a terrible change to only let you produce them in cities with a broadcast tower. But I don't know how much those changes would really alter the victory types except adding in extra conditions to worry about.

 

[MrRadar]

It is very possible, but when I play Peter I find myself building everything I can to handle all of the great writers that I am spewing out.

Mind, that in the interest of this thread, you would be banned from ever having a functioning TD, if you went for a CV with him, so only a few wonders and NHM could accommodate those great works, other GP would stay jobless for life. And you would be kinda discouraged from selling your art not to make things more difficult for you.

but rock bands are not very effective when the computer has not built many districts and or wonders.

Ha, that would be a real curiosity - a Rock Band so long-lived an durable, that it ran out of places to perform in the entire world!
Now I am intrigued - has anybody really had something like this?

 

[Troy Bruckner]

I would argue that it would be rare to win a science victory without a campus. I know personally I'd never even attempt it. I mean, if you can do it, all the better for you.

The only argument I would say is "unbalanced" would be encampments in relation to military wins. While they now increase your resource limits, the fact that you no longer need them for the whole "one copy of the resource to build unlimited copies of the unit" makes them potentially less needed than they were.

Although really, if they wanted to "require" the districts, you could simply change the spaceport to be required to be built next to a university or research lab, and for culture, it might not be a terrible change to only let you produce them in cities with a broadcast tower. But I don't know how much those changes would really alter the victory types except adding in extra conditions to worry about.

I routinely ignore building campuses early and concentrate on faith, culture, gold and I am able to keep up and sometimes be ahead in science output.

 

[MrRadar]

I would argue that it would be rare to win a science victory without a campus. I know personally I'd never even attempt it. I mean, if you can do it, all the better for you.

Do try it, you may very much surprise yourself.

Although really, if they wanted to "require" the districts, you could simply change the spaceport to be required to be built next to a university or research lab, and for culture, it might not be a terrible change to only let you produce them in cities with a broadcast tower. But I don't know how much those changes would really alter the victory types except adding in extra conditions to worry about.

No, I'm not here to talk about such additional artificial hurdles, but instead about some ways to find more meaning in specialisation and the way in which some yields are or could be generated.

I routinely ignore building campuses early and concentrate on faith, culture, gold and I am able to keep up and sometimes be ahead in science output.

Exactly.