Should you pick your desired victory at the beginning?

[Foxtrot2873]

When you first start your game, do you decide exactly what type of victory you want?

 

[AriochIV]

If you want to do a cultural victory, you have to decide right away.

 

[tballz]

I usually figure it out within the first 100 turns or so after taking a look at what my starting point offers and comparing it to which civ i've drawn

 

[TommyVern]

I not only pick it at the start of the game but even before I start the game. My choice of leader is very dependent on which victory condition I'm trying to achieve.

 

[alysenne]

It depends on the difficulty level you've chosen. The higher the difficulty, the better it is for you to pick the victory condition ahead of time.

Personally, I don't like playing at the highest difficulties. I feel like I have to do specific strategies or AI tricks to win consistently. I'd rather play the way I want to play.

So that often means I can pick how I'm going to win later in the game.

For example, I usually only settle 2 to 4 cities before I end up in my first war. I puppet everything, which means that a cultural victory is still a reasonable possibility even midgame.

 

[Futumch]

Sometimes you can find yourself in a position where you can choose between a couple of different sorts of victories. Saving the game at that fork can let you play out each different ending as you like (for example if you are starting to build spaceship parts and the Utopia Project becomes available to build).

For my own games I tend to have a couple of ideal victory types in mind when I start a game, as TommyVern says, it can affect your choice of leader even.

 

[ButSam]

I generally choose right away, but retain flexibility to change later. For example, it is relatively painless to change from whatever strategy I started out wanting to achieve to either Diplomatic (as long as gold isn't a problem) or Scientific (if gold is a bigger problem than research)...so I start out planning on Culture or Domination more frequently, but sometimes I start from scratch seeking for Diplo or Scientific...particularly if a certain Civs' traits and/or starting location make it more beneficial to pursue Diplo or Scientific victory.

 

[Trickster7135]

If you want to do a cultural victory, you have to decide right away.

No, you don't. Considering how culture builds up over time, you can skip the first 50 turns and not bother to build any culture buildings or wonders. You'll only end up delaying yourself two or three turns by the end of the game.

 

[QuixotesGhost]

I decide by the time I get my first policy pick. So roughly 20 turns in. Even if I decide to save it for Commerce or Patronage.

No, you don't. Considering how culture builds up over time, you can skip the first 50 turns and not bother to build any culture buildings or wonders. You'll only end up delaying yourself two or three turns by the end of the game.

Lack of the Oracle and Stonehenge can easily delay you by a good 20-25 turns, perhaps more.

 

[}{ELL/\/()]

I think within the firs 10-20 turns, you know who you are, what resources / city states/ civs are near you and can decide the best course of action.

 

[belengthy]

I usually have an idea when I start, but I keep my options open. My last game I had in my head I wanted to win Domination, but Siam engulfed the other continent and I got lazy and went the science route. Probably could've done Diplomatic since my economy was healthy and had a fair amount of allies already.

 

[Yzman]

On easy diffilculties you don't need to choose much...on higher, definitely. On a chieftain game ( wanted all the wonders achievement) I had no winning strategy and ended up winning a cultural victory, without even doing the piety social policies no less. I could also have won a diplo ( had so much money I could buy all of the votes) or a space race ( was close to completing it and was eras ahead in tech).

 

[alpaca]

The difference between a science and diplomatic victory isn't huge because you actually need the conditions for the diplo victory for the science one. I don't really play the game to win anymore because the victory conditions are so borked: Conquest is always easiest and works if an AI conquers every other AI and you just take their capital, diplomatic just requires bribing all city states you can get your dirty hands on, and science victory is oh so slow.

The only remotely interesting one is cultural but I'm experimenting with huge empire strategies at the moment.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The only one that takes extensive planning is culture. Even then, you can probably decide a bit into the game, you just won't get an optimal finish time.

 

[dubrown]

It depends, sometimes I decide before the game starts what I want to do, sometimes not. So far I've decided before gamestart my goal just to try out the different leaders and victory conditions. Later on I suspect when I start with random leader/random map etc that the circumstances has to dictate what victory condition to go after, atleast that was my usual approach in CivIV.

 

[Syiss_]

I feel like winning isn't really much of an achievement in itself, so I'm generally aiming for the fastest victory possible, which makes it important to plan out the victory condition from the very start (including picking a civ and map suitable to it).

 

[Trickster7135]

Lack of the Oracle and Stonehenge can easily delay you by a good 20-25 turns, perhaps more.

Not building Oracle will delay you about 7 or 8 turns, as that's about how long it takes to get my last policy.

Not building Stonehenge... well I've never been able to build it on Emperor+, so I can't really comment on it, other than to say it's culture output is only equivalent to two landmarks, and any culture you get before broadcast stations and other multipliers doesn't really add much compared to the high cost of social policies late game.

 

[ButSam]

No, you don't. Considering how culture builds up over time, you can skip the first 50 turns and not bother to build any culture buildings or wonders. You'll only end up delaying yourself two or three turns by the end of the game.

I agree with you Trickster. My very first game of Civ 5, I won a culture victory. Granted I did decide for culture victory from the beginning, but I was horribly inefficient. I did *not* build Stonehenge, which would have been +8/turn * 300 turns/game (post-stonehenge) = 2,400 raw culture (without modifiers!). I also did *not* do anything on the Piety track to see if it could be done, and because I wanted to do Rationalism. I did the Liberty track most of the game, only deciding toward the end to start the first track (forgot the name of it!), which gives a wonder bonus. I made silly mistakes that are expected in the first game such as not realizing what buildings would provide culture. I didn't build temples, for example, until about halfway through the game. I also didn't prioritize my tech research around culture.

Despite all of this, I won a culture victory, around the year 2000 (exact year I don't recall, but I know I didn't get to 2010), so that is a full 50 turns before the end, on the first playthrough ever of Civ V, and without doing some of the things people claim are "gotta-haves" for culture victory.

On the other hand, in Civ IV, even on very easy difficulty levels, it took me a few plays to figure out how to win a culture victory, and you certainly had to decide from the beginning.

EDIT: I also had 6 cities that I built in the game, plus 2 more cities I had taken over, so I wasn't a small empire either.

 

[IgnatiusTBarfat]

I really enjoyed this question and the responses.

For the first time since I started placing the Civ series I realized that I have a victory type in mind before I even spawn a game.

 

[uberdubersoldat]

If you want to do a cultural victory, you have to decide right away.

while probably true, thats definitely not true in 100% of cases. I've played a game where I got beat in a war, so I retreated to an island where my main forces were built and sold off the rest of my cities in the meager hope I could regain a culture based footing and win.

I guess this only worked because the AI sucks dick at naval combat.