The Modern Economic victory path is my favorite

[UWHabs]

I've only gone through it a couple times, although I don't think either of them I was really constrained at all. Even if my science trails production, it's not more than like 5 turns from when I finish the previous project to when I unlock the final one.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

Eco is easy to do (and fast). Port TOWNS can just stack up factory resources.

Military: if I'm gonna go military, then I'll just konquer whatever is out there. Why fart about with quest.
Drive them before me and hear the lamentation of their wimmin!

Culture isn't that difficult either.
Science is kinda tedious.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Culture is harder after the patch. It's become a race to get to the artifact, where before everyone could dig up one artifact from a site. If you're the first to unlock Hegemony, you can get a head start on Antiquity artifacts. But the AI learns that soon enough, so it may be tough to get to the level where you can build the World's Fair.
Does anyone know if capturing an AI city where they have a Museum gets you possession of the artifacts they had stored there?

 

[stealth_nsk]

In my experience (mostly on immortal):

1. Culture is a lottery. Depending on how focused AI is (or how badly they beat each other), or just luck with overbuilding, it ranges from very easy to just too late. Overall I want a bit more connection to culture and a bit less randomness. But with recent changes and automatic artifacts from research after Hegemony, it's much better than on release and is pretty interesting to pursue.

2. Economic is pretty automatic, but I really like how it's opposed to military. If you're at war, you get huge cost increase and, on top of that, you need for this victory the same 2 resources which are badly needed for war - influence and money. So, sometimes it's pushed back a lot just by this.

3. Scientific is still the latest one of all peaceful victories. Even with huge science output I struggle to complete second milestone before winning either cultural or economical, unless I deliberately delay them. On the other hand, it's the most reliable peaceful victory.

4. Military looks solid, but I haven't reach one yet, because I usually play too peacefully. Tried it once, but it really needs much bigger scale of war. Also, a bit annoying that AIs often delay taking ideology, which makes getting military points even harder.

5. Score victory look more or less at the right place now. You almost always get the victory you naturally go for and score comes into play only on rare occasions.

 

[uppi]

4. Military looks solid, but I haven't reach one yet, because I usually play too peacefully. Tried it once, but it really needs much bigger scale of war. Also, a bit annoying that AIs often delay taking ideology, which makes getting military points even harder.

In my opinion, it does not make much of a difference whether the AI picks an ideology or not. At best, that is 3 settlements less you need to conquer. And that is only if your war targets pick the right ideology early. But that rarely happens, since you want to pick weak targets which are likely late to get to ideologies.

So pick an ideology and go to war. Plan to capture 10 settlements and if you get lucky, you might only need 8 or 9. But that should only be a few turns difference once your war machine is running.

 

[moondog385]

Agreed. Since the first time I won that way, it’s been my favorite. I love how it feels to build those railroads all around my empire, seeing them all connect, and imagining the resources getting transported. I think part of the fun is that it reminds me of VI’s culture victory, putting things into city’s slots. That was my favorite victory by some margin in that game.

 

[stealth_nsk]

In my opinion, it does not make much of a difference whether the AI picks an ideology or not. At best, that is 3 settlements less you need to conquer. And that is only if your war targets pick the right ideology early. But that rarely happens, since you want to pick weak targets which are likely late to get to ideologies.

So pick an ideology and go to war. Plan to capture 10 settlements and if you get lucky, you might only need 8 or 9. But that should only be a few turns difference once your war machine is running.

Yeah, my peaceful nature feels really bad when I try to plan conquering 10 settlements