Theory Why Modern Age Culture Victory Is Weak: The British Museum Will Alter It In DLC 1

[tman2000]

Many people have discussed why the culture victory is so weak in the modern age. It can be rushed. The AI can strategically declare war to prevent you from getting the artifacts you need, then pick them up while you're fighting, and lock you out of that victory. The concept is weird. Things like this.

I have a theory that the historically grandest example of a modern era country that ratted around scooping up artifacts is Great Britain. Since GB is coming in the Crossroads DLC part 1, I sincerely wonder whether the British Museum won't be its associated wonder. Since civs get discounts on their associated wonders, but any civ can build them, then in theory a mechanic related to modern age cultural victory might be what the British Museum modifies.

Bear with me.

Maybe the "true" culture victory for the modern age involves diplomacy options that the British Museum will specifically modify, and that there was some reason why having the "true" culture victory in at launch would have spoiled the British Museum by inference. So, maybe they're going to patch in the "true" culture victory when GB is announced properly to go along with its wonder and civ abilities.

To restate, GB as a civ - whose features and attributes are still a mystery - will be directly related to the modern age cultural victory in the context of what the British Museum represented. This is to differentiate GB from its portrayal in past games as a colonial, military and trade empire. Here it is a cultural power. To keep GB from being spoiled, they have nerfed the cultural victory in the modern age, and it will be reintroduced after GB is announced.

How's the cut of my tinfoil jib?

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

According to screenshots it looks like Great Britain will be getting the Battersea Power Station as their associated wonder.

 

[tman2000]

According to screenshots it looks like Great Britain will be getting the Battersea Power Station as their associated wonder.

There goes my tinfoil.

I have to check I didn't see that anything had been announced.

 

[Black Gate]

There goes my tinfoil.

I have to check I didn't see that anything had been announced.

Battersea hasn't been officially announced but people were snooping through every frame of the Carthage/Britain showcase of the last livestream and saw something that looked like it. Nintendo's eShop has also revealed the flavour text for each DLC and implies a very industrial Britain imo.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I think the reasons why cultural victory could be rushed is just that it wasn't tested enough. No amount of company testing could compare to the amount of time players spend when the game is released, also if the game is constantly changing (which it normally does before release), there's not enough room to test balance things.

I expect culture victory to be changed in the coming patches, probably something like putting Hegemony at place where it can't be beelined could be a good first step to test.

P.S. I actually managed to win non-cultural in my latest game. I focused on civilization civics and started beelining to Hegemony quite late in the game, so I won economical before I dig out enough artefacts.

 

[JNR13]

Civ VI had a great culture victory. It was dynamic and tapped into a lot of different game mechanics. People whined that it was too complex; that the game didn't lay out its entire math in front of them even though it was totally sufficient from a strategic perspective to simply pursue the goal "get as much tourism as you can." People also kept crying about an economic victory because every yield needs to have its own little compartmentalized linear victory. God forbid we have to use resources as means to an end or combine mechanics.

This fandom got what it deserves when it comes to victories, imho.

All that VII's culture victory needs to make it more bearable is to tap more into the thing they did with Hegemony. Have multiple such "rounds" of discovering artifacts and make a much smaller share available with Natural History directly. Reward researching the entire civics tree with more artifacts to be unveiled. No deeper mechanical change needed to get the victory into a place where it fits the pacing and depth (or lack thereof) of the other legacy paths, I think.

 

[bumpyglint]

Civ VI had a great culture victory. It was dynamic and tapped into a lot of different game mechanics. People whined that it was too complex; that the game didn't lay out its entire math in front of them even though it was totally sufficient from a strategic perspective to simply pursue the goal "get as much tourism as you can." People also kept crying about an economic victory because every yield needs to have its own little compartmentalized linear victory. God forbid we have to use resources as means to an end or combine mechanics.

This fandom got what it deserves when it comes to victories, imho.

All that VII's culture victory needs to make it more bearable is to tap more into the thing they did with Hegemony. Have multiple such "rounds" of discovering artifacts and make a much smaller share available with Natural History directly. Reward researching the entire civics tree with more artifacts to be unveiled. No deeper mechanical change needed to get the victory into a place where it fits the pacing and depth (or lack thereof) of the other legacy paths, I think.

In Civ VI the cultural victory actually had a really big problem: tourism was basically completely useless for everything except winning the game, so it was a "all or nothing". All the Civs, wonders, improvements etc... with tourism bonus were completly useless if you didn't take them all; it wasn't a good concept.

Now it's still bad (maybe even worse), but at least trying to get artifacts makes sense (also just to "steal" them to others).

The main problem with CIv VII cultural victory is that:

1) culture is completely useless for it; when a player study a continent with its explorer, the artifacts are available for everyone (hegemony's artifacts included!!!!); you simply need to produce more explorer and more museum than other (you definitely don't need much culture for boths and considering the bug/ exploit on hegemony, having high cultures gives you no advantages)
2) it's easy to rush and can't be stopped. I don't know if this another intended bug, but you can't kill enemy explorer, so you can't even block them declaring war. It's just "spam explorer and hope to have artifacts close", it's not funny at all.

 

[stealth_nsk]

In Civ VI the cultural victory actually had a really big problem: tourism was basically completely useless for everything except winning the game, so it was a "all or nothing". All the Civs, wonders, improvements etc... with tourism bonus were completly useless if you didn't take them all; it wasn't a good concept.

Now it's still bad (maybe even worse), but at least trying to get artifacts makes sense (also just to "steal" them to others).

The main problem with CIv VII cultural victory is that:

1) culture is completely useless for it; when a player study a continent with its explorer, the artifacts are available for everyone (hegemony's artifacts included!!!!); you simply need to produce more explorer and more museum than other (you definitely don't need much culture for boths and considering the bug/ exploit on hegemony, having high cultures gives you no advantages)
2) it's easy to rush and can't be stopped. I don't know if this another intended bug, but you can't kill enemy explorer, so you can't even block them declaring war. It's just "spam explorer and hope to have artifacts close", it's not funny at all.

Killing enemy explorers would make winning either unachievable (if AI will use it right) or even easier (if only human player will use it). And for MP it will be unachievable by default. It doesn't look like a solution.

But yeah, cultural victory is quite problematic so far.

 

[mbbcam]

According to screenshots it looks like Great Britain will be getting the Battersea Power Station as their associated wonder.

Speaking as an Englishman, this fills me with despair as well as being comical. It makes me wonder if someone on the development team is a fan of Pink Floyd.

How many people travel to Britain to see Battersea Power Station? I can just imagine hordes of Chinese and Japanese people leafing through their travel guides to Britain and exclaiming: "Wow!! Look at that square, brick building with four chimneys! That is really worth travelling half way round the world to see! We'd better get on a plane immediately!"

Give me back Stonehenge and the Celts ...

 

[stealth_nsk]

Speaking as an Englishman, this fills me with despair as well as being comical. It makes me wonder if someone on the development team is a fan of Pink Floyd.

How many people travel to Britain to see Battersea Power Station? I can just imagine hordes of Chinese and Japanese people leafing through their travel guides to Britain and exclaiming: "Wow!! Look at that square, brick building with four chimneys! That is really worth travelling half way round the world to see! We'd better get on a plane immediately!"

Give me back Stonehenge and the Celts ...

It will become the tourist attraction after appearing in Civ7.

Seriously, though, it's good to have less known wonders in the game and it looks like Britain is greatly focused on production, so it makes sense.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Speaking as an Englishman, this fills me with despair as well as being comical. It makes me wonder if someone on the development team is a fan of Pink Floyd.

How many people travel to Britain to see Battersea Power Station? I can just imagine hordes of Chinese and Japanese people leafing through their travel guides to Britain and exclaiming: "Wow!! Look at that square, brick building with four chimneys! That is really worth travelling half way round the world to see! We'd better get on a plane immediately!"

Give me back Stonehenge and the Celts ...

I mean, it is a pretty spectacular building. Odd choice for a British wonder, I agree, but still an impressive building - and I guess it works as a symbol of British industrialisation, even if it was built after the industrial revolution.

 

[Hildebolt Von Berenreuthe]

Was just going to write a thread about how ridiculously easy it is to win cultural victory at the moment, but this seems to be the place to vent lol. I am enjoying the game in general, but I am now having to just skip the cultural victory route altogether in order to have any challenge at all..

 

[stealth_nsk]

Was just going to write a thread about how ridiculously easy it is to win cultural victory at the moment, but this seems to be the place to vent lol. I am enjoying the game in general, but I am now having to just skip the cultural victory route altogether in order to have any challenge at all..

It's discussed in more than one thread actually.

 

[UWHabs]

I think the reasons why cultural victory could be rushed is just that it wasn't tested enough. No amount of company testing could compare to the amount of time players spend when the game is released, also if the game is constantly changing (which it normally does before release), there's not enough room to test balance things.

I expect culture victory to be changed in the coming patches, probably something like putting Hegemony at place where it can't be beelined could be a good first step to test.

P.S. I actually managed to win non-cultural in my latest game. I focused on civilization civics and started beelining to Hegemony quite late in the game, so I won economical before I dig out enough artefacts.

I've tried my hand at very mild modding, and the changes that I made were to push explorers back to I think Globalism, and have them only buildable in a city with a museum. Those helped at least force civs to get a little culture research going before they can get explorers.

But I've seen other people with other options for the victory. Forcing you to research each artifact one by one in a museum, limiting explorers and charges, something that forces an investment into culture for you to get the artifacts, all would be better.

 

[uppi]

In Civ VI the cultural victory actually had a really big problem: tourism was basically completely useless for everything except winning the game, so it was a "all or nothing". All the Civs, wonders, improvements etc... with tourism bonus were completly useless if you didn't take them all; it wasn't a good concept.

Now it's still bad (maybe even worse), but at least trying to get artifacts makes sense (also just to "steal" them to others).

The main problem with CIv VII cultural victory is that:

1) culture is completely useless for it; when a player study a continent with its explorer, the artifacts are available for everyone (hegemony's artifacts included!!!!); you simply need to produce more explorer and more museum than other (you definitely don't need much culture for boths and considering the bug/ exploit on hegemony, having high cultures gives you no advantages)
2) it's easy to rush and can't be stopped. I don't know if this another intended bug, but you can't kill enemy explorer, so you can't even block them declaring war. It's just "spam explorer and hope to have artifacts close", it's not funny at all.

You can do a bit more than just hope. Especially with the Hegemony wave of dig sites, there are a few things you can do:
- place your explorers in such a way that they can quickly reach the artifacts on a continent, no matter where they appear.
- have a good rail network and place your explorers on rail stations to shave off a few turns of travel time
- if the artifacts are not researched yet, do not research them immediately, but wait until your explorers are in position to gobble up all the dig sites which appear
- if you know where the AI has parked their explorers, choose another continent to research (this will also lure the AI away from the original continent so you can do the same thing there later)
- keep strike teams of explorers on each
continent to be ready in case the Ai researches them.

It is not too bad of a minigame in itself. But the problem is indeed that it is not connected to culture at all (or much else for that matter). If anything, the gold output matters most since you always want to buy explorers.

The question is though: How can it be fixed? Can it be fixed?

The question

 

[wesplaysciv]

All the victories need to be improved. Question is are they or just going to wait for something like Tourism in the 4th age?

 

[stealth_nsk]

One of the biggest things regarding victory and legacy paths. In one of the coming patch it's expected that any age could be configured as final and we could expect atomic age expansion coming some time soon. With this, each victory is split into 2 parts - legacy path, which works even if the current age is not final, and the actual victory, which comes actual fulfilling golden requirements for the legacy path.

So, generally, collecting artefacts as path progress is very likely to stay in modern age. There could be more ways to get them or more gradual reveal, but the general approach is the same.

But for the victory itself, I think building world fair may require a bit more tweaks.

 

[Uberfrog]

Civ VI had a great culture victory. It was dynamic and tapped into a lot of different game mechanics. People whined that it was too complex; that the game didn't lay out its entire math in front of them even though it was totally sufficient from a strategic perspective to simply pursue the goal "get as much tourism as you can." People also kept crying about an economic victory because every yield needs to have its own little compartmentalized linear victory. God forbid we have to use resources as means to an end or combine mechanics.

This fandom got what it deserves when it comes to victories, imho.

No, we weren’t just whining. Civ 6’s Tourism really is needlessly opaque. Spot the odd one out:

1. Conquer every opponent’s capital city
2. Complete the Exoplanet Expedition project
3. Convert 50% of every civilisation’s cities to your religion.
4. “Get as much tourism as you can”

As @bumpyglint has already said, there is an issue of Tourism in Civ 6 being entirely a victory yielding (it was better in Civ 5 when it was related to ideological pressure). But even if we accept that Tourism only exists to measure progress towards a Cultural Victory, what exactly is the precise victory condition? How do I know what more I need to do to win?

“attract more visiting tourists to your civilization than any other civilization has domestic tourists at home”

What on earth is a domestic tourist? How is it relevant to my civ - does it give me any income? No, it just acts as a passive defence against cultural victory.

The deficiency of the victory is plain enough to see by opening the Victory panel - the only information you are presented with is a bizarre fraction against each civ and (hopefully! Eventually!) a counter that may or may not accurately tell you how many turns it will take to win. It’s a disaster of information.

I don’t mind the process of gathering tourism, appeal, rock bands etc - it’s definitely one of the most dynamic and fun victories in Civ 6 (now in stark contrast to Civ 7’s awfully designed cultural victory…). But it clearly fails at communicating what precisely the player needs to do. And this means the end game is more about blindly stacking tourism bonuses until an arbitrary counter allows you to win the game.

 

[King of Prussia]

Well science requires you to go thru most of the tree to finish it, where as culture just needs 3? or so civics. Spacing it out so you have to do the same, requiring a good culture gain, would be 1 solution. Of course, if this was done, then i would say econ would be the easiest to achieve. Ive more or less done it in all of my games, without much trouble or thought. Of the 3 ages, modern right now has the weakest of the legacy points.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Well science requires you to go thru most of the tree to finish it, where as culture just needs 3? or so civics. Spacing it out so you have to do the same, requiring a good culture gain, would be 1 solution. Of course, if this was done, then i would say econ would be the easiest to achieve. Ive more or less done it in all of my games, without much trouble or thought. Of the 3 ages, modern right now has the weakest of the legacy points.

Culture needs 6, because there's a chokepoint in the middle, but it's still not much. Also, providing you have civ-specific and ideology policies which are not related to cultural victory, there still will be the way to get to necessary civic quickly even if Hegemony effect will be pushed later and require more branches.