Victory conditions discussion/critique

[KrikkitTwo]

I think the problem with the Diplomatic Win is that it's almost contradictory. Assuming you go through the process of building, you don't really get a benefit by building it, aside from inclusion, but it's highly unlikely that the other Civs will vote for your Diplomatic Win. So even though your name is on the board and you went through the trouble to build it, odds are, the wonder isn't going to pay off.

By having the United Nations within your OWN borders, there should be definitely be a plus in Prestige for your nation. As a result, there should be bonus points, as in your Civilization has more weight in UN votes, or you should get a reputation boost, giving you +3 relations among all the Civs, given the fact that you built such an Institution in the name of Global unity. (Or even make the other Civs more obliged when the UN builder asks for Favors, something like that)

Or maybe to change the way the voting process works. Put everyone's name on the board when choosing a Secretary General. Why not, the UN is designed for Global inclusion. But have it where Civs can NOT vote for themselves (but can abstain). This would force more of a diplomatic effort among ALL the Civs, allows the potential for other Civs to be Secretary Generals and would give it more of a 3 Dimensional feel.

In my opinion, the Diplomacy Victory and indeed the United Nations wonder could use some revamping.

I really like civs not voting for themselves, aside from that major change, perhaps the UN could give someone more votes.


What's really needed is the option to have diplomatic votes in the diplomacy screen (you vote for this and I'll give you tech X, Gold X, to War with, etc.) How likely a civ would value that would depend.

 

[dh_epic]

I think almost everything has been said already about the victory conditions!!! Space Race is boring plain and simple (I turn it off most of the time). I also tried cultural but miss by less than 10 turns to a AI space, Its the hardest I think to get...

The thing about the space race is it IS boring. But the game becomes even MORE boring without it, I find, because then the end game has absolutely no pressure. Part of what makes domination interesting is to know that your opponent might have a chance of launching a spaceship before you take them out. But I don't knock your choice -- so long as you're having fun.

You should apply your own technique to culture. Conquest anyone who has a shot at the space race while you squeeze out those last few turns of culture.

In some ways its more a under acheived Domination victory turn into Diplo!!! The victory I got is exactly that... I was conquering every Civ that didnt vote for me and after a while I just saw that I had enough vote to elect myself secretary and pass every thing that I wanted

Here it is again -- conquest your way to diplomatic victory.

Fixing the Victory Conditions

I think you and I are complaining about the same things. The victory conditions have always sucked for the Civilization series, although it's more pronounced now that domination is harder. The best strategy is to conquest and switch. Take out your opponents AND boost your economy.

There's nothing wrong with conquest. It should definitely be an option. Maybe even make it happen a little faster. But it needs to be seperate from other victory conditions.

I'm not claiming to have all the answers. But let me take a shot --

Take cultural victory. If you're the most hated nation on the planet, then how can your culture be respected? I always thought cultural influence shouldn't just be something you generate in your cities, but something that requires you to reach out to other civilizations. Whoever does the best job of reaching out would have a bigger surge in culture. Hence, conquest would actually HURT your chances at cultural victory.

If they introduced an economic victory, it would need to be along the same lines. It couldn't just depend on your flat amount of cash. It would need to depend on your international trade. Otherwise it would just be another form of domination victory.

I also think the diplomatic victory leaves the most to be desired and ought to be completely rebuilt. I think this could depend a lot more on minor civilizations and barbarians, if they go to the trouble of making those interactions more meaningful.

 

[magnate]

I think Domination is actually the kind of culture victory you envisage, dh, because the amount of land you dominate is all about your total cultural influence, not that of three cities. Hitting the %pop requirement seems to me to be trivial compared with hitting the %land requirement. If they were reversed I think Domination would be not so far adrift in terms of being so hard to get (compared with other VCs).

So my suggestions are:

1. Remove "three-city" culture VC altogether, replace it with %land based cultural victory (ie. Domination without any %pop requirement). This would favour more smaller cities, carefully laid out, and make military defence and/or diplomacy important.

2. Replace Domination with a "religion" VC, where you need a %pop requirement and the most extensive religion (ie. your state rel is in the most cities, must be over 50% of cities). This would be interesting because you could win with just a few big cities yourself, persuading AIs to adopt your rel and spread it for you etc. I think it's a shame that no VC currently features religion.

3. Reduce Conquest VC to something like 90% of cities (or maybe of world pop) to avoid tedious endgame and enable beating that last AI with three huge cities who's close to the space VC ...

4. Add some requirement to the space race VC to make it less of a no-brainer for the AI. Not sure what to add, but some sort of condition like "at least 15 cities" or "at least X total pop" or something which forces people going for space race to keep expanding instead of being able to focus on it so easily.

5. Re-vamp the Diplo VC (and the UN) in the way others have suggested. This seems to me even harder than Domination at the mo, because I end up winning Domination well before I can vote myself to a Diplo win! I like lots of the suggestions on this theme so far, esp. that building the UN should get you something extra, and that you can "buy" votes through trade (though some leaders may be more likely to double cross than others ...)

6. Personally I hate the "time" VC, I think it's lame and I always switch it off. The world doesn't grind to a halt in 2050, and the scoring system is totally broken, so IMO the time victory is meaningless. Happy to leave it in for those who like it though - it does at least prevent the game dragging on forever if you can't win but can stop the AI from winning ...

CC

 

[kurdi]

2. Replace Domination with a "religion" VC, where you need a %pop requirement and the most extensive religion (ie. your state rel is in the most cities, must be over 50% of cities). This would be interesting because you could win with just a few big cities yourself, persuading AIs to adopt your rel and spread it for you etc. I think it's a shame that no VC currently features religion.
CC

A Religion victory is a GREAT IDEA, I think... they should have had something like this in this new Civ release, since as a concept religion is tackled for the first time. I wonder if they can introduce something like this in patch!

 

[zienth]

1. Remove "three-city" culture VC altogether, replace it with %land based cultural victory (ie. Domination without any %pop requirement). This would favour more smaller cities, carefully laid out, and make military defence and/or diplomacy important.

If the required percentage is anything close to the current domination requirement, his would require military conquest, which is kind of the opposite of what I think of as a culture victory. There is no way you can control a significant percentage of the land without using force. You can't culture flip several entire civs in any reasonable timeframe.

2. Replace Domination with a "religion" VC, where you need a %pop requirement and the most extensive religion (ie. your state rel is in the most cities, must be over 50% of cities). This would be interesting because you could win with just a few big cities yourself, persuading AIs to adopt your rel and spread it for you etc. I think it's a shame that no VC currently features religion.

You'd have to make the requirement considerably higher than 50%. You can easily get 50% by just spamming out missionaries. The only things that could make it difficult are:
1) Closed borders - It's not too tough to get open borders with most AIs if you really try.
2) AIs running Theocracy - This can be a little tougher, but if nothing else you can try getting the UN to pass Free Religion. And most AIs don't run Theocracy all of the time.
3) The limit of 3 missionaries per civ. This is probably the biggest limit, you'll spend most of your time waiting for missionaries to get where they are going.

Problems 1 & 2 are probably only going to be an issue with a few AIs (Tokugawa, Isabella, and Montezuma in particular), but they can be overcome by force or changing religions to match the AI (while sending in missionaries from your religion!) or via the UN.

Somehow, having the primary difficulty in acheiving a victory be the travel time doesn't sound like a fun game to me.

Keith

 

[SwedishChef]

I'm kind of surprised at the dissatisfaction with the victory conditions. I've never minded any of them, overall. I think domination was a good addition back in Civ3 since fighting all the way to conquest isn't always going to be motivating to some people. In fact, that's the core of the idea I want to bring up.

To me, what makes the game fun (or not) is whether it's a challenge. Do I have to make interesting choices and trade offs? Is there a point in the game (hopefully several) where I'm not certain I can win?

If there are these points, then I have fun - even if the last few turns of building the spaceship (or whatever) aren't thrilling in and of themselves. (Though I did have a close space race game not long ago.)

If I DON'T have these experiences in a game, then ALL of the victory conditions are of little interest. Either I'm so much stronger than the AI players that I can just pick whichever victory interests me that day, or I'm so weak that none look achievable.

I admit I sometimes enjoy just kicking the crap out of the AI, but most of the time the game is only interesting if I have to figure out how to win. For me, in Civ4, this is probably at Prince or Monarch. Noble doesn't seem to pose much threat any more. For other people it will be other difficulty levels.

Do you agree the element of challenge is more important than the particular victory condition?

 

[kurdi]

It seems from what I’ve read that the “leadership” rating you get after you win hinges on the time it took to do so, which means that this victory guarantees you an ego-boosting “Dan Quale” rating. (Is this correct?)

To answer my own question, it does not seem that the only consideration in the leadership ranking is the time it took to win. I just won my second game on Monarch through a time victory, and my leadership rating was ..... Ivan the Terrible (For the first time something higher than the bottom 3 ratings). My leadership score was something like 7600 while my in game score was 5406 vs. 5207 for the AI civ next in line.

 

[ajil]

Here is my 2 cents on the subject.
First off, I am usually a peaceful builder. I like to expand early, maybe have 1 war to make my civ the biggest and get more resources. Usually sometime around 1500-1700 it will become apparent that I am the most powerful and have the game in the bag. This is when the victory conditions bother me.

Culture: Why after spending all this time to make a great civ would I want to decapitate it by shutting off all science? Culture would be a LOT better if there was some way to win while not crippling your civ.

Space Race: Lets face it, it takes forever. You have to research all but like 2 techs, and then build basically 10 wonders. So the game I have been winning since 1700 runs until well into the 1900s. Oh boy

Diplomacy: I swear it is almost impossible to win diplomacy unless you fight a TON. I do not think only population should matter. Tech and military strength should have something to do with it.

Time victory: Takes forever and is super boring, I wish I could just tell the game to *end turn* for 20 turns in a row

This leaves only the war victories, and not everyone is a war mongerer.
With all that said, I still really enjoy civ 4, especially the first 2-3 hours of a game. Once I improve my system, I think I will start playing large and huge games to make the expansion and exploration period last longer.

 

[CharlieM]

Question about Time Victory ... mousing over the Scores tell me that the Factors the game considers in scoring are (I'm at work and this is from memory) land size, population, wonders and techs.

So Culture has no direct effect on your score?

Also, I'm looking for more information on exactly how the score is calculated. For example, do you get points just for TRYING to build wonders, even if you get beat to them?

 

[jesusin]

I fully agree with @SwedishChef and @ajil.
This game is all about early expansion. Once you are the best Civ in the game, doubling the 2nd one in every possible parameter, choosing a VC and winning is boring. In fact, I never finished my games in Civ3, I would just start another game when it was clear I was going to win.

Regarding turning off game conditions, it seems like cheating. If you want to put a handicap on yourself, do it, but let the AI choose his own path to victory. Who do you think will win the game if you disallow every VC but cultural? There is no point in winning such a game!

I find that less micromanagement makes Civ IV much more fun in the late stages.

Finally, I don´t consider Time Victory a victory at all. It is only my opinion, but I feel it is just a draw, nobody was able to win in the given time.

 

[spork]

Actually, I find the space race very interesting, for reasons mentioned on the first page of this thread. Yes, it's a lame way to win, but it's not easy on Monarch and above to prevent other civs from beating you with the spaceship. With everything set on the defaults and most of the world being left in peace, my Monarch opponents are usually well on their way to finishing the spaceship by the 1960's. If I don't want to race them, I pretty much have to fight them. And that introduces a very important element of strategy.

Basically, there are only two cures to being beaten by spaceship: building one first or plunging the world in a modern-era war. So in my last Monarch game, when my most advanced enemy started making progress on the spaceship, I switched from Pacifism to Vassalage+Theocracy and started building lots of modern armor. Pretty soon I was pretty tough, and after thousands of years without so much as a barracks, I ended up overrunning the world and winning by conquest (deliberately interrupting my own production of the last spaceship part one turn before it was finished).

 

[zienth]

I think many of the people have the same basic issue: at some point in many games, you have an insurmountable lead, but have to keep playing for several more hours to actually reach a victory condition. None of the conditions are that bad if you have a close competition going with another civ or civs, but when you are way out in front in 1200AD and know you're going to win, any type of victory condition is often a long way away (unless you've been warmongering for the last millenia or two).

First off, if this happens to you often, you need to move up a difficulty level. If it happens to you often on deity level, well, I just don't know what to say.

But as an additional solution, how about a "blowout" (there's got to be a better name, but I'm drawing a blank right now) victory that kicks in if one civ has over twice the score of any other civ? It would probably have to be time limited to prevent a lucky goodie hut on the first turn from doubling someone's score, so maybe it would only happen after 1AD. If you have twice the score of the next civ, a victory is pretty much a foregone conclusion, so why not have it end right there, rather than having to play a couple more millenia?

 

[shane0714]

I enjoy the domination and conquest victories far more than the others. In Civ III I typically was one of those peaceful types who usually won space race or time victory. But then I figured out how to implement a good warmonger strategy and now that's the only strategy I enjoy. I have started about 8 or 9 games so far mainly on noble. I have won on prince and am pretty sure I could do so now that I have gotten good at completely destroying everyone on noble. The latest I have finished a game so far is in 1864; I usually finish in early 1800's. However, the game I am currently playing is on a large map instead of the standard map that I had used in all the other games. On this larger map, I have realized an adjustment has to be made because you really cannot build too many cities or it really strains your gold, and hence, the speed of research. I like to make a game in the late game where my goal is to finish off a civ as fast as possible. This requires me to strategize my attack, especially on an island/archipelago map. Coordinating navy and land forces to work together is just way too much fun for me. I haven't had to worry about air forces yet b/c I usually win about the same time I research these. Siege weapons are the key to a quick victory. Just imagine having three separate armies all being transported simultaneously to different areas of a civ's empire. One army for taking the capitol, one for taking as much land as possible where he's weakest, and another to take another major city or resource next to the capitol. Then coordinating them all to knock out the civ as fast as possible. For me, the rest of the victories are just their in case I fail in my military conquests. Space race is ridiculous to me, cultural is impossible b/c I have sacrificed wonders and culture to build my military, diplo is also impossible for obvious reasons, and time victory is also ridiculous b/c if my game went that many turns, then in my mind I would have lost.

 

[Chrono285]

I agree with zienth that if you're dominating long before the game's over that a bump in difficulty level will make things interesting again. As I'm playing I usually feel that there's no way I'm going to win until the very end when I snatch victory out from under their feet... or get completely crushed. Except of course for domination victories... when I'm... dominating...

 

[azzaman333]

In single player, all these victories are fun, but in Multiplayer, you get a real sense of acheivment. I have even won a diplo victory in a multiplayer game with 7 humans left at the vote time. I was only 3rd largest, but i had built the UN, and the 2nd and 4th civs hated #1 so much that they voted for me. Most satisfying win ever.

 

[Javert]

I use Diplomatic for "Lazy Man's Domination". Modern era domination attempts can increase the RL time it takes to finish a game exponentially - especially with a lot of water on the map. After 25 hours in a prince level archipelago map, I realized I could either spend four more hours getting the last 5% of land area I needed for domination or I could simply vote myself the victor with my recently captured UN. I needed no other votes. Kind of defeats the purpose. This situation probably only occurs on archipelgo maps though, as land area is more densly packed with cities usually. Apparently you get no domination credit for water area covered by culture borders.

Space race I just use in those games where it looks like beating down the space racers will be too time consuming to accomplish before they launch. Usually if you just mobilize against any civ that starts building parts you can stop them though.

 

[Bain]

1. Remove "three-city" culture VC altogether, replace it with %land based cultural victory (ie. Domination without any %pop requirement). This would favour more smaller cities, carefully laid out, and make military defence and/or diplomacy important.

I'm not quite sure how this would be different from current domination. Population is really not an issue when you control that much territory, I usually have way more population than required when going for a dominance victory (last one I think was like 60% population)
This simply isn't the point of the current Culture VC, which I think is create a few legendary cities instead of culture bombing the entire world into your empire.
I'm certain that it's fully intended that you are NOT achieving a cultural victory as a military superpower.

2. Replace Domination with a "religion" VC, where you need a %pop requirement and the most extensive religion (ie. your state rel is in the most cities, must be over 50% of cities). This would be interesting because you could win with just a few big cities yourself, persuading AIs to adopt your rel and spread it for you etc. I think it's a shame that no VC currently features religion.

If someone goes for this Victory, just have free religion passed by the UN to counter him entirely. No state relegion - you lose. I think a victory should be designed for both AI and MP wins, and persuading your rivals to adopt your religions then would be just like persuading them to join a defensive pact and vote for your Diplomatic victory.
Religion already is a tool for a Diplomatic victory, as it's most unlikely that an AI player will vote against you if you share the state religion while the other guy worships something else.

3. Reduce Conquest VC to something like 90% of cities (or maybe of world pop) to avoid tedious endgame and enable beating that last AI with three huge cities who's close to the space VC ...

I agree, except for the last part, which makes you sound like a sore loser

4. Add some requirement to the space race VC to make it less of a no-brainer for the AI. Not sure what to add, but some sort of condition like "at least 15 cities" or "at least X total pop" or something which forces people going for space race to keep expanding instead of being able to focus on it so easily.

it indeed appears like you lost more than one Space races to AI while going for a different victory? Space Race however definatly needs to be made more challenging =)

5. Re-vamp the Diplo VC (and the UN) in the way others have suggested. This seems to me even harder than Domination at the mo, because I end up winning Domination well before I can vote myself to a Diplo win! I like lots of the suggestions on this theme so far, esp. that building the UN should get you something extra, and that you can "buy" votes through trade (though some leaders may be more likely to double cross than others ...)

Dip VC already can be "bought", you just need to chose your allies well in advance. Founding Christianity and making it your state religion when other civs are likely to do the same makes it pretty easy to get def pacts and therefore diplomatic victory votes. Religion is one of the keys to this type of victory.

6. Personally I hate the "time" VC, I think it's lame and I always switch it off. The world doesn't grind to a halt in 2050, and the scoring system is totally broken, so IMO the time victory is meaningless. Happy to leave it in for those who like it though - it does at least prevent the game dragging on forever if you can't win but can stop the AI from winning ...

it's not even a victory, it's more like "yeah at least you had most points" at 2050 or something. Can you even get better than Dan Quayle by time victory?

CC[/QUOTE]

 

[keso]

Take cultural victory. If you're the most hated nation on the planet, then how can your culture be respected? I always thought cultural influence shouldn't just be something you generate in your cities, but something that requires you to reach out to other civilizations. Whoever does the best job of reaching out would have a bigger surge in culture. Hence, conquest would actually HURT your chances at cultural victory.

I don't agree. Take for instance the Romans, I'm not a historian but I don't think the romans where well liked at all by their neighbours but their culture is respected and remembered to this day. The Incas where an isolated high-culture empire that got wiped out fairly quickly by gunpowder but their cultural achievements are still recognized. The U.S, dare I say, are not very well liked but no one can deny that american culture has a direct impact (dominant?) on everyone living on this planet. I'm not one of those that wants total realism in Civ games but culture, as implemented in Civ IV, works and makes sense to me.

 

[genjiboy]

Ok... there needs to be SOME victory for the non-warmongering player that isn't broken. Space race is crap, time victory is failure, culture victory is too hard, diplomacy too easy, etc. What choice is there but warmongering?

For the space race, I think it would be interesting if you NEEDED certain resources to be able to produce the parts. Or have a lauching platform that needed to be built in a city - one that could be easily sabotaged.

On a side note, I wish there were more espionage. Maybe a "global spy network" style victory. Big Brother is watching you...

I'm with other people on the not-finishing thing. My interest generally doesn't hold out long enough for a victory. Will be playing it on a harder difficulty soon. Or against humans.

 

[fed1943]

I agree with the victories´conditions,as they are IMO the logical and right end to a game with multiple and independent good strategies (not a limitated game,as,for instance,a game who forces the pacific builder to obtain a building device only by war,is).
So,I think to disable one path to victory is a bad idea;that´s the path of one,or more,of my opponents and must prevent him/she/it to arrive there before I arrive to my path´conclusion.
Conversaly,the idea of a religion victory to add (not to replace)to the others seemms interesting.
Best regards,