As famed American nuke-crackpot Douglas McArthur once said, "There is substitute for victory". And in the game of Civilization, this is true. It's one of the core game mechanics to encourage people to keep playing towards the end! While many have been saying that Civ should go in a direction of EU4 and more sim-centric games, I disagree. Part of that is that victory is what makes Civ so addictive, and, fun to play with others (Even if they are AI). Like I've said here before, Civ VI's emphasis on simming/min-maxing has made the game more single player focussed which highlights the failings of the AI moreso than if the game was better designed with multiplayers in mind (Cause then your could blame the humans for not optimizing tile yields lol). This isn't to say that a multiplayer game needs to lack complexity/ ability to min-max, but in general, victory and end goals help multiple parties psychologically towards an end goal. So rather than reforming the idea of victory being required, I wanted to think about to simplify the conditions compared to what we've seen in the past 3 iterations of Civ (But mostly 5&6 since I've played a lot more of them).
Currently, in Civ VI we have 6 wholly and almost entirely different win conditions-domination, diplomacy, science, culture/tourim, religion and score/time. While having so many options is nice, it making balancing them so many times harder! Or, it just ends the game in a boring manner as in the score victory. But then at the same time, having just 1 kind of victory like in Humankind is also weirdly boring too. What I will say is that Humankind's system of "point building" does seem to work better in the balancing department compared to the random production-based achievements of the science victory or the unable-to-personally-generate diplomatic victory points in Civ VI. There's a lot of pro and cons to having a lot or a few victory conditions and with the fanbase clamoring for another VC with economic victories, I wanted to see everyone's thoughts on what they think of victory conditions. I should mention that this was inspired after seeing a reddit post on the subject a day or two ago(Link: ). Go check it out if your interested still!
My thoughts/Ideas:
Personally, I would prefer 3 overarching but deeply interconnected victory types of which I'm calling 1) Domination, 2) Influence, 3) Unity. Domination is more traditional and conquest based while Influence and Unity both employ resources and yields to generate Influence and Unity "points" throughout the game, but more dynamically in the later ages. When I say points, I don't mean like the arbitrary "2 points gained to X Civ go brrrr" like in VI's diplomacy victory but rather as small drops in a bucket towards a bigger goal in the late game. Thematically, Influence would be that your Civ's achievements and splendor is so influential that the world is integrated into following your society's way of life. Unity would be that your Civ's achievements in facilitating a connected, peaceful, and diplomatic world allows your Civ to be "voted" as the leader of the planet. As their names suggest however the big difference would be that Influence is more internally-generated while Unity is more externally-focussed. Both Influence and Unity would utilize economics, religion, ideology (should it comes back lol), diplomacy, and most crucially-like with domination-culture and science to build towards the victory.
As a result, I would argue that culture and science should NOT be locked into any victory type-they're both needed for all three. Civ VI tried to do this with governments/policy cards giving you bonuses for science and domination victories, but I'd like to see science and culture's role in other victory types diminish. Theses two central yields should help unlock the social policies/civics and techs needed to pursue the victory conditions. I know this sounds obvious but it's just the power that pure science (i.e. the Babylon theory) has for winning just needs a nerf and needs to be split up.
OK but the new VCs...
1) Let's start with domination. Well...it's what you’d expect. In order to keep expanding you’ll need ample scientific and cultural advances though and the penalties for falling behind should be massively severe. Conquered cities (Perhaps a vassal/puppet system?) should reduce the amount of science and culture you generate without proper development so constant warring/expansion will hinder you waaaay more than in Civ VI leading to collapse. Civ VI’s system was nonexistent and it made tall play hilariously unviable. But Civ V’s happiness was rightfully horrid too…a middle ground is really needed. Either way, I don’t see anything wrong with conquering each civs’ capital as part of the win-condition so long as we get some ability to change capitals like Phoenicia…all civs should be able to do that. How I see it is that the domination condition is 2-fold. One, the dominating civ must conquer each Civ's capital (Regardless of where it's moved) at least once and to win, they must hold onto three/fourths of the capitals at the end of a turn. As I envision holding enemy cities to be a bit more challenging in this new game, this gives a bit more depth than "rocket artillery go brrr" and leads to being able to counter domination much better-especially if there is an early runaway civ that conquers a whole continent. But yeah...domination is domination.
2) Influence would be the amalgamation of our current CV as well as hints of an economic victory and religion. Tourism should return but there should be multiple ways to get it equally…natural history like National parks (I.e. making preserving land give you something opens doors), recruiting great people, and producing great works. I think that great artists/writers/musicians shouldn’t “give” a great work singularly but should build towards Civ-specific works of art or engineering. That way we can give non-written cultures more of a chance instead of making the Maori not able to gain great writers randomly. Why can't a great work be a TV show or a radio broadcast? What about a rousing speech even? Great works could be just a cool thing about a city-like perhaps a public canal system, a church, or a fountain even. They *can* also be pieces of art that need to be displayed but that shouldn’t be all of them and should not be housed in Wonders-those should be relegated to district buildings. All in all, great works as generated through culture and GPP should help gain tourism and thus a big component of Influence.
Another way to gain Influence would be economically. While gold is more of a means towards an end, controlling important areas of commerce and luxury resources should have huge benefits for building Influence. A well placed trade hub between two continents or a canal/mountain pass should not only generate loads of gold through some kind of trade route taxing system, but should in-game, make your currency and culture more accessible and accrue Influence over time. That way, control of resources and trade nodes (Which should be generated/denoted on the map) actually and actively helps towards a victory condition. As a side note, luxury and stretgic resources should be able to be “upgraded” (Or removed for gods sake) into late-game forms. Iron mines should become processing plants, horse stables/pastures can become racetracks, and these new improvements should get bonuses based on adjacent districts, cities, or improvements to help resources better scale with game time. Additionally these new improvements can help add a little bit to the Civ’s Influence-continuing to make resources valuable while furthering that VC too.
Finally, religion should also build Influence; specifically in how many cities and population units are adhering to that Civ’s faith. I like that all Civ’s get an eternal pantheon in Civ VI but they should all get a religion too; the big difference would be on whether the player wants to spread the religion. Religion should give HUGE benefits but also destabilize civs that don’t use certain governments (That’s another whole concept…). For example, a divine monarchy/theocracy can give great domination and production bonuses, but is weak towards not faithful empires. A merchant republic/oligarchy might create a weaker state/give less bonuses but creates more room for religious diversity. To that end, the end goal of religion should not be to get rid of all others but to just convert citizens passively or actively since more citizens and cities under that religion builds Influence for your Civ throughout the game. I think by not separating out religion and religious units into the game, religion can be something that everyone needs to care about and work around-creating more dynamic gameplay towards the Influence VC. However religion can also help with another VC…
3) Unity would replace the sorry excuse for the current diplomatic victory (With bits of culture thrown in the mix) and would work similarly to generating Influence. To gain Unity, you need to control the world congress/council for a long period of time. Controlling the world congress would be, like Civ V, only available Renaissance era beyond and would start with the person who first discovers all of the other Civs. From there, votes would be given out based on each players’ Influence relative to their continent to start, but what gives people power could change each game based on what’s popular. Religious civs could get more votes/ Unitary power with one global decree, or, perhaps Peaceful Civs could get more if certain proposals pass. But even if your Civ is small and lacks a wide religion or territorial presence, you should be able to compete in more competitions like Olympics, World’s Fair, Economic forums and the like to gain huge amounts of Unitary power. Better yet, success in these competitions should come with more voting power on the world council, allowing to garmer more support towards your Civ winning a Unity victory. However, there could just as well be some overlap with economic Influence points as controlling major trade hubs and cities could, in the late game, provide Unity power as well. The same could be with a resolution that creates a worldwide currency based on trade nodes and resources controlled+improved. Hell, you could even make an argument that domination Civs could gain more unity power through their conquest of so many cultures-perhaps having multicultural cities and cities of many different origin Civs should help accrue Unity points in the late game! So I think there is a lot of flexibility here to make a more diplomatic-themed victory that hinges on interacting with other Civs (As opposed to Influence which is more internal "sim"-happy).
I hope I was clear in all this but I'm mainly just imagining three different victory conditions that all utilize production, growth, faith, gold, and strategy to win as opposed to generating science and culture. It's not radically different to what we have now (i.e. you need production to build spaceports etc.) but I think by decoupling culture from CV and science from SV specifically, those yields can more directly help you get higher yields in other departments which *actually* fuel your victory in the game. I also think that fewer VCs gives more opportunity to "tall" or weakened Civs as time and situations changing could benefit them; at the very least, it encourages strategic use and forethought of land over just "have lots of tile to have lots of districts brrr".
Anyways...thanks for coming to my TED talk and please fill out the poll! I'd be interesting to see what you all think of VCs : )
