Victory Conditions

[stealth_nsk]

Take a poll, then
I prefer the %.
I've won cultural victories in IV by rushing into Mansa Musa's land and razing one of his cities.
I've won space victories by sabotaging the enemy's spaceship.
If you want to play tall and don't want to go to war to defend yourself agaisnt it, then in my opinion, don't tick the domination victory in the victory conditions screen.
It is important for me that domination do not turn into a conquest of each and every but also of each and every small civ out there. Otherwise, you're jsut turning the endgame into a rehearsal of uninteresting move to mop up the map.

Do you remember hunting last city in Civ1? That was boring. Conquering other civ capital doesn't look uninteresting to me.

 

[Ryika]

I'd certainly prefer the %-victory, simply because it doesn't require you to backstab your allies.

The idea of being able to win as a team sounds interesting, but ultimately doesn't really make sense, because the same "You've never done anything, but you were part of the right alliance, so you're a winner now!"-situations could occur.

Having to take up a % of the map solves all of these issues, while also not allowing players to just sit back and wait, which I think is a good thing (but inevitably other people will see this as a negative).

 

[LDiCesare]

Do you remember hunting last city in Civ1? That was boring. Conquering other civ capital doesn't look uninteresting to me.

Yes, but I think hunting city capitals is less fun than trying to achieve X% control of the map and Y% of the population as in Civ IV. YMMV.
The main differences are early game and allies. If you get all capitals by 1000 AD, you may not control much of the map, but it's likely that some of the civs you didn't totally destroy managed to take over and be a threat again as you didn't kill it totally.

 

[Makenshi]

The idea of being able to win as a team sounds interesting, but ultimately doesn't really make sense, because the same "You've never done anything, but you were part of the right alliance, so you're a winner now!"-situations could occur.

For my part, I don't advocate that "an alliance victory of some sort" means an actual victory for all members of said alliance. Only the "leader" of the alliance [the big civ which actually did the hard work of blood and steel] would be declared victor.

In that game I'm playing, for example, Denmark would not be the winner, I [Rome] would be. Old pal Harald would just not be stomped and have his capital taken.

Maybe such a system could feature some alternate ending screen/movie for alliance members: they would receive neither the "you were triumphant!" nor the "you have been defeated!" screens, but instead some "you survived under the protection of your alliance, not as good as winning but not as bad as losing, deal with it and do better next time".

 

[stealth_nsk]

I'd certainly prefer the %-victory, simply because it doesn't require you to backstab your allies.

The idea of being able to win as a team sounds interesting, but ultimately doesn't really make sense, because the same "You've never done anything, but you were part of the right alliance, so you're a winner now!"-situations could occur.

Having to take up a % of the map solves all of these issues, while also not allowing players to just sit back and wait, which I think is a good thing (but inevitably other people will see this as a negative).

Correction - you don't have to backstab your allies, unless they are big enough. If your allies are more or less significant, you need to backstab them for domination victory anyway.

If backstabbing allies is a real issue, the game may have something like vassal mechanics, so if your forces are dominant, your ally could accept submissive position in your alliance. In this case the ally could be counted as conquered. The approach will work better with capital conquering mechanics, but for % it would work too.

 

[Ryika]

For my part, I don't advocate that "an alliance victory of some sort" means an actual victory for all members of said alliance. Only the "leader" of the alliance [the big civ which actually did the hard work of blood and steel] would be declared victor.

In that game I'm playing, for example, Denmark would not be the winner, I [Rome] would be. Old pal Harald would just not be stomped and have his capital taken.

Maybe such a system could feature some alternate ending screen/movie for alliance members: they would receive neither the "you were triumphant!" nor the "you have been defeated!" screens, but instead some "you survived under the protection of your alliance, not as good as winning but not as bad as losing, deal with it and do better next time".

Then why would people stay in your alliance if it makes you win the game? Unless of course you want to see AIs play the games as if they were purely powers within the game, not players that are aware of the victory conditions - which I personally don't agree with, but I understand that position. Thematically it makes sense, but I don't think it would end up as a fun victory for those who play to get better.

Correction - you don't have to backstab your allies, unless they are big enough. If your allies are more or less significant, you need to backstab them for domination victory anyway.

No you don't, unless they make up more % of the map than you need.

In which case yes, you, should need to backstab some of your allies, after all you want to become the dominant force. mauling people and making other people worried that they may be the next ones to be mauled is part of the deal. After all, you need to conquer -someone-, if you want to be friends with everyone then domination isn't exactly the victory condition for that. That's quite different from having to backstab literally every small empire and take their capitals for no real reason other than "That's the victory condition!"

 

[stealth_nsk]

No you don't, unless they make up more % of the map than you need.

In which case yes, you, should need to backstab some of your allies, after all you want to become the dominant force. mauling people and making other people worried that they may be the next ones to be mauled is part of the deal. After all, you need to conquer -someone-, if you want to be friends with everyone then domination isn't exactly the victory condition for that. That's quite different from having to backstab literally every small empire and take their capitals for no real reason other than "That's the victory condition!"

I believe there's an elegant solution to the problem. The diplomatic penalties could be so high what after trampling half of civs you loose all the allies. Problem solved

 

[shaglio]

Yes, but I think hunting city capitals is less fun than trying to achieve X% control of the map and Y% of the population as in Civ IV. YMMV.
The main differences are early game and allies. If you get all capitals by 1000 AD, you may not control much of the map, but it's likely that some of the civs you didn't totally destroy managed to take over and be a threat again as you didn't kill it totally.

That's why Civ 4 also had a Conquest victiory that requires you to capture all the cities in the world.

Civ 6 could use Civ4's Domination victory (X% land + Y% population) as its Domination Victory and Civ 5's Domination Victory (capture all original capitals) as its Conquest Victory. I won't do that, but it could in a future expansion.

EDIT: Sorry LDiCesare, I misread your post and thought you were taking the opposite stance.

 

[m15a]

That's why Civ 4 also had a Conquest victiory that requires you to capture all the cities in the world.

Civ 6 could use Civ4's Domination victory (X% land + Y% population) as its Domination Victory and Civ 5's Domination Victory (capture all original capitals) as its Conquest Victory. I won't do that, but it could in a future expansion.

I can't decide whether I like the victory condition in Civ IV or V better but, yes, I think I would prefer having both as different victory conditions (or one victory condition requiring that either condition met). Both options could be tedious in the end game, so I'd prefer being able to choose whichever is easier/funner to reach.

 

[masda_gib]

Then why would people stay in your alliance if it makes you win the game? Unless of course you want to see AIs play the games as if they were purely powers within the game, not players that are aware of the victory conditions - which I personally don't agree with, but I understand that position. Thematically it makes sense, but I don't think it would end up as a fun victory for those who play to get better.

Maybe it could be made so that being a vassal makes you count as conquered regarding domination victory but you also get boni (science, gold, amneties, some other in-game effect/currency) depending how much stronger your dominating civ is. (what's the other partner in such a constellation called?)

So the vassal has a reason to choose 'not being obliterated'; and with the boni it gets a chance to rebel some day. That would make it a risky deal for both sides.

 

[Captain Queeg]

Sounds like there are a lot of warmongers out there, based on the level of discussion.

I like the idea of having to conquer all of the capitals, even if this means backstabbing your old allies. This IS about world domination isn't it?

It shouldn't be too hard to fix the main weaknesses to a cherry-picking strategy in Civ5. You could ensure that any AI civ with a coastal capital builds a strong enough navy and air defense system that capitals would be tougher to capture (maybe you have to take over every district? Or take over the capital AND cities representing at least two-thirds of the peak population?). You also could fix the stupid nuke rules by building in a MAD system (any offensive nuke use is met with by an immediate nuclear retaliation), having all civs immediately DOW a user of offensive nukes (also MAD), increasing the diplomatic penalties for even possession of nukes, etc.

They need to fix the denouncement / casus belli system too, so that the diplomatic constraints on warmongers are more realistic. Maybe get rid of denouncements altogether (talk is cheap), and increase the costs of diplomats / embassies so you need to spend real money on PR with other civs.

Speaking of diplomacy, I like the diplomatic VC, but it needs some tweaking too. To get (most) everyone in the world to love you, I suggest that alliances / defensive pacts be much easier to form, but with bigger bonuses from supporting an ally, bigger penalties for refusing to engage in *tangible* support when an ally is attacked, and huge penalties for unprovoked war (ie once you start on the warmongering path, you can forget about a diplo victory). The cash system of buying city states mainly needs AI to be more proactive in using its own cash to compete for influence.

I like the idea of religious victory too, but it will probably need a lot of revision to get the balance right after it is rolled out.

 

[LDiCesare]

One thing I hate in V is that, because of the domination victory, you cannot raze a capital. The game mechanics don't allow you to do it. If the capitals are still not raze-able, I'll be pissed off. The capitals of many civs (Babylon, Uruk, Persepolis...) are long gone.The game should allo us to have that.

 

[Acken]

I always thought it made sense to need all capitals.

Glad civ5 diplo is gone.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Economic victory, yes, but not diplomatic one (unless diplomatic is economic victory in disguise as it was in Civ5).

Also, gold is designed to be spent. You could direct it towards winning science, for example.

As I said, though, that has been fixed by replacing buying city states with the need for envoys (which actually ties neatly into Civics and Technologies too). So diplomatic victory suddenly becomes a lot better than in previous iterations of the game.....if it's done right.

 

[Atlas627]

One thing I hate in V is that, because of the domination victory, you cannot raze a capital. The game mechanics don't allow you to do it. If the capitals are still not raze-able, I'll be pissed off. The capitals of many civs (Babylon, Uruk, Persepolis...) are long gone.The game should allo us to have that.

We've already seen that you can raze capitals. I suppose, if you still need to personally control all capitals, then that refers to all existing original capitals. Razing them, if you really want to, brings ALL civs closer to a Domination victory (including the civ who lost the capital, unless they check that you must control your own original capital. If you must control your own, then razing a capital also locks them out of the Domination victory)

 

[qwerty25]

One thing I hate in V is that, because of the domination victory, you cannot raze a capital. The game mechanics don't allow you to do it. If the capitals are still not raze-able, I'll be pissed off. The capitals of many civs (Babylon, Uruk, Persepolis...) are long gone.The game should allo us to have that.

Youd need a method to allow the original civ to reclaim their original captial though. Like resettle on the tile. Or else of they lost their city in the beginning but later defeated everybody else, they would lose for lacking a capital.

 

[stealth_nsk]

As I said, though, that has been fixed by replacing buying city states with the need for envoys (which actually ties neatly into Civics and Technologies too). So diplomatic victory suddenly becomes a lot better than in previous iterations of the game.....if it's done right.

Victory based on city states is just another example of diplomatic victory, which has no connection to actual diplomacy

Also, since:
- City-states could be razed in Civ6.
- No significant penalties for early attack of city-states.
- No ability to massively overthrow enemy envoys (with each AI having even 2 times less envoys than human player, it will be a struggle to have more than 2-3 city-states as vassals).
I don't think city-state victory would work well in Civ6.

In short: making diplomacy victory to rely on actual diplomacy will not work well, because AIs are opponents in the first place. It's possible to have other victory hidden behind the name of diplomacy victory, but I don't see real reasons for it.

 

[Tatran]

Scientific victory : "Der Flug zum Mars". (The flight to Mars.)
So no more Alpha Centauri. And also no further details.

 

[Silverdawn]

Here are screenshots of the Science, Culture and Domination victories in the build that was played at gamescom:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=14408032&postcount=2503

The next step early in the game is "Build Spaceport" as you can see in the screenshot. That is district is available at "Rocketry" tech. It also has some sort of rocket project, likely the one for launching the satellite.

There is another possible rocket project at "Nuclear Fission" (or that is an ICBM) and something at "Satellites" that might be for the moon step. There is another rocket at "Nuclear Fussion" and some other late techs might be needed for Mars (e.g. living quarters or crop growing). The later tech tree may not be complete. For the 150-turn demos, they were told they could only show the tree through the Industrial.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

One thing I hate in V is that, because of the domination victory, you cannot raze a capital. The game mechanics don't allow you to do it. If the capitals are still not raze-able, I'll be pissed off. The capitals of many civs (Babylon, Uruk, Persepolis...) are long gone.The game should allo us to have that.

I 100% agree with this. Even if the designers insist on basing the Domination victory around capitals, at least make it control all the capitals that exist, so you can keep or raze them. Why not? It feels incredibly ahistorical and gamey to have indestructible cities on the map. Now admittedly it's not too often you actually want to raze a capital (and the biggest incentive for doing so, global happiness, is gone), but if I want to do as the Romans did and burn Carthage to the ground out of spite, I should be able to.

EDIT: Atlas67 says that capital razing is back in Civ VI--that's great!

Another consequence of the Civ V's system was that you couldn't change the location of your capital. Again, this is something that historically was very common, and it should be an option for a player.