Victory Conditions

[bbbt]

To summarize from the livestream, victory conditions are basically hitting a certain threshold that unlocks a final big project to build:

• Science: 3 space flight projects, unlock first staffed(?) space flight project
• Culture: 15 archeological artifacts in museum, unlock worlds fair project
• Economic: 500 railroad tycoon "points" (# of resources slotted in factories with railroads X number of turns slotted), unlock world bank project
• Military: Conquer 20 points worth of opponent settlements (more points for ideological opponents), unlock operation ivy project

Tbd if you can build the final project in one city or multiple cities (and if that would be separate proejcts or all contributing to one). Legacy points reduced the build time needed. A developer diary was promised further in the future.

I'm curious what folks think about this. I'm a little underwhelmed. It makes them feel a little samey/limit replaybility to me:

• All but the military victory seem very "separate silo" imho, where you don't need to interact with other Civs (in a way I was explicitly doubting would happen tbh)
• Culture victory seems diminished from Civ 6 - you've gone from many routes (appeal, national parks, improvements, great works, rock bands, etc) to one
• AI-wise, more streamlined goals is easier for the AI in theory. But the AI was easily sabotaged on space race projects in Civ 6, everything is a project now. It likely depends on how they've implemented the project. So tbd there.

Otoh, this is not make or break for me, and I get that:

• Given the stated issue that most people don't even make it to the end, I can see why complex victory conditions would not be a priority
• Victories can be expanded on in futher DLC/expansions (as was the case in 4, 5, and 6 iirc). Can potentially be game modes to allow for players that do/don't want more complex victories.

 

[moysturfurmer]

We don’t yet know enough about how they work. There seems to be something slightly more than “Build Victory Project” when you unlock them. Completing the Economic Legacy Path in Modern unlocks a Great Banker Unit, which presumably ties into the World Bank victory condition. Hard to determine how complicated it gets.

 

[gdr_willter]

I always thought that the Civ games need to estimate the ruling and leading power and give them a victory when they want/deserve it. If the game can't handle it, at least it have to provide the controllable victory conditions to the players.

"No, you can't win for now because you didn't complete the stiff victory condition (which you can't reach or you don't really understand)" was the main cause of the endgame problem, especially for the cultural victories. Tourism is the best motif for it, but the worst mechanism for it.

I think the system as the combination of visible legacy milestones and the final victory conditions are good enough. I usually enjoy the game playthrough more than the actual victory, so simple VCs are totally fine for me.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

One of my biggest pet peeves in Civ games was that Religious and Domination victories were utterly incompatible with my playstyle of large maps, large players. No one has time to conquer 17 other capitals to win "Domination".

This approach to Victory Conditions are much more paltable because I can actually be a decent Domination player, I also think, if and when they implement Hotseat, this victory system and legacy paths actually encourage each Civ to do something within an individual age, so I look forward to this system. It's nice. A change I myself was eyeing to some extent.

 

[tedhebert]

One of my biggest pet peeves in Civ games was that Religious and Domination victories were utterly incompatible with my playstyle of large maps, large players. No one has time to conquer 17 other capitals to win "Domination".

This approach to Victory Conditions are much more paltable because I can actually be a decent Domination player, I also think, if and when they implement Hotseat, this victory system and legacy paths actually encourage each Civ to do something within an individual age, so I look forward to this system. It's nice. A change I myself was eyeing to some extent.

I'm in the same boat... love huge maps, not compatible with religious and Dom as you say... even with culture victory in 6 with too many civs in play. Fun to see this changes

What remains to be seen is the actual option we DO get in VII as map types... not convinced huge is back...

 

[pokiehl]

I'm in the same boat... love huge maps, not compatible with religious and Dom as you say... even with culture victory in 6 with too many civs in play. Fun to see this changes

What remains to be seen is the actual option we DO get in VII as map types... not convinced huge is back...

Same here… I hope we see more of the map stuff soon. I want a variety of good map scripts that create interesting worlds, and I of course want the return of the Huge size as well.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

World's Fairs were a showcase of forward-thinking technologic innovation. It seems really weird to tie them to digging artifacts.

On the other hand, it helps explain why the Modern Age ends early, as apparently the real world game of Civ 7 was won in the 1850s by either Great Britain or the French Empire, depending on whose first big international exhibition meets the World's Fair standard.

 

[chaosprophet]

I'm curious about them but need a lot more information, and probably to actually play and see how they work in actually to be able to give a good opinion on it.

All but the military victory seem very "separate silo" imho, where you don't need to interact with other Civs (in a way I was explicitly doubting would happen tbh)

Take in account that the Modern Age Ideology system make it so it will be quite hard to avoid conflict on it. Also we don't know if when you start going for a victory condition, if other civs would then try to rush you.

 

[bbbt]

World's Fairs were a showcase of forward-thinking technologic innovation. It seems really weird to tie them to digging artifacts.

On the other hand, it helps explain why the Modern Age ends early, as apparently the real world game of Civ 7 was won in the 1850s by either Great Britain or the French Empire, depending on whose first big international exhibition meets the World's Fair standard.

It does seem a bit odd to have a modern cultural victory that's entirely archaeology based - and launch the game with a Napoleon (looter extraordinaire) who has no bonus is to archaeology and potentially not even England at all. We'll have to see when all the modern civs are out yet.

Take in account that the Modern Age Ideology system make it so it will be quite hard to avoid conflict on it. Also we don't know if when you start going for a victory condition, if other civs would then try to rush you.

I'd definitely assume there will be some sort of race to try and sandbag an opponent's project (militarily and/or via espionage), while attempting to finish your own. But my concern is that's likely going to be at the very end, and potentially lead to a similar ending every time.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Have to play to be sure, of course, but I like what they've done in theory, even if I do have some reservations about specific decisions (e.g. culture = artefacts).

The good thing is that it should be possible to balance the victory types, in a way that has never been possible before. Couple this with the increased visibility of legacy paths, and I do believe there is a lot of potential for Civ VII games to have close, tense, and fun finishes; exactly what they set out to do, and rarely the case in prior games.

I can understand why someone might be put off by the slightly "bucket filling" nature of the victories, I'm not convinced they've got their flavour just right, but I think they needed to change it up since victories have always been a problem in Civ. In VI, domination and religion were far too tedious, diplomatic was both boring and frustrating, culture was too obtuse, although it did at least work. Science was fine because it was the simplest, and it seems to me as though they have taken the science model and applied it to all victory types.

I think there has always been a more fundamental problem, too; the player has too few tools with which to disrupt the game when things are not going well. Diplomacy, espionage, and war are fine in theory but haven't really worked in practice, the first two usually being too ineffective and the third being too closely tied to tech progress, essentially being unrealistic for anyone behind in tech. With the changes to diplomacy, the Age resets, and the more balanced victory types, might we finally have an interesting end game?

 

[chaosprophet]

Have to play to be sure, of course, but I like what they've done in theory, even if I do have some reservations about specific decisions (e.g. culture = artefacts).

More than the victories themselves, one thing I can see coming in a major expansion is expanding each legacies pats, not just adding 1 or two more legacies, possibly making so each legacy each age has more than one way to acquire points to it instead of current system where there is only one so people can achieve them with different strategies. Also something they probably want to do to give more variability after we had the game for a while and may be getting tired of going for the same stuff.

 

[Isengardtom]

More than the victories themselves, one thing I can see coming in a major expansion is expanding each legacies pats, not just adding 1 or two more legacies, possibly making so each legacy each age has more than one way to acquire points to it instead of current system where there is only one so people can achieve them with different strategies. Also something they probably want to do to give more variability after we had the game for a while and may be getting tired of going for the same stuff.

I agree that’s definitely a possibility. You could see them add the collection of art works as a legacy path for cultural victory in Modern
Unless they keep that for the 4th age that may be added

 

[Scrabbler]

One weakness of Civ 6’s design was that there was really only one competitive path to victory, albeit with five highly distinct flavours: namely, acquire as many cities as possible and then hyperfocus on one of the five strategic paths (military, science, tourism, faith or diplomacy). Although every playthrough involved all of these to different extents, winning quickly and efficiently meant concentrating on just one path.

In Civ 7, competitive play in the first two ages is all about setting yourself up for the third age through legacy bonuses. The big change compared with previous Civ games is that you have the option to focus either on one of the four strategic paths (science, culture, military and economic) or on multiple paths. I think this is a good innovation and it should lead to a greater variety of gameplay experiences.

However, in the Modern Age it seems to revert back to the standard Civ victory system where the player needs to hyperfocus on just one of these paths to win. On the face of it, this seems disappointing, although we don’t have a lot of detail yet and we don’t yet know how much interaction/synergy there will be between the four victory paths.

We have some details of the 12 goals that players can choose to focus on (four in each age). Some (e.g., build seven wonders) are good in terms of thematic immersion, while others (have five tiles with 40 total yields) are much more gamey. The Exploration Age cultural path is disappointing for me as I was hoping that they would go back to a more subtle Civ 4 style religion system, but instead they are continuing with the Civ 5/6 system where players "own" religions and are strongly incentivised to stop other players’ religions from spreading. It also seems disappointing to have the Modern Age cultural path concentrate only on archaeology rather than contemporary cultural achievements.

I quite like the scoring of the military paths which incentivise conflict over the New World in the Exploration Age and conflict between different ideologies in the Modern Stage but we will see how this works in practice. If you can capture wonders, codices, resources, etc., then the military path could be strong due to the synergy with other paths.

Overall, I am fairly optimistic about the gameplay in Civ 7 but we will have to wait and see.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

I would suggest one possible remedy to the strict bucket filling is a variation on Score Victory, where if you reach some total number of Victory Points across all four buckets, you win. About 5/8 of all 4, or perhaps 2/3 of 3? Sort of like when I finally declared a major in college I was able to add a 2nd major with only 2 more classes, and a minor with 1 more.

 

[Zaarin]

I would suggest one possible remedy to the strict bucket filling is a variation on Score Victory, where if you reach some total number of Victory Points across all four buckets, you win. About 5/8 of all 4, or perhaps 2/3 of 3?

This is sort of in the game insofar this is how you win if nobody has won before you hit the turn limit. (Or if you do a single age game...which feels weird to me. I'm not sure I'll ever play a single age game, but in the event I did I'd like to see victories added to earlier ages...)

It's interesting to note that in previous titles we've always talked about victory as something no civ has achieved, whereas all of Civ7's victories (except debatably military) have been accomplished IRL. Some of them multiple times.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

This is sort of in the game insofar this is how you win if nobody has won before you hit the turn limit. (Or if you do a single age game...which feels weird to me. I'm not sure I'll ever play a single age game, but in the event I did I'd like to see victories added to earlier ages...)

It's interesting to note that in previous titles we've always talked about victory as something no civ has achieved, whereas all of Civ7's victories (except debatably military) have been accomplished IRL. Some of them multiple times.

I'd say that the Military Victory has been done quite a few times in the Modern Age. All you need to do is take 7 cities of someone with a different Ideology. Germany did it vs France, Britain's North African holdings, and the USSR. The Allies (and the US in particular) did it vs Italy, Germany, and Japan. Outside of the "Ideology vs Ideology = 3pts" part, Britain got 2pts per city taking over India and dismantling the Ottoman Empire.

The Science Victory has only been accomplished a handful of times.

The Culture Victory and Economic victories have been done an indeterminate amount of times because we can't really quantify factory resources and artifacts in real life terms, but the British Museum is certainly a Cultural Victory and many nations are producing and widely distributing things made in factories.

 

[chaosprophet]

I'd say that the Military Victory has been done quite a few times in the Modern Age. All you need to do is take 7 cities of someone with a different Ideology. Germany did it vs France, Britain's North African holdings, and the USSR. The Allies (and the US in particular) did it vs Italy, Germany, and Japan. Outside of the "Ideology vs Ideology = 3pts" part, Britain got 2pts per city taking over India and dismantling the Ottoman Empire.

Albeit the Actual victory is to make and test a fusion bomb, it seems by the name. Not many did it, especially that early.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Albeit the Actual victory is to make and test a fusion bomb, it seems by the name. Not many did it, especially that early.

That's just the name of the victory. It's flavor text. It doesn't say you have to complete a project.

 

[Seek]

With cultural victory you have to complete a project, it stands to reason that’s true for the others as well. Iirc Ed alluded to that in the stream.

 

[Leucarum]

I think the vicrory tracks in modern are less of a problem than the ones in exploration where they feel un-necessarily specific, and a little prescriptive, i.e. skewing gameplay in unusual directions. Accumulating treasure fleets are a very specific way to play the game, while the distant land caveats on other tracks are also prescriptive - to the point where it feels telling that the base game already had to introduce other ways for some civs to interact with the mechanics. I do like that there are multiple ways to generate relics, but even those aren't as varied as I was hoping.

For modern; the economic victory at first looked like it would skew your gameplay, but on reflection as it's tied into boosting yields you probably want to do it anyway? Ditto with the exploration-age science track.

I have mixed feelings as I like the accumulation of points to spend betwren ages, but I'm increasingly feeling like the best part of 7 will be the ancient era - more so than previous civ titles... Ironically since the opposite was one of firaxis' stated aims.