Which victory condition is hardest? Why

[.Shane.]

(Poll Request) I did a search and didn't find this poll, though I found an interesting one on favorite victory condition

Which victory condition do you think is the hardest and why? Is your opinion relative to the difficulty level?

Let's see:

Conquest (Destroy all the others)
Domination (most of % territory and population)
Score/Time (End to 2030/2050 and the biggest score wins)
Space
Cultural (3 cities of 50 000 culture)
Diplomacy (Election/Vote at the United Nations/UNO)

Personally, I'd say cultural. 50k culture in a city is something I can't fathom.

Side note: How does one get a "Conquest" victory w/out at some point first qualifying for a "Domination" victory?

 

[Lithgon]

I'd say cultural since 50k is quite a large number.

Side note: How does one get a "Conquest" victory w/out at some point first qualifying for a "Domination" victory?

Destroying the cities instead of assimilating them.

 

[Archbob]

Try Cultral on emperor level on a huge map, epic speed(I noticed marathon actually makes Cultral vic easier even though you need 2x the culture).

The map type has to be Archipelago or Tiny islands.

I haven't been able to do it yet.

 

[tombeef]

I agree, cutural takes some serious planning and commitment, and is still a challenge, especially on higher difficulties.

 

[jimbob27]

The only one I haven't done is cultural. Sitting there building stuff and avoiding the rest of the world isn't really that interesting for me.

I think it depends a lot on the maps. If everybody is on the same land mass the domination and conquest ones arn't that hard. With the right civ, you can easily get to a stage where you're close to dominating.... and then its just your choice whether you take more land, or raze the remaining civs.

Its a lot harder to get these victories on games where everyones spread out on various islands.

 

[Sisiutil]

I'm tempted to say Cultural as well, but I've pulled it off a few times now. The only win I haven't achieved yet is Conquest, so I'm going to go with that one, and I find Domination pretty challenging, too. Maybe because, like my citizens, I begin to suffer from war weariness as well.

 

[Snerk]

Conquest and diplomacy are the ones i havent completed yet. So i'll probalby have to go with them...

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Some are hard because you tend to trigger another first

Conquest+Time.. both hard to do without hitting Domination first (Time because you basically just need to keep everyone else from getting strong enough to pull off a Space Race, and the best way to do that is to keep them small.)

If you turn off the Domination win possibility, then you can achieve any victory but Culture by just focusing on crushing all opponents, and keeping them crushed. (ie they all become about equally difficult)

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Some are hard because you tend to trigger another first

Conquest+Time.. both hard to do without hitting Domination first (Time because you basically just need to keep everyone else from getting strong enough to pull off a Space Race, and the best way to do that is to keep them small.)

If you turn off the Domination win possibility, then you can achieve any victory but Culture by just focusing on crushing all opponents, and keeping them crushed. (ie they all become about equally difficult)

 

[JoeBas]

I'd have to say conquest... I've completed 4 games on Noble so far (unmodded vanilla 1.61, large maps, 2 extra civs, random civ player and AI selection, random AI personalities), and won all 4... first one space race (Elizabeth), second Diplomatic (Saladin), third Domination (Genghis), and fourth Cultural (Catherine). Bear in mind, though, that I set out with each game to do that kind of win, and went for it (well, first one I was shooting for diplomatic, but couldn't get the votes so I just built the ship).

Conquest, though... it's so hard to get that one without hitting another limit first... and a lot of the times, even if I'm getting close, it's so tedious hunting down the fleeing AI's that I usuall just wuss out and either start a new game or trigger another condition to end the suffering.

Of course, I tried stepping it up to Monarch after those 4 wins (now that I have the "hang" of IV), and am getting to the point that a little AI Slaughter might be a GOOD thing...

 

[armchairknight]

Being a serious builder I normally achieve a cultural or diplomatic victory. I've yet to manage a domination or conquest victory. I guess I just suck at war. I can kill off the odd civ or two, but not nearly fast enough. I am getting better at it, though... so I'd say that Conquest is the hardest for me.

 

[Archbob]

Actually on anything under monarch, domination/conquest isn't that hard, just pick off the civs one at a time, it usually works.

I only play Arch/islands maps so it takes time, but its not that hard.

 

[Bongo-Bongo]

Because I'm not a warmongerer, I find domination and conquest the hardest victories to achieve. I've haven't won on domination, and have won one on conquest. I find cultural the easiest to win by.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Diplomacy. By far. The only victory condition you cannot achieve by yourself...
Ever tried to win that way without being the biggest (and that means, bigger than 50% land!) Civ, in a game without a single inter-AI war? Without any chance to ever initiate some bad feeling among them?

Dom/Conq/Space is reasonable doable. Either you're dead or near dead in the midgame, or you should succeed.
Cultural is insanely easy, even on Emperor, if you go for it from the first moment (that is, Cottages+Cathedral spamming).

 

[King Flevance]

Culture is hard and ties for the most satisfying for me with Conquest. However, conquest is the hardest due to the fact it is impossible without disabling Domination.

I only play on huge maps so this is what my opinion is based off of, I suppose Conquest is easy on a small map. But on a huge map your rivals can settle faster than you can conquer. Playing on a huge map, conquest is:

A)Impossible with all victory conditions running.
B)Unlikely without installing new governers and settling behind the wreckage. This takes huge hits against your economy to be able to support an army making it that much more unlikely.

All other victories have more subtle ways in dealing with the huge map issue.

EDIT: Diplomacy is the 2nd hardest I believe as it does involve the size of your own empire along with relations.

 

[Figaro]

Side note: How does one get a "Conquest" victory w/out at some point first qualifying for a "Domination" victory?

On really small maps, a single enemy city can have over 33% of the land area in its radius towards the end of the game, especially if the landmass is quite small. Also, often Conquest victories are scored before all the land is conquered (especially on Terra or Islands maps). And of course, you can turn off Domination.

Conquest and Domination victories are usually my favourite but I'm often too lazy to go round conquering things, I prefer to just sit staring at my automated empire and continually press <ENTER>!

Cultural Victories can be pretty hard because if you don't get all the early high-culture wonders you're often completely screwed. And its always very frustrating when you keep producing Great Prophets instead of the invaluable Great Artists (the prophets come I assume from all the Taoist Pagodas you end up building!).

Time victories aren't too difficult, the reason they're unpopular is that the Civ4 points system is heavilly biased in favour of early victories, and as you can't get a Time victory at any point other than 2050 you never score much from them.

Space Race victories are generally the easiest I find because the AI rarely if ever put all their efforts into building the spaceship parts. You can win the Space Race even if you're quite behind in score for this reason - I won a Space Race with a One City Challenge against my two biggest rivals who in a Permanent Alliance with each other and BOTH had more score than me.

Diplomatic victories in my experience are something of a mixed bag; often I find I'm failing the required vote by a tiny ammount and so just do something else instead.

 

[.Shane.]

Conquest, though... it's so hard to get that one without hitting another limit first... and a lot of the times, even if I'm getting close, it's so tedious hunting down the fleeing AI's that I usuall just wuss out and either start a new game or trigger another condition to end the suffering.

So, its not that its the "hardest", maybe the most tedious?

@Bongo-Bongo (and other cultural win fans...)... how do you do it? What's the key to amassing that much culture?

 

[Sisiutil]

So, its not that its the "hardest", maybe the most tedious?

@Bongo-Bongo (and other cultural win fans...)... how do you do it? What's the key to amassing that much culture?

Short version: Great Artists and especially the slider. Also, peace.

 

[marioflag]

Personally i think that the hardest victory is conquest if you are playing against a lot of civs.Personally i like to play everytime with all 18 civs so i never managed a conquest victory because it's too long.
In order of difficulty from harder to easier it's my opinion:
1.Conquest
2.Domination
3.Diplomatic
4.Cultural
5.Space Race

 

[Older than Dirt]

Domination is the easiest. Cultural is the hardest. Whist you be enculturating your country the other counties, be building space ships with the space escalator-on-a-string and whup you good unless you spend very much gold coin to sabotage with a spy. Domination is so easy I have to give away cities to prevent it happening as I wait for the cultural victory to occur by spawing great artists (what nonsense - what great artist has there been in the modern age?). UN is particularly easy. As you destroy other civs just destroy all the unnecessary cities. Research and built UN and vote yourself in when you obtain the required number of votes, which is based on population. Genocide in Civ 4 is a virtue!