Summary
Often taking at least several hours to see through to the end, it’s vital that a strategy game has satisfying and varied victory conditions. While smaller-scale strategy games can get away with a simple military victory where players just need to wipe their opponents off the face of the map,grand strategy gamesneed to have a bit more to their endgames if they want to really encourage players to stick with a match till its conclusion. And thankfully, that’s exactly what theCivilizationseries does.
Though it’s chopped, changed, and added a few over the years,theCivilizationfranchisehas always had a satisfying and varied set of victory conditions. But while the economic, military, religious, and cultural victories all have plenty of depth, it’sCivilization’s science/technology victory that’s probably the series' most consistently satisfying, offering a great deal of strategy, variation, and often featuring a visually impressive ending. But there’s still room for improvement there, andCivilization 7could expand upon its technology endgame in some major ways.
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Civilization 7 Could Expand its Technology Endgame in a Few Big Ways
For the longest time, theCivilizationseries didn’t really change up its victory conditions all that much, and that’s especially true for the science/technology victory. In the vast majority ofCivilizationentries, players aiming for a science victory need to research most of the game’s technologies, paying close attention to those more advanced techs that revolve around flight. Once researched, players need to start building their spaceship bit by bit, eventually launching it and hoping that itreaches Alpha Centauribefore an opponent can complete any of the game’s other victory conditions.
Civilization 6was the first game in the series to really shake up the victory conditions, and science got one of the more significant overhauls. While the focus is still on researching the vast majority of the game’s technologies, the end goal is slightly different forCiv 6’s science victory. Rather than build a spaceship, players need to build a spaceport district, launch a satellite, and research, build, and launch three separate components of a Mars colony.
Though it hasn’t been confirmed at all yet, it seems likely that Firaxis will want to continue expanding upon the series' victory conditions in the upcomingCivilization 7, and there are a few big ways in which it could improve upon the sequel’s technology endgame. The biggest improvement would be expanding onCivilization 7’s science victory even further, adding more tasks to the checklist before the player wins. For instance, after landing on Mars and establishing their colony, players could then be required to make alien contact. After that, players could then be tasked with researching alien technology and using it to discover faster-than-light travel, finally ending the game once they’ve reached another galaxy.
Expanding on the technology endgame inCivilization 7could even pave the way for a potentialXCOMcrossover, letting players research and use exclusive XCOM soldiers after discovering alien technology, just like inCivilization 5’s Brave New World expansion. Of course,Civilization 7’s science victory couldn’t be the only condition to receive an expansion as that would make the game extremely unbalanced, but there’s a lot of potential for Firaxis to have some real fun withCiv7’s technology endgame. While landing on Mars is definitely fun, players have likely seen that ending countless times now over the last seven years sinceCivilization 6’s release, and Firaxis shouldn’t waste an easy opportunity to go above and beyond.
Civilization 7is in development.
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