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Victory (Civ5)

Civilization V has five different paths to victory.

Domination[]

Domination victory (Civ5)

In vanilla and Gods & Kings, you achieve a domination victory if you are the last player in possession of your original capital. You do not have to wipe out all other players entirely! It doesn't matter who controls the other Capital Capitals: you can, for example, let another player take all the other Capital Capitals but yours and then take their Capital Capital, at which point you win immediately. Also, if two other players capture each other's original capitals, you will win the game even if you weren't at war with either of them.

Note that the original capital of a civilization can never be completely destroyed; it can only be captured (unless you play the "One City Challenge"). If your Capital Capital is captured, another one of your cities will be assigned as the current capital. The current capital can, however, be destroyed and does not count towards the domination victory.

In Brave New World, you must control all opposing players' original capitals and be in possession of your own original capital to achieve a domination victory.

Science[]

Science victory (Civ5)

To achieve a science victory, you must build and launch a spaceship. In order to do this, you need first to complete the Apollo Program project, and then you must reach far enough in the technology tree to be able to build the components of the spaceship. All of the necessary technologies for this are in the Information Era (Modern and Future Eras in vanilla), and require developing practically the entire tech tree.

Once you have all the required components of the spaceship (or as they become available), you can assemble them at your Capital Capital. The spaceship will be automatically launched to Alpha Centauri once assembled.

In Brave New World, it appears that the tech development in the later eras has been considerably slowed (more Science Science required for each tech), probably to allow for a longer time to play with all new late-game features introduced in the expansion.

Cultural[]

Cultural victory (Civ5)

Cultural victory is achieved by filling out five trees of social policies and completing the Utopia Project. Each tree has 5 policies, so in order to win you must have acquired 25 social policies in 5 different policy trees.

Social policies are acquired with Culture Culture, with the cost increasing for each new one. Also, founded and annexed cities increase the amount of Culture Culture needed depending on map size, which makes this path very hard for large empires. To work around this issue, you can limit the foundation of new cities and, when capturing other players' cities, you can make them puppets instead of annexing them.

In the Brave New World expansion pack, cultural victory conditions change dramatically, and have been replaced with what is best described as a "Cultural Domination" victory. The task is to use the new Tourism Tourism game mechanics to influence all other civilizations still in game and achieve at least the Influential level of cultural influence with each one.

Based upon the difference between a civ's Tourism Tourism and others' Culture Culture, there are six possible stances: Unknown, Exotic, Familiar, Popular, Influential, and Dominant. The difficulty is increasing your cultural influence from Tourism Tourism with other civilizations while simultaneously protecting your own civilization from their influence using Culture Culture.

Diplomatic[]

Diplomatic victory (Civ5)

Diplomatic victory is achieved by winning a vote in the United Nations. To win the vote, you must have the majority vote, and in order to gather more votes, players can become allies with city-states, or return captured cities to defeated AI players.

The player who built the United Nations first has two votes instead of the usual one, giving them an extra edge when voting. Every civilization leader will vote for another civilization that liberated his capital (in which case this leader will get the vote). City-states will vote only if they are allied with a civilization or a civilization liberated them in the past, so a common way of winning would be allying with the required number of city-states on the turn just before the UN vote occurs.

The Brave New World expansion makes changes to the diplomacy feature. The United Nations is not a buildable wonder anymore - instead it develops automatically from the World Congress when a civilization reaches the Information Era or at least half of the world's civilizations reach the Atomic Era. At that point, a new automatic vote starts every 20 turns: the vote for the World Leader. The conditions for winning this vote are pretty much the same as for winning the vote for any other resolution, except for a minimum number of votes required is based on number of civilizations and city-states.

Time[]

Score victory (Civ5)

Time victory is achieved by the player with the highest score by the end of the time period, assuming no one has achieved any of the above victory conditions. The deadline for a time victory is usually the year 2050 AD, but it is possible to change it to an earlier year or a predetermined number of years. Note that, on Standard speed, 2050 AD occurs at Turn 500, making Turn 499 the last turn you can play before the game is over and the winner is determined by score. If you don't have a score lead, it can be very easy to lose a game if you mistime, say, your final spaceship part.

This form of victory is a kind of stalemate. Remember that you can always disable this victory type before starting the game.

Score[]

  • The amount of Gold Gold in a player's treasury
  • The amount of resources a player possesses
  • The number of tiles within your borders
  • The number of cities in your empire
  • The number of people in your empire
  • The number of Social Policies you have adopted
  • The number of technologies you possess
  • The number of "Future Techs" you possess (as Future Tech is a repeatable technology)
  • The number of wonders you have constructed (contributes the most points towards victory)

Your score is also used to determine your Ranking, which compares you to one of the following historical figures at the end of the game:

Rank Leader Quote Score
1 Augustus Caesar I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble. 2,500+
2 Hammurabi When Marduk sent me to rule over men, to give the protection of right to the land, I did right and righteousness, and brought about the well-being of the oppressed. 2,250-2,499
3 Abraham Lincoln Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other. 2,000-2,249
4 Charlemagne Let my armies be the rocks and the trees, and the birds in the sky. 1,900-1,999
5 Winston Churchill A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. 1,800-1,899
6 Nelson Mandela It always seems impossible until it's done. 1,700-1,799
7 Marcus Aurelius Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish. 1,600-1,699
8 Joan of Arc I am not afraid... I was born to do this. 1,500-1,599
9 Charles de Gaulle Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own. 1,400-1,499
10 Simón Bolívar Judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement. 1,300-1,399
11 Lech Wałęsa He who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed. 1,200-1,299
12 Ivan the Terrible Withal, I concern myself greatly regarding the affairs of state, constant wars against hostile nations, and the welfare of my poor people. 1,100-1,199
13 Henry VIII My Lord, if it were not to satisfy the world, and my Realm, I would not do that I must do this day for none earthly thing. 1,000-1,099
14 Herbert Hoover Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt. 900-999
15 Louis XVI Listeners never hear any good of themselves. 800-899
16 Neville Chamberlain In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers. 700-799
17 Andrew Jackson There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it. 600-699
18 Nero So great an artist, I die! 500-599
19 Warren G. Harding Somewhere there must be a book that tells all about it, where I could go to straighten it out in my mind. But I don't know where the book is, and maybe I couldn't read it if I found it. 400-499
20 Ethelred the Unready Yeah, just five minutes, all right? 300-399
21 Dan Quayle If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure. < 300

Defeat[]

Defeated (Civ5)

A defeat occurs either when you have no cities and no Settlers, when a player who is not on your team achieves one of the victory conditions, or when the turn counter runs out in a game with the time victory deactivated (in which case the game ends in defeat for all players). Retiring from any game also counts as a defeat.

Recommended civilizations for each victory[]

This section is intended for new players who look to improve their experience with all victory conditions. All civilizations recommended here all have significant bonuses towards their preferred victory paths, and these bonuses are focused, synergized, and can be easily leveraged by new players.

Domination Victory[]

  • Assyria can quickly capture cities and receives bonus rewards for doing so.
  • Germany can gain massive rewards from attacking Barbarians, and can leverage these into conquest.
  • The Huns can raze cities faster, receive bonus Production Production, and have two unique units in the same era.
  • Mongolia has massive bonuses for certain types of units, as well as a unique Great General.
  • The Zulus earn promotions for their units faster.

Science Victory[]

Cultural Victory[]

Diplomatic Victory[]

  • Greece and Sweden both receive boosts to Influence (Civ5) Influence, allowing them to rack up more votes.
  • Polynesia can scout quickly in the early game, allowing them to host the first World Congress.
  • Siam gains an incentive toward befriending city-states.
  • Venice can purchase city-states that are supporting other civilizations, allowing them to gain a monopoly of the votes.

See also[]

Civilization V [edit]
Gods & KingsBrave New World
Lists
Eras
Concepts
Miscellaneous
† Only in vanilla Civ5
‡ Only in Gods & Kings and Brave New World
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