I've Played Every Culture Victory In The Civ Series, & Civ 7's Is The Worst

Sid Meier's Civilization 7 features several fun ways to win, but the Culture Victory isn't one of them. First introduced in Civ 3, I've rarely found the franchise's Culture Victories to be as assured in design as, say, the path to scientific domination, but they're generally capable of at least holding their own. Civ 7's approach to the concept, however, strikes me as unfinished in a way that stands out both among the victory paths available in-game and the history of the series as a whole.

More than any other path to victory in Civ 7, the Culture Victory is conceived as a product of the Ages system. To build the World's Fair that wins the game, a civilization has to collect an array of Artifacts left behind in prior Ages, most of which will likely be acquired through a race to dig them up around the world. In theory, it's a neat way to establish and trace a cultural legacy in-game that's shaped by the events of a campaign, but it doesn't ultimately pan out in most key regards.

Civ 7 Doesn't Pace The Culture Victory Well

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Admittedly, going for a Culture Victory is rarely my first instinct in a Civ game, as I tend to be more inexorably drawn toward the relentless, all-consuming progress of Scientific Victories or worldwide Domination. I always like to get a survey of my options, though, and I've had fun with past challenges, from Civ 3's straightforward but difficult focus on raising Cultural Value to the pivot to tourism in Civ 5: Brave New World and Civ 6. With Civ 7, I decided to take the plunge in my second campaign. Ten hours later, I came out of the Modern Age scratching my head.

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The problems with the Culture Victory are multifaceted, but I think the biggest core issue is pacing. Other victory conditions in Civ 7 build on consistent advancement, both across the Ages and in the Modern Age Legacy Paths. Culture, however, is erratic at best. Natural History, the civic necessary to start on Artifacts is available at the beginning of the Modern Age civic tree. Hegemony, which adds Antiquity Age Artifacts into the mix, is further down the line, but the Modern Age civic tree simply isn't big enough for that to withstand a true cultural powerhouse for long.

Culture Victories Feels Disconnected In Civ 7

Artifacts Aren't The Peak Of Cultural Achievement

That speed is a payoff for Culture generation, but it's a challenge that crumples too easily to feel like much of a triumph. It ultimately just sets the stage for the race to dig up the artifacts, which itself has almost nothing to do with any cultural progress up until that point. Prior achievements like the spread of religion fail to matter beyond what they offer in the Age transition, and it's entirely possible to win a Culture Victory without feeling like you've made a mark on the culture of the world.

Along with the general Civic tree and civilization-specific ones, Culture can also be used to research Ideologies in the Modern Age, but these don't have a meaningful connection to the Culture Victory.

Any civilization can spam explorers with enough production or gold, and through a real historical lens, housing artifacts doesn't feel representative of what cultural might means in the modern age. While the British Museum's wealth of artifacts is indicative of its once-unstoppable force of colonization, the sun has already set on the British Empire, and putting the focus on the artifacts themselves puts the cart before the horse. The worst thing a Civ victory condition can be is arbitrary, and the Culture option in Civ 7 doesn't quite manage to avoid the damning descriptor.

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A friend of mine recently won a Culture Victory on Viceroy, and without the buffs to the AI and nerfs to the player that higher difficulties provide, his Modern Age ended up being over almost as soon as it started. I played my first run for a Culture Victory on Sovereign, and Charlemagne actually proved competitive in digging up artifacts, which simply stalled out the victory progress for a while rather than intensifying the conflict. Other ways to scrounge up Artifacts, like overbuilding opportunities that are never properly explained, are anemic by comparison.

Civ 7's Culture Victory Has Major Opportunities For Change

The Worst Victory Condition Deserves An Overhaul

Civ 7 Religion Civic unlocked gameplay image

I don't think the solution to Civ 7's Culture Victory is to simply throw in the towel and return to Tourism, which had plenty of its own problems, but I do think it needs an overhaul. Luckily, there are plenty of places to get started. Even when sticking with the current system, some basic changes could at least tie its ideas together more thoroughly, like rebalancing the methods of acquiring artifacts or giving modern cultural buildings more distinct advantages.

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Ideally, though, I'd like to see some major new concepts injected. Modern Age diplomacy feels like a system left slightly adrift, so tying it into a Cultural victory could be a good way to represent soft power if Civ 7 doesn't end up adding a separate Diplomacy Victory. I also think there could be merit in offering several different ways to achieve a Culture Victory, whether they all get shoehorned into the Artifacts system or become distinct path options that could break Civ 7 a little further out of its emphasized linearity.

A Culture Victory overhaul is one prerogative that needs to happen in the base game, not just DLC.

Even with the modern decline of religion's global power, I think Civ 7 should consider picking up where the Exploration Age left off with a way to turn religious spread into staying cultural power of a more secular nature. Virtually any through line would feel mechanically rewarding, and gesturing at the lingering aftereffects of colonization under the name of religion makes reasonable historical sense. The hard break makes sense with Civ 7's emphasis on stopping snowballs and letting faltering civilizations claw back into competition, but it overplays its hand with Culture.

The Culture Victory isn't currently a deal-breaker for me, and although I still don't know exactly how I'd rank Civ 7 as a Civ game, I do think it's a very good game in general. It still needs work, though, and a Culture Victory overhaul is one prerogative that needs to happen in the base game, not just DLC. Firaxis may already have plans in the works that are better than anything I could come up with, but whatever a reworked Culture Victory might end up looking like, I'm confident that it would outclass the one Civilization 7 currently has.