Hey, Civ fans! I'm Bill Anderson, Game Designer on Civilization VII. Following my colleagues' recent Dev Diaries covering the new Time-Tested civs and Triumphs systems arriving in the Test of Time update, I'm here to break down the new Victories system, and provide some context for how we arrived at these particular changes. 

But first, a quick introduction by way of my personal history with Civ: I started at Firaxis as a Systems Engineer on Civ VII before I moved into Design partway through production. I worked on the Diplomacy system, the Advanced Start system, the original Legacies and Victories, and pretty much anything I could get my hands on as development progressed. I've been a Civ player since childhood, starting with Civ III. After college I began following the series closely with Civ V, and each release that followed, along with basically every other 4X game that's come out since. It's certainly my genre!

Following Civ VII's launch, the criticisms surrounding the game's Legacy Paths were quite consistent. Many found the system too "railroady," with overly prescriptive goals that led players to pursue the same handful of optimal paths instead of encouraging experimentation with new strategies. In other words, it made too many campaigns play out the same way.

So, for the Test of Time update, we decided to dismantle Legacy Paths and replace them with two different, more open-ended features. Triumphs—which you can read about in the Dev Diary by my fellow designer Kiera Boyle—replace the old system's in-Age objectives, offering compelling tasks to complete across the Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern Ages without too narrowly feeding into your long-term goals.

Victories have also been completely overhauled. Previously, players essentially had the option to complete the Legacy Paths or not, with the added problem that completing them wasn't impactful enough in the game's final third. You would hit the Modern Age, pick a Victory to try for, and race to accomplish it first, incentivizing you to only focus on a narrower-than-intended slice of the Age instead of all it had to offer. 

By contrast, the new Victories are designed to create tighter races between civilizations, pitting you head-to-head in hopes of overtaking each others' scores. The key here is providing many different ways to contribute to one's score, letting players see more of the Modern Age in each game. And if you absolutely dominate early on and begin snowballing toward the win, it's now possible to claim Victory in the Exploration Age.

Victory thresholds become reachable mid-way through the Exploration age and begin high, becoming more achievable over time, so wins are still most likely to occur during the Modern Age. The majority of games will conclude before the "end," but we do still have a score victory to break ties if needed. We also wanted to give these increasingly attainable thresholds some flavor; even if you already have a high enough score to win eventually, we want to encourage players to try to win earlier if they can manage it. Scoring an earlier Victory like the Transcendent Victory should give winners an increased sense of mastery, while inspiring their opponents to achieve the same.

Another key to refining these reworked Victories was making progress feel meaningful in every Age, while still carefully balancing progression across all three. The decisions you make early on can't be so important that they dictate everything that follows, and in many ways, the stakes should feel higher in the final third. We also want players to always be able to grasp what's going on and have a sense of that progression, so it's a bit of a tightrope to walk, especially as you mentally track everyone's Military, Cultural, Economic, and Scientific advancements. For Military, Cultural, and Economic (we'll get to Scientific shortly), the idea is that you'll be regularly gaining points in multiple categories: 

• Military progress mainly represents control and conquering of Settlements, and settling in Distant Lands.

• Cultural score is racked up by building Wonders, Unique Buildings, and Unique Infrastructure, as well as having Celebrations.

• Economic is obviously about growing your economy over time, slotting Resources and constructing Gold Buildings, with even more points scored via Treasure Convoys  or slotted Factory Resources.

Whichever scores you prioritize pursuing, your overarching goal is straightforward: accrue scores that are certain percentages higher than the second-place player's. If you're in first place, the runner-up sets the benchmark you'll need to beat to keep and secure the lead. In the Exploration Age, the Transcendent Victory's score threshold begins at six times the second-place player's. It drops to four times the second-place score near the end of the Age; in Modern it drops to three, two, one-and-a-half, and one-and-a-quarter times as the game progresses. Once you reach that goal, you have to hold it for five turns to win. If the countdown is interrupted, that's okay - it'll resume once you meet the requirements again.

That just leaves Science Victories. Traditionally, achieving Science Victories in Civ has meant winning a space race, and we wanted to keep that goal consistent. At launch, Civ VII required the completion of three Modern Age Projects to launch the rocket and win. We expanded on that, keeping those Projects and adding more across every Age, like charting the stars or discovering calculus.

Those projects now provide Innovation, which is how you win the Science Victory. Once you have 100 Innovation and a launch pad, the five-turn countdown will start. In addition to completing the Projects, you can also gain Innovation across the Ages by slotting Codices, pursuing Tech Masteries, and even advancing a final Project that can be completed as many times as needed. 

Once we had these new and updated systems stood up, our Firaxis Feature Workshop[civilization.2k.com] participants were invaluable for helping us properly tune the new Victories. They helped us identify and implement many more unlockable ways to score Victory points, each adaptable to your playstyle regardless of which civ you're leading or which strategies you employ. We want to offer as many ways as possible to win, and even ways to pivot toward different Victories via new late-game Dedications, which you can also read more about in Kiera's Dev Diary.

Of course, the copious playtesting feedback helped us tweak many numbers elsewhere too, but the Workshop's most significant impacts in this area all resulted in making the Modern Age more exciting, with bigger and more dramatic swings that feel like culminations of all your strategic decisions made throughout the campaign.

When the Test of Time update goes live, playtesters may be pleased to find even more new additions inspired by their feedback, specifically in their campaigns' final moments. I'll avoid elaborating for now since some in-progress features may slip to the future updates, but that sort of illustrates the larger point here: the Firaxis Feature Workshop's influence will surely be felt on Civ VII well beyond the Test of Time update! 

Once Victory has been decided, the brand-new endgame celebration will really emphasize the journey of your personalized empire. To draw a clearer, more satisfying throughline across your completed campaign, this final moment has been reworked to focus on your chosen leader – rather than only which civs you played or how you won – along with scenic new flyovers of your sprawling territory.

Now that Time-Tested civs allow for maintaining a more consistent identity in a given game, focusing on leaders ensures that every player can experience equally momentous finales. Better yet, you may also notice new leader animations here – their accompanying voiceover lines had already been recorded but ended up unused until now, when this leader-focused shift gave us the perfect reason to add them in. All of these tweaks coalesce into moments of victory that are simply more cinematic and sweeter to achieve.

Whether you win or lose any given game, I can't wait for returning and new players to explore these improved systems and see how they synergize to make for more compelling victories. I think you'll find that Modern Age gameplay feels more varied, that you're more likely to have late-game mechanical discoveries inspire wildly different future runs, and that the game better encourages you to lean into unique strategies you've stumbled upon.  

With Test of Time (and much more) just over the horizon, I'd like to thank Civ fans for their continued feedback and collaboration in helping build Civilization VII into the best game it can be, and one we all truly believe in. 1.4.0 is not the end of development by any means - and we’re not afraid to acknowledge there’s always more tweaking to do - so please keep us updated on how these new Victories feel, and keep providing your feedback in spaces like the Civilization[discord.com] Official Discord[discord.com]. For further breakdowns of everything found in this massive update, check out our Game Update Notes[civilization.2k.com] page when it releases on May 19!

A quick Test of Time livestream update: Due to some unforeseen livestream technical difficulties, we are going to postpone today’s developer stream and shifting things to a recorded format with our guests instead. We know a lot of you carved out time to join us today, so we really appreciate the patience and flexibility here. We’ll have more to share soon!

In the meantime, please check out the Game Guide[civilization.2k.com] and First Look for Alexander, the new free leader added or all Civ VII players!