I have been playing Civilizations for many years (since Civ 3), and I’ve always wondered how do people win their Civ games. A few weeks ago, I conducted a poll on Reddit called What is your most frequent Civilizations 5 victory? Close to 900 people answered, and the result was quite fascinating.

Everyone who is reading this blog should be familiar with Civ 5 (I assume, otherwise you don’t be reading), so everyone should know the rules. Let’s go right into the key results:

Science came out to be the most frequent way of winning, with 42.6%. For me, this is not a surprise at all. Back in Civ 4, almost all of my games were won by launching the spaceship (although I am more of a culture guy now). Science Victory is definitely the easier way to win a game because it is the least fighting victory. By least fighting, I mean you don’t really have to compete with your opponents as long as you stay ahead in science. For other victories, you need to stay ahead in science AND fight for land, city states or artifacts/wonders.

Domination is next on the list, with 20.8%. This is a bit of a surprise to me because I find domination victories the hardest. I am saying hard in the general sense (i.e. not relying on certain UAs/UUs like the Chinese, the Zulu or the Mongols, in which case domination may become easier than, say, diplomatic wins). It is hard because it requires both skill and luck. I won a domination game recently using Rome and my opponents included Japan, Mongolia and the Aztecs. Basically they started fighting other civs and took some capitals well before I launched my own attacks. This made my life really easy since all I needed was to declare war three time to wrap up the game (first on Japan, from whom I took 3 capitals, then on the Aztecs, who also had 3 capitals and finally a blitzkrieg against the Mongolian capital, who was my ally for almost the entire game). If you have a game with warmonger-hater, I’d imagine a domination game would be really difficult as everyone will start to hate you by the time you conquer the second opponent capital. But okay, I didn’t ask what is the simplest way to win a Civ game, so maybe people go for domination victories because of their psychological satisfactions.

Next on the list is Culture, and this is what I voted for. Honestly, I think Culture wins are the easiest (for me, at least) because 1) it isn’t as war-centric as domination, you only need to take down one or two big opponents rather than all seven. 2) Good relationships with city states will give you a huge boost in culture, so even if I wanted to go for a diplomatic win, I often find myself pivoting to culture victories. And finally, 3) even if cultural wins become implausible, you still have the opportunity to try your luck on science wins.

Diplomatic wins came last, with 14.9%. I never won a game diplomatically so I guess my behaviours agree with most Civ players. To me, unless if you use a leader with a City State UA (like Greece), you’d either end up winning in a different way (I wanted to try a diplomatic win a few times, but ended by with a culture win), or have trouble maintaining good relationships with all city states (especially with Greece, Siam or Sweden around).

And finally, here are some interesting national stats:

The most Intelligent country: UK (49.5% Science wins vs. 42.6% globally)

The most Artistic country: Germany (25% Culture wins vs. 15.8% globally)

The most Friendly country: Poland(28.6% Diplomatic wins vs. 14.9% globally)

The most Aggressive country: Norway (35.7% Domination wins vs. 20.8% globally)

The most Defeated country: Poland (28.6% lost vs. 5.0% globally)

This is just for fun so don’t take it too seriously :) By the way, here is the complete set of the country level stats, if case if you are curious.

Last, but not least, those who find Civ polls interesting should definitely check out the following list:

Civ 4 vs. Civ 5, which one do you like more?

What is the highest Civ 5 difficulty level you’ve ever defeated?

What is your favorite Social Policy/Ideology in Civilizations 5?