Are the non-domination victory conditions redundant?

I have had a few games where I couldn't win by domination. Either because then enemy was miles away and I couldn't be arsed finding them. Or I was friendly with remaining civs or finally the other civ was quite powerful and I didn't want to go to war as it would just drag on the game too long/.

I think it could happen under the right circumstances; perhaps you're turtling and able to defend your little empire with a single chokepoint, but you don't have enough champions to go on the offensive and still protect your lands, you could wind up with a spell of making win being the only option. But for the most part non-domination win conditions are redundant, if you can win through them you can almost always win by domination, it just might be a little less convenient. I used the master quest to win a recent game, but only because my domination came to a halt when I realized I was locked into a peace treaty with the lone remaining single-city enemy (not even sure how that happened, I guess it was automatic when I extorted some gold out of him to declare war on an enemy of his that was in the way anyway). The master quest was simply faster than waiting out the treaty; convenient, but not necessary.

I think diplomacy - or lack thereof at higher difficulties - has a lot to do with it. At hard+ difficulty, if you're not aggressively expanding and conquering AIs, then the AIs with their bonuses will see you as weak and automatically declare war on you anyway (because no matter how much questing you do and/or how much magical might you build up, all the AI seems to care about is cities/population/troops). So war is inevitable either way, and if you can hold your own in that war then you can probably win by domination, and if you can't then you won't last long enough for the master quest or spell of making.

Yup.

It has been my experience that the alternate victory conditions are generally only viable if you turn conquest off or cant be bothered to hunt down your opponents utterly.

• Alliances only really happen when everyone is afraid of you. Requires Conquest.
• The Magic stuff takes so much production and so much time to get there that you kinda have to wait for it. Happens late enough you pretty much have to wait for it on purpose.
• The Master Quest.. Well... Considering that is scattered across the map, and you either have to be allied or crushing your opponents, its triply moot. I've never even bothered to try it due to where I need to be to start even thinking about it. Requires Conquest.

Well I usually finish my games with the masterquest, giving my opponents a timer, because my sovereign reaches "demi-godhood" (lvl 14 ish) somewhere near midgame and can basically with much planning and proper levelling + enchantments (plus either luck or an escort) bash down the epic quest. with proper items he can do it on his own, people want to go to war because I am tunneling through theyre territories havent been a problem in the last 2 games I remember.

Spell of mastery... its not redundant because its a nice alternative to hunting down some "idiot sovereign" that is hiding in the forest or... well you get the idea, being a time saver, if you do not count factions surrendering.

The issue at hand is, the surrendering option made conquest so easy, and so fast that the other victory conditions needs something more...

PS. the AI is too random and... angry? to have any kind of permanent alliance with... Or I just randomly piss them off when playing
The issue with this is, as Mals said (reply #3), they require you to be rather strong to not want to go to war with you in the end. which you need a little conquest or rapid expansion to accomplish.

The end line from me is, the game forces you into a game for conquest by being very aggressive, and the other victory conditions require you to have a stalemate, or somekind of peace treaty, which if you are giving time to doodle around doing the masterquest becomes too easy too, so IMO there lacks some mechanic to either help you with peace and then give people the ability to deter you from completing the masterquest, or the magical holy ritual of righteousness (whatever its called) something... more.
Either that or they become a... "I really WANT to see the magical mastery spell be cast this game" solution. Well I might be thinking too much and playing my thoughts out too little... It would require me to open the game and have 3-4 long games to think completely through...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

In the last month, I've won in every way (with each race-type I could think of), and while the conquest is perhaps too easy (a 12,060 point win on challenging with only melee builds highlights that), there are other situations where the other victories are viable alternatives.  One of my first games was against a powerful Empire (I spent too much time exploring, rather than expanding), so I allied with the other Kingdom and used the diplomacy screen to pay him (lots) to go to war with the Empire.  Then I waited about 5 turns and piled in through another front.  That was a satisfying Alliance victory--while the particular setup doesn't happen very often, it's hard to see how that can be improved.  Ideas?

In one of them, I played Pariden and set my sights on the ultimate magic victory.  If you make that decision early on and push for it, you don't have to be dominant to get there (only the most developed cities--doesn't mean you can match the hordes of enemy armies).  Not sure there is any way to improve the mechanics of this victory.

It stands to reason that if you build ridiculous amounts of strength every time, that can be considered the generic path to victory, and the specific avenue is moot.  That's different than saying it's necessary.  As release nears, I hope we see AI that will try to prevent the magic and Quest victories as you get far along the path.  (The master quest is lots of fun, and that's really all that should matter--who cares, really, if you could have won in another way?)

In general, though, most situations/play styles call for an area-wide beatdown.  Nothing wrong with that, but having those other paths available is more important than trying to tailor must-do-to-win paths for each of them, right?

And Kongdej, if the AI was any less aggressive, the game would be so boring it'd be unplayable (surely, most people are similar to me in that they hate it when the computer opponent simply waits around to get beat, all passive-like).

Yep.

Totally different situation from, say, the 3 victory conditions in Star Chamber, where it can often be a nail-biting race or surprising twist to see who pulls off what. FE's "alternative" VCs are weaker, too, than Distand Worlds' alternatives, since those can be activated at lower thresholds and are often hybrids themselves. With that being said, I don't think the Civilization franchise's alternate VCs were much good, either (although I have never played iteration 5, maybe they did a better job). But there is still hope, since FE Beta 3 lacks a lot of things, one of them being balance, and that is sure to get better at some point. Variance, one of the other thing it lacks, will probably take a lot more effort and reworking, but who knows.

Stop... Using... logic!!!

Probably right, but it does kill the viability of the other wins due to you having "won" already on military, well that's just how I feel, the Magic victory IS a good condition to stop stalemates if it didst useless-ify your sovereign.

And when I talk "viable" win conditions, I do not mean master quest is not unacheivable once you have the army to kill off the enemy kingdoms, I am talking about ease of use, I can either take 100 turns running after the master quest in each corner of the map, or 40 tuns making the AI surrender. So "slight" changes is all I would love to see.

Then again, magic victory is good for stalemates if your sovereign is useless, and master quest is good if you have a powerfull team you can spare in peace-time (tactical-wise, ofcourse you can do it just for sport) alliance victory... obviously acheiveable... but my brain has no idea how to do that.
Meaby I could tribute another faction to keep being my ally?

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

The end game has yet to be worked on in any great effort. Expect Beta 5 or 6 to handle the victory stuff. We really don't even have the Diplomacy or Quest systems in place to know what to expect. Conquest is the most viable because it is the most basic way to win. Master Quest and Spell of Making will undoubtedly get some polish too. The only one I see as being hard to balance with the others is the tech victory. It will be hard to say that teching in Magic is well balanced with teching in Civilization even thought the Magic option takes less time and grants some powerful magic towers to fend off those conquistadors. 

Bear in mind that some of us enjoy the eXplore, eXpand and eXploit elements of the game far more than the eXterminate! I'm hopng that diplomacy and influence play a larger role in the final game and that careful management of diplomatic resources will allow the player to enjoy peaceful relations with the AI factions while pursuing a non-domination victory. My perfect game will have non combat champions who follow diplomatic and administrative paths with specialized quests they can complete to earn experience.

The spell of making is way too easy. If you keep the game going long enough to build a force capable of completing the Epic quests, you'll almost certainly have the prerequisites for the spell. I believe that in addition to the current requirements, the spell should be unlocked by completing an epic quest.

This is one thing that I was fearing....have the same problems with Gal Civ II.
- Domination was useless because conquest was needed
- Alliances was useless because there was always some stick in the mud that wanted conquest
- Technology was useless because it took forever to pursue that route and conquest became inevitable.

Hoping that the victory conditions in FE are a little more flexible.