Future Era

Have the existing Scientific Victory condition substituted by a Future Era. There, instead of different cultures, different dominant technological paths might be chosen. Every path may have a special project or wonder they could build (or a scenario they might achieve), that could end in Victory (similar to the Quest Victory in Endless Legend). Ideas for the tech paths include:

- Spacefaring, with Weyland-Yutani HQ as its special building. Again, various paths might be chosen here, such as Space Exploration or Disaster Aversion, wherein the humans explore for the sake of it, or try to escape from their dying planet.

- Mind Control, with the Psychic Dominator special building. Here, again, it's not only about building a society of mindless drones that obey your every whim, it can also be about creating some kind of Utopia, similar to the Helios ending in Deus Ex: Invisible War

- Cloning & Genetics, with the Dr. Moreau's Laboratory special building. The focus here might either go towards "improving" the human race, or going for experimentation with mutation, or creating a plutocracy, wherein organs are grown for the selected few, or for all men equally.

- Ecology, with the Growlab special building. This is where everything is made of hemp, and society might swing into either ecological terrorism, where pollution becomes something punishable by death, or into biotechnology, organic computers, lighting and... everything else, so that the planet is preserved

- Dystopia, with Soylent Green Factory special building. This is when humanity decides to squeeze out the concept of modern capitalism to its last drop. Most likely this results in either a completely authoritarian 1984-like society, or a "Brave New World" type of thing. Who cares about the future anyway?

- Cybernetics, with the Augmentarium special building. Human revolution is upon us! Shall we push humanity to unseen hights or ensure that every bit of neural activity on the planet is tracked and monitored?

- Robotics, with the Tyrell HQ special building. This could be either a Blade Runner-like scenario, with humans creating a sentient race of disaster robots, or something similar to Animatrix, with creating a cheap slave force, thus freeing up humans to do whatever they like.

- AI, with the Data Haven special building. Unlike the Robotics path (where we might say that the idea is to "replicate" human consciousness using data modelling, faster processors etc), this one focuses on creating actual artificial life, either for the sake of elevating humanity to godhood, or for the purpose of digital immortality, where the programmed life is but a "shell" for humans to later implant their consciousness.

- Limit breaking, with the Spice Harvester special building. What if humanity focuses on unlocking the latent potential of their own body? By combining various forms of training for the mind and body with a little bit of special substances, humans can be imbued with efficiency never even dreamed of before. The possibilities are endless -- from achieving true peace by means of everyone having the power of farsight, to a world where said "special substance" might become something that humans can't simply do without.

- Contact, with the Galactic Cantina special building. This is a risky scenario, where humanity decides to pour all its resources into searching for extraterrestrials. Who knows, they might be benevolent and help uplift our people, or they might be malevolent and destroy everything. Or there might not be any ETs that are developed enough to find us. It's a gamble, and it can be event-based.

- Worship, with the New Zion special building. What if careful worship and all-encompassing influence of the Scripture is something that should drive humankind's development? This could mean not only the rise of intolerance and luddism to unprecedented levels, but also a creation of a highly moral society, where everyone behaves (or are made to behave) as true Samaritans.

- Occultism, with the R'lyeh Obelisk special building. What if all those mystical practices that originated with the shamans from pre-historic times, survived up to this day for a reason? What if rituals, both mundane and gruesome, are the key to the betterment of mankind (or the selected few)? It could be a huge gamble, but we as a species might not make it without the support of an all-mighty being. Or beings.

- Art, with the Neo-Salon special building. What if pursuit of artistic expression becomes the main focus of peoples' lives as the Earth inevitably ceases to be a safe place to live? Creation and consumption of art gets elevateted to unprecedented hights. It's the bourgeois era in modern times. Sure, not everyone wants to be an artist, but let them think they are special. And for the ones with the "gift" -- they are to be given everything to develop their craft. Who knows, it might be another mechanism of control, or a time of wondrous creation while the whole world writhes in agony.

These are some of the ideas -- of course, there are most likely other areas I didn't cover, but I'm sure people will pitch in, if this idea interests anyone :) Basically, the main thought here is that not all of humankind follows this particular path of technology, but the people under your leadership do. It also doesn't mean that there is a strict tech path for each of these scenarios. They would certainly overlap, similar to a Tech Web from Civ: Beyond Earth. The main idea is that cultures are sort of replaced by priorities in development.