Economic Victory

[Impaler[WrG]]

Affores and I did some brainstorming over Skype focused mainly on Economic victory/defeat. Here is a summary of some ideas we had.

* A player will be able to 'own' some kind of 'share' in themselves and other civs, players can trade their shares or engage in some kind of 'hostile take over' attempt. Shares are essentially the 'territory' for economic battle.

* Players could create shares by building certain buildings like Banks and markets which would now cost a sum of money instead of or in addition to hammers. Also building certain wonders or expending Great Merchants might create shares as well

* Corporations could exist and have shares as well, players could create shares by building/buying 'branches', the Corporations act as 'small fry' that can be fought over, having the majority of shares could grant a unique bonus (think owning Railroads & Utilities in Monopoly)

* Shares should provide modest income potential probably a slice of the player or corporations income. Not sure if the rate should be fixed or variable. Controlling lots of shares should be the most effective way to be come wealthy.

* Shares do not change hands because of military conquest, at worst you might be able to destroy your opponents shares but your can't conquer them, this is to prevent military power from trumping everything else.

* If players are making loans amongst each other then shares could act as collateral in such loans, essentially the share is being mortgaged until the dept is payed this should solve the whole "I just back-stab you and go to war and never payback the loan" issue that SMAC loans had, now the creditor would get to keep the valuable shares.

* Some kind of 'Market' could exist for everyone's shares, this might be a real bid/offer based system or more of a 'mock' market. In any case players can buy/sell shares in the various civs and corporations. Some kind of market manipulation should be possible so their are real tactics and strategy to 'playing the market'. Their might be an AI controlled 'public' entity distinct from the civs in the game that everyone can trade with as an option.

* Hostile take overs should be a battle fought with money, perhaps it's just a simple auction with the 'target' share going to the highest bidder or it might be more complex. In any case deep pockets are the best defense and it would be a free-for-all in which anyone can 'attack' anyone else. Their would need to be at least some level of defense for smaller guys to keep them from being gobbled up, perhaps the difficulty of hostile takeovers rises the more then are used.

* If a Civ losses the majority or perhaps all of their shares they become a 'Debtor' nation which is a quasi-death vassal like condition in which the 'Creditors' aka masters gets most/all the civs income. Some kind of 'escape' condition might exists but like Vassals this is a state we would expect a human player to quit the game under. AI's would pursue the escape condition to at least keep a human Creditor on their toes.

[LDiCesare]

This share idea is interesting.

Let me see if I understand correctly:

Shares should only be created by explicit action, after some tech (capitalism, bank, whatever) is reached. "Better" or more shares available with later techs.
Shares can be created by capitalist nations and provide economy boosts. For example, having 10% of your economy in shares provides a 10% bonus to economic output of your civ.
If you buy a share from someone else, you take part of that bonus.
If you hold a civ's share, you can act upon it to hurt that civ. For instance, you'd forfeit the bonus for yourself, but also cause the civ to lose what they were supposed to gain.
So if civ1's shares are 50% owned by civ2 gets a 50% bonus, civ2 earns maybe 10% of that bonus in dividends, and if civ2 decides to, it can turn the 50% bonus into a 50% penalty to the economy (so drops from 150% to 50%).

Shares should be bought initially to provide the bonus, and are available to anyone who offers a bigger price.? You can raise your own shares prices by buying them again. The one you buy from probably gets money as a compensation.

[Janig]

Impaler the shares that you describe seem to the represent the gold/power/score/resources/techs that already exist in Civ. Replace shares with 'power' in ur first 4 points and it reads like youve just ripped off Civ4! Fyi military power does trump everything else, that is the nature of civilization.
#6 reputation
#7 diplomacy
#8 fyi money = power
9,10 ... I dont see a single original idea in ur post please enlighten me

[Crazy George]

If a Military Victory means controlling X% of the Land and Population in the world by Military Occupation;
If Diplomatic Victory means influencing X% of the World's population by Diplomatic means;

Then why not define an Economic Victory as controlling X% of the World's Commerce?
A Cultural Victory as controlling X% of the World's Culture?
A Technological Victory as providing X% of the World's Innovations?
And so on.

Such as system would be:
1) Easy to understand (at least to me).
2) Simple to implement.
3) And would force even the most gung-ho Warmonger to pay attention to their civilizations culural influence and economy, lest they suddenly find a much weaker opponent closing in on a Cultural Victory (see Religion in History for a case study).

[Crazy George]

Not as straightfoward to work out as the above, but I would also like to see Joint Victories.

Why does Monty vote for my victory in the UN election?
Because if I win, he would share in that victory; and given the state of the game, that's his best option.

I'm thinking some sort of partial point score dependent upon one's contribution to the victory, but I feel that needs to be tweaked a little more. Perhaps adding additional penalties.

Anyhow the basic idea is, when worse comes to worst, players and the AI can give up on a Single Victory and opt for a Multi-Player Victory instead at a reduced point score.

And a simple opt out button on the start screen could easily eliminate this form of victory altogether.

[Janig]

Crazy George I dont know about you but I dont like domination victories, theyre normally a surprise due to their arbitrary % nature, and if it were not for this I would think you make a good point. Krikkitone highlighted that Conquest, Time and Space Race victories must be included becuase they represent reaching the boundaries of the game. I fear that the contrived Diplo, culture, domination and economic victories have negative inspiration. As Impaler highlighted: popularity, strong culture, big territory and strong economy should truly allow the user to pursue those necessary, greater victories. If a victory is completely arbitrary then its always going to seem arbitrary!

[Explorer]

I'm kind of curious why so many people are claiming these victories are "arbitrary." The rules for how these victories are achieved are clearly spelled out, and you can check the Victory Conditions screen at any time to see how well your opponents are doing as well.

That being said, I believe an economic victory is a much needed victory condition. It really shouldn't even be an arbitrary "stockpiling of points" either. Instead of having a certain amount of gold to win, why not win by controlling trade? If diplomacy is getting an overhaul, what's wrong with allowing players greater control over trade routes? Buy, sell, cajole and intimidate your way into securing the most lucrative trade routes, thus ensuring your indomitable place in history as the wealthiest nation the world has ever known. Money is power, after all.

Nations that benefit from these trade routes would want to sidle up to the economic powerhouses. Nations that are locked out of those trade routes will have more of a reason to go to war over them. This can really tangle up diplomatic relations as well. Give Montezuma access to your best trade routes and he'll happily come to your aid when Elizabeth decides to challenge your economic superiority. Of course, it would also be nice to be able to purchase military units from other countries like you could in Galactic Civilizations. Again, money is power.

It also would open up for more strategic play if/when they bring back corporations in a future expansion. Every nation in the world has pursued wealth as a means to greatness, so why exclude it as a victory condition in the game?

[Impaler[WrG]]

Originally Posted by Explorer

I'm kind of curious why so many people are claiming these victories are "arbitrary." The rules for how these victories are achieved are clearly spelled out, and you can check the Victory Conditions screen at any time to see how well your opponents are doing as well.

Arbitrary != Undocumented

When people say arbitrary they mean the percentage (67% for Domination) is just something the developers picked as a point ware the nature of the game makes your victory assured and the players is probably no longer being significantly challenged. But it makes no sense that the whole world decides to capitulate to you at that point, especially considering how doggedly the typical AI will resist you often literally fighting to the 'last man' while refusing all peace offerings, humans on the other hand are going to capitulate when you have about 50%. The victory is thus arbitrary, only total elimination of all opponents (Conquest) is non-arbitrary.

Originally Posted by Explorer

That being said, I believe an economic victory is a much needed victory condition. It really shouldn't even be an arbitrary "stockpiling of points" either. Instead of having a certain amount of gold to win, why not win by controlling trade? If diplomacy is getting an overhaul, what's wrong with allowing players greater control over trade routes? Buy, sell, cajole and intimidate your way into securing the most lucrative trade routes, thus ensuring your indomitable place in history as the wealthiest nation the world has ever known. Money is power, after all.

Nations that benefit from these trade routes would want to sidle up to the economic powerhouses. Nations that are locked out of those trade routes will have more of a reason to go to war over them. This can really tangle up diplomatic relations as well. Give Montezuma access to your best trade routes and he'll happily come to your aid when Elizabeth decides to challenge your economic superiority. Of course, it would also be nice to be able to purchase military units from other countries like you could in Galactic Civilizations. Again, money is power.

It also would open up for more strategic play if/when they bring back corporations in a future expansion. Every nation in the world has pursued wealth as a means to greatness, so why exclude it as a victory condition in the game?

The control of trade routes is indeed an important part of an empires wealth (often the defining part). But I'm not sure how detailed it could be, do we want a trade-routes created in the Civ4 manor or by the older Caravan linkage system? Either way I could see the Route becoming a 'share' like entity that could be traded or controlled in some way but it might be limited to being controlled by only one of the two sides in the trade or possibly one or more 'middlemen'. This could perhaps reflect some kind of taxed or inequitable trade as was typical for much of history. Military power should indeed be able to seize such trade-routes.

[Trias]

One issue I have with the domination and cultural victories in civ4 was that the final step towards these victories rarely depended on some explicit action of the player, but on some number updating at the end of your turn. In the case of domination, it often was the one of your recently conquered cities coming out of revolt, and with culture it was your third city attaining legendary status.

This made these victories feel very arbitrary. Also since there was no advance warning (when not using BUG) these victories could sometimes sneak up on you. (I've literally had a surprise cultural victory 5 turns before my spaceship reached alpha centauri.)

This contrasted with the conquest, diplomatic, and space race victories, which were triggered by some explicit action of the player; Conquering the last city for conquest, voting for diplo victory, and launching your space ship for the space race.

I really hope that this gets improved for civ5. The introduction of the new conquest condition (capture all capitols) makes me hopeful. This condition eliminates the need for the domination victory (which existed mainly as a way to ended the game by conquest without the extended "mopping up" phase after everybody was effectively defeated.

I hope that they find a way of making the cultural (and a possible economic) victory more interesting, involving more explicit action to trigger as well.

On different note. A lot of posters have commented on diplomatic victory not making sense in multiplayer. There is an ease way to fix this, remove the option of abstaining in the vote (or make the result depend on the percentage of votes actually made). This way the players have to give their vote to one of the candidates (or just leaving it up to the other player to decide). Drawback is that "strategical voting" by players trying to not end the game can make the result very random.

A more interesting way of attaining diplovictory, would be through allied victory pacts. (And collectively winning some other victory condition.)

[globalempire]

domination is not arbitrary.

if you controlled 67% of the worlds land and 60% of the worlds population you would be unstopppable.

think about if you controlled 67% of earths population you would have about 4 billion people ish under your control. you would be unstoppable.

same thing woth the land. you would control 60%of resources and therefore with your incredible population would be unstoppable.

you win at this point so that you dont ahve to holod a miliatry campaign that is going to result in the termination of every nation. because it could take some time. but you are going to win

[mjs0]

Originally Posted by globalempire

domination is not arbitrary.

if you controlled 67% of the worlds land and 60% of the worlds population you would be unstopppable.

think about if you controlled 67% of earths population you would have about 4 billion people ish under your control. you would be unstoppable.

same thing woth the land. you would control 60%of resources and therefore with your incredible population would be unstoppable.

you win at this point so that you dont ahve to holod a miliatry campaign that is going to result in the termination of every nation. because it could take some time. but you are going to win

Of course you are going to win at that point but that is not the issue, it is arbitrary because the number 67 is arbitrary.

Why not 66%, or 68%...those numbers work just as well, as do many others, so the choice of 67% is...arbitrary.

[Janig]

addressing the true question here

Originally Posted by Explorer

Every nation in the world has pursued wealth as a means to greatness, so why exclude it as a victory condition in the game?

you just said it yourself that wealth is a means not a greatness. if a victory isnt great then it is an empty, arbitrary one. games are supposed to be fun

[awesome]

a pyrrhic victory is still a victory

[Explorer]

Originally Posted by Impaler[WrG]

Arbitrary != Undocumented

When people say arbitrary they mean the percentage (67% for Domination) is just something the developers picked as a point ware the nature of the game makes your victory assured and the players is probably no longer being significantly challenged. But it makes no sense that the whole world decides to capitulate to you at that point, especially considering how doggedly the typical AI will resist you often literally fighting to the 'last man' while refusing all peace offerings, humans on the other hand are going to capitulate when you have about 50%. The victory is thus arbitrary, only total elimination of all opponents (Conquest) is non-arbitrary.

Exactly. By using that criteria, then everything, short of complete and total domination is arbitrary. Just because humans will concede the game at 50% and that AI doesn't until 67% doesn't mean that the victory condition should be removed from the game. The only thing that you need to do is "renegotiate" where to place the win condition. I do agree that 50% control of any victory condition should suffice (with, perhaps the exception of the religious victory condition in the Fall from Heaven 2 mod).

So how would you have it? Should conquest and time victories be the only win conditions? I mean, the world isn't going to bow down to you just because you decided to colonize another planet, either. In fact, they should probably also remove the conquest victory as well, since if you conquered the entire world rebellions and splinter factions are bound to spring up and fight for independence. The point is that the game has to end at some time, and expecting the world to bow down to you and acknowledge your superiority is completely impossible (thereby effectively eliminating ALL victory conditions).

Originally Posted by Impaler[WrG]

The control of trade routes is indeed an important part of an empires wealth (often the defining part). But I'm not sure how detailed it could be, do we want a trade-routes created in the Civ4 manor or by the older Caravan linkage system? Either way I could see the Route becoming a 'share' like entity that could be traded or controlled in some way but it might be limited to being controlled by only one of the two sides in the trade or possibly one or more 'middlemen'. This could perhaps reflect some kind of taxed or inequitable trade as was typical for much of history. Military power should indeed be able to seize such trade-routes.

Oh, I'm definitely not advocating reintroducing the minutiae of the caravan. Trade routes could work similarly to the current trade route system, with a few exceptions: you could manually change or disconnect the trade routes, and the invisible trade routes can be seen with a "Show trade routes" button.

If you can see the trade routes, you can manually block them during times of war. This would be easy to do by pillaging roads, of course. But if the game can also recalculate the trade routes a different way, you can still gain a smaller income from them. In other words, the most direct route would yield the most money, but if the main road to your city were pillaged then you'd have to redirect using a longer less direct route. This would have the effect of decreasing the monetary yield (since it takes longer to travel back and forth to those cities, there would be fewer trips made).

Over the ocean, it would add even more strategy. If I had a weak navy, but I still wanted to disrupt trade, I could block transcontinental trade in the middle of the ocean (like what the German U-boats did in both World Wars). But the ships could redirect around the ships' "zone of control," thus reducing the trade route's yield but not eliminating it (assuming the technology exists to see the ships, in the case of the U-boat example). The way to completely block transcontinental trade would be to break your navy into various task forces and set up "screens," so that nobody break through. Or of course, take a chance and blockade the other civilization near its port and be prepared for the other civilization to fight.

It would also add a reason to develop an air force, even if you're not going to air superiority. Airports would not only give you much more lucrative trade routes (due to the speed of air travel--but perhaps still not as good as naval trade routes, due to the weight restrictions on air travel that ships would not experience), but they would also automatically give you the most direct trade route, thus maximizing your profits. Air patrol missions (perhaps the same as intercept missions, perhaps not--that would depend on game balance issues) would serve the same purpose of blockading air travel within that particular aircraft's range. Air intercept missions would be a means of seeking out and shooting down those air patrols.

So with all that added strategy, it could also be pretty much ignored if the player wanted, too. You could just have the AI governor just choose your trade routes automatically. You would never have to click the "Show Trade Routes" button if you didn't want to, either. That way, it doesn't have to be complex (but it can be if you want to delve into the inner workings of the trade route system). It also allows for more peacetime strategies by pursuing technologies that make your trade empire more powerful, as well as wartime strategies.

Of course, these ideas could be fleshed out much further, but it is an idea. I saw a more tedious version of it in Galactic Civilizations II, and thought it could have been handled much better. Hence, my ideas for making most of this happen under the hood.

[Explorer]

Originally Posted by Janig

addressing the true question here

you just said it yourself that wealth is a means not a greatness. if a victory isnt great then it is an empty, arbitrary one. games are supposed to be fun

That sounds like you're just trying to twist my words around. How about this: Wealth IS greatness. Wealth IS the means to an end.

How many rulers throughout history sought conquest simply for the sake of conquest? You can list those rulers on one hand. Economic growth is what they pursued. The Vikings had little arable land, so they raided to survive. England, Spain, France and Holland colonized the world to gather wealth. The Mongolians conquered most of Asia and Europe for wealth. Even the United States and the Soviet Union became enemies in the Cold War because of their strongly different economic beliefs (which also became a system of government).

My point is that every nation in the world seeks wealth. Everything else is secondary. Therefore, wealth IS greatness.

And I also think that would be incredibly fun. If you don't think an economic victory would be fun, stick with warmongering--they're not going to take that out of the game just because builders like developing a strong economy.

[GhostWriter16]

Well as people have said, "Conquest/Domination/Diplomatic effectively neutralize the opposition. Space transcends the map.

Time, well, I'll admit sometimes its annoying but the game's gotta end sometime.

Culture? Well, its supposed to mean your culture's so strong, other nations want to join you, so, neutralizes the opposition.

Money? Well, if there was one world currency, and you controlled it, you'd neutralize the opposition.

So it does work.

[travlake]

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (my 2nd fave civ-style game behind civ IV) had economic victory. Link.

Basically if you had enough money where you could "mind control" (like espionage except there was an option to actually take over an enemy city and it cost gold instead of esp points) every city on the planet you won econ victory 20 turns later as long as your capital didn't fall. It was very hard but acheivable for Morgan (the fin leader in alpha centauri) and sometimes other leaders. Ball park translation to Civ IV terms: 1000 gold per enemy city of size 12, more for bigger cities less for smaller ones.

[Janig]

Originally Posted by Explorer

Wealth IS greatness. Wealth IS the means to an end.

My point is that every nation in the world seeks wealth. Everything else is secondary. Therefore, wealth IS greatness.

ok I disagree but lets entertain you and apply this logic to your earlier question

Every nation in the world has pursued wealth as a means to greatness, so why exclude it as a victory condition in the game?

revised

Every nation in the world has pursued greatness as a means to greatness, so why exclude [the pursuit of] greatness as a victory condition in the game?

damn thats a good question. that is what you mean to write right?

Originally Posted by Domination3000

victory isnt about the opposition imo, I think victory is self fulfilling, maybe thats why Im a winner

1000 gold per enemy city of size 12

means 1000 gold per enemy city of size 12, that is no reason for any kind of victory of civilization, maybe thats why smac is a fantasy game

[Impaler[WrG]]

Quit this semantically arguing, its pointless and stupid.

Wealth has been of huge importance in history no one can deny that. Lots of people like the idea of an economic victory but others feel (rightly in my opinion) that all the prior attempts have been wanting. Try brainstorming a better form of Economic victory rather then getting all off-topic.

[Janig]

if you dont want a discussion on the meaning of economic victory you shouldnt have clicked on the Economic Victory topic mate