What the author is circling, rather like a rogue moon, is the idea of Civilization as a Narrative: the old concept of History as a series of Stories, which is now a bit out of favor with 'professional' academic historians even though Narrative History of all kinds is by far the most popular (and readable) history published.
And the other part of this concept is that it could be used to change the Victory Conditions dramatically.
Right now, Victory in Civ is (and has always) been defined by how you end the game: One More Turn might be the game's motto, but the Last Turn and where your Civ stand at that point is the only turn that counts for Victory. Furthermore, as is becoming increasingly obvious, the Victory Conditions are largely utter Fantasy: NO ONE has ever come close to conquering the whole world militarily, or even all the important parts of it: all the Eurasian Conquerers: Alexander the Great, Chingis Khan, Timur-i-Lenk, never even conquered the entire Eurasian landmass, and never touched the Americas, Africa, western Europe, Australia, or Southeast Asia. NO religion has ever been dominant over the majority of the world's population or all of the human-inhabited territories. "American" cultural norms might seem to be predominant in the last half of the 20th century, but they are in many cases warped a great deal from their American Originals into something very different - look at the application of American Cartooning/Animation in Japan or American Movies in India for examples.
And were the game to have an 'Economic Victory' on the same model as the Religious, Cultural and Domination it would be equally fallacious: the trend, in fact, is Less economic control by governments, and more economic power in the hands of NGOs like international corporations and even individuals (Warren Buffett controls more Wealth than the majority of members of the United Nations)
So, what if instead there were Victory Conditions dependent on how well you 'played' the Narrative of your Civ? How often you gave them military Glory to admire and cheer, how much Prosperity (Happiness, Gold/Population point, etc) and for How Long? Note that in measures of Happiest Populations among countries of the world today, the winners are always smaller countries - size could be utterly immaterial in this kind of Victory, which would go a long way towards breaking the Tall versus Wide controversy that has bedeviled the game since the beginning.
Conceivably there could be 'historical' (or at least, Historically-Based) Narratives for each Civ, but to keep each Civ from degenerating into a single playstyle for Victory, there should also be 'generic' Historical Narratives - perhaps involving only one Era or other smaller segments of History: recreate the British Empire of the 18th century, or the American overrunning of the North American West or Russia's spread into Siberia: read any decent history of any segment from Ancient to Modern and Narratives will be apparent that could be adopted to give Victory Conditions that occur While You Play.
Your game victory would be utterly independent of your Last Turn, but utterly dependent on how you got there: play of the game would matter, not ending the game.
