Mercantile Victory: Could it return?

[MerchantCo]

I would find the addition of a Mercantile Victory quite interesting. [note that my name is "MerchantCo"] What do you think? Could it be properly executed? What would be the requirements? What loopholes would prevent a Mercantile Victory from being balanced? [example: you could simply buy alliances with all the city states and win a diplomatic victory instead].

 

[I_qua_I]

I'm not even sure how to conceptualize this. What exactly would a Mercantile Victory consist of?

 

[MerchantCo]

A certain amount of gold, perhaps.

 

[The Man Wood]

As much as yes this could be a victory condition. Technically you could still aim for this victory by playing Vanilla. BUT in my current game as Venice on a huge map with 22 civs, I am earning 500+ gold per turn and its only the industrial era. So it would probably be heavily flawed if you are using BNW.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

A diplomatic victory is an economic victory. The AI just stinks at countering it. I was disappointed when I found that they didn't fix getting elected just through CS alliance, but it is what it is.personally, I would add more major civ delegates (to the point where all of them together equal just over what a major Civ would have when the UN is built) and, have the top three in votes be eligible.

As for an actual economic victory, I think they would have to add corporations to the game.

 

[Unresolved]

It would be a bad idea to have an economic victory unless they change the bonuses the AI receives. For all the other victory conditions, the AI receives bonuses that indirectly help a VC(production, coup rate, etc...). If there was a VC that hinged on either GPT or a lump sum of gold, the AI would be getting a bonus(lower maintenance costs) that would directly lead to an economic victory. That and it's far too easy to take away an AI's lump gold sum through trades.

 

[FstrthnU]

IIRC, Alpha Centauri handled this by making you acquire enough gold/energy to buy all the foreign cities on the map. Depending on how they would scale the trade routes and AI bonuses this method could work again (though would be VERY tough with the AI ICS)

considering how the World Congress is basically a rehash of the Planetary Council from SMAC, this could be another legacy feature they add in to CiV

 

[tomtom5858]

For all the other victory conditions, the AI receives bonuses that indirectly help a VC(coup rate)

The AI does not receive bonuses to coups. Any time you think this is happening, it is simply confirmation bias. Source: source code via Putmalk.

 

[Junuxx]

IIRC, Alpha Centauri handled this by making you acquire enough gold/energy to buy all the foreign cities on the map. Depending on how they would scale the trade routes and AI bonuses this method could work again (though would be VERY tough with the AI ICS)

considering how the World Congress is basically a rehash of the Planetary Council from SMAC, this could be another legacy feature they add in to CiV

Yep, "Corner Energy Market", and it was VERY expensive. Usually when you could afford it, you would be so powerful that you could easily win militarily.

 

[Unresolved]

The AI does not receive bonuses to coups. Any time you think this is happening, it is simply confirmation bias. Source: source code via Putmalk.

Interesting. I'm not too familiar with the coup mechanic, the influence of you and the coup-er swap, correct? I've been couped and dropped from 70+ influence to 0.

 

[FstrthnU]

Interesting. I'm not too familiar with the coup mechanic, the influence of you and the coup-er swap, correct? I've been couped and dropped from 70+ influence to 0.

I think the closer the Civ attempting to coup is in terms of influence (relative to the current ally), the higher chance of success. The higher-ranked the spy, the better chance the coup will work too (I think).

 

[skallben]

A diplomatic victory is an economic victory. The AI just stinks at countering it. I was disappointed when I found that they didn't fix getting elected just through CS alliance, but it is what it is.personally, I would add more major civ delegates (to the point where all of them together equal just over what a major Civ would have when the UN is built) and, have the top three in votes be eligible.

As for an actual economic victory, I think they would have to add corporations to the game.

I loved corporations, now that we got trade routes its the only thing I miss.

On topic: Money itself has no value, it's what you do with it. Economic power has been a driving force throughout history and the actual reason behind many, if not most conflicts. It is however easier to motivate the masses with religion or ideology. The roman heritage remains thanks to their military power spreading it and the heritage of the european renaissance thanks to the intensive production of culture and maybe moreso to attitude towards culture itself.

A global embargo on China or US would like have their economy implode. I think corporations is a good idea but more like a driving force towards other goals, just the way religion and trade currently work. If implemented with diplomacy we could get really interesting conflicts, think something like Feitora or excavation mechanics on rival civs. We could have options to ban specific corporations but suffer diplo hits, we could trade resource exploitation rights, maybe have diplomats work on bribing locals to give away those rights. The possibilites are endless here, but we don't need another victory condition IMHO.

 

[EditorRex]

As noted above, a Mercantile victory would be similar to the Diplomatic victory, which involves a lot of bribery. I think adding this victory is worthwhile, but should also include a serious tweaking of the Diplomatic victory conditions. I think Patronage is too powerful and Commercialism needs to be beefed up, at least under vanilla and G&K. I haven't tried the BNW variant yet.

 

[pilot00]

IIRC, Alpha Centauri handled this by making you acquire enough gold/energy to buy all the foreign cities on the map. Depending on how they would scale the trade routes and AI bonuses this method could work again (though would be VERY tough with the AI ICS)

considering how the World Congress is basically a rehash of the Planetary Council from SMAC, this could be another legacy feature they add in to CiV

Yep, "Corner Energy Market", and it was VERY expensive. Usually when you could afford it, you would be so powerful that you could easily win militarily.

As far as I remember the only faction that could do that (in a normal game anyway) with a degree of efficiency were the Morganites, but they suffered extensively on the military and expansion sides.

It was a well thought out victory condition though and hellish difficult to pull through.

 

[Lyoncet]

I really feel like with the state of the game right now, this wouldn't be a good idea. Especially if it were implemented as as flat "spend X amount of money to win" even if X is variable like it is in Alpha Centauri. It just seems extremely gamey and uninteractive. Not that we haven't had uninteractive victory conditions in Civ V, like the old culture victory.

If they were to do that, I'd first want to see a fix to diplomatic wins so that they're not simply economic wins. With everyone voting for themselves, winning diplo essentially comes down to generating enough money to buy all the city-states (or hedging a bit with coups, a few tenets, etc.) Until that's addressed I see no reason to add an economic win since we already have an economic win.

That said, if they could come up with a distinct, interactive way of doing it, I'd be all for it. Like some sort of way of undermining/buying out/bankrupting all the other world economies, akin to the "pay enough to mind-control every city" win from Alpha Centauri being described in in-universe terms as "corner the global stock market." Which is just badass.