Real World

[Zhahz]

If the actual countries were playing Civ4, who would be winning? I'm saying Europe, Cultural Victory.

Europe isn't a country...and the USA is beating all of Europe (and the rest of the world) in a cultural victory race anyways.

Which language is the language of business? Which currency is the most commonly used for business? Whos movies are you watching? Whos music are you listening to? Whos PC games are you playing!? Etc. How many European countries teach english as a 2nd language in their schools? (and it isn't so they can talk to Brits, trust me)

As of the end of the cold war you could argue that the USA has won by diplomatic victory too. The USA is pretty much the enforcer for the UN.

Nobody is close to a space victory (in Civ terms).

Domination or conquest aren't going to happen and even though the USA has a dominant military and meddles in world affairs constantly there are other "empires" with significant military strength (china, for ex).

 

[Percinho]

Europe isn't a country...and the USA is beating all of Europe (and the rest of the world) in a cultural victory race anyways.

Which language is the language of business?

<sigh> Can you please explain to me how the culture you have built up on the 230 years since your independance can possibly be anywhere near the total thatwill have been built up by the Greeks/Indians/Egyptians etc.

Whether American culture is greater in influance at this moment than any other culture is largely irrelevant in terms of winning a civ vculture victory. In order to win in game terms you must start amassing culture in your biggest cities before AD times, so if you are looking at a cultural victory, only the ancient civilisations would have a chance.

And the laguage of business is English. Look at that name again, it'll give you a clue as to where it came from. If you are going to claim that you gain points because McD's, Starbucks, etc are spreading round the world, then us English would gain points for everywhere that English spreads.

 

[carn]

The concept of Russia and the US forming a permenant alliance was a joke right?

No, just stating a fact, together they have enough nukes and the first strike power to get rid of the rest.
If they do not ally to grab victory now, it's their problem, because China will be on par in a few years with early warning and nuclear subs.

Carn

 

[Mauritania]

Macedonia will conquer the world...again. Fear us for we have err... this sliced onion tapped around this brick, the ultimate chemical weapon!!!

 

[carn]

Nobody can conquer the world by force. With Ideas maybe but force. You can be killed by a nuke or with a fork. The fork doesn't make you any less dead. Not to mention who is going to fight. DO you honestly picture the american population as more military ready than China, Russia hell even Cuba and Mexico. Sure they have big guns but they have limited number of people who actually know how to use them. The oposition on the other hand can arm 1 bilion people with rifles or bomb vests if they want to and march them to the US. You know the Germans killed 20 mil russians in the WW2 and still were overrun. You can bet that the bombs will be over way before the enemy is. Watch a good ant documentary for a good analogy. A sufficiant number of fearless naked savages even can beat you if their numbers are high enough. The only way for small force no matter how technologically superior to win over a much greater force is through fear. Backing people into the corner makes them fearless as they have nothing to lose. And some are just fearless anyway because of other factors. That is what makes kamikadzes and the like so dangerous. If I'm not afraid of you killing me than tha chance that I take you down with me is pretty high. FEAR is the ultimate weapon in any conflict. Spartans at the Thermopilies is a prime example of the ultimate power of fear. The russians with their handfull of nukes at the Cuban crizis held America back with its huge arsenal using nothing but fear. Never underestimate fear.

You are right, that enough low tech armed people will overrun an high tech enemy. But "enough" can be quite lot. The average nuke in US arsenal is 500 kilotons, that kills easily 1 million people(more if they are packed into cities). They have 10000 nukes. That makes 10 billion dead enemies, probably more as lot of them are in cities. And to get them across ocean to attack the US you need ships and there only number of ships help, number of people is irrelevant beyond crew.

You're idea, that a sufficient number of savages can beat someone is no longer true since 150 years, if the technological superior force is not hampered by ethical problems.

20 savages against 1 knight is bad for the knight, he has to run.
20 against a rifleman the same.

Larger groups change that in favor of the high tech forces, as there fit only so many savages per square meter.
Against 1000 knights i would guess 40000 savages stand a chance.
Against 1000 rifleman more are needed.

Still numbers that could be mustered.
But 150 years ago, machine guns came and there it's different, in WW1 stupid military commanders had to find out the hard way, that 500 men are not enough to get towards a single machine gun(2 men).
1000 men armed with machine guns could stop 500000 savages, if they do not run out of ammunition and their guns do not fail. And you cannot make a surprise attack with 10000 savages so that the machine guns cannot come to use.

Then we got tanks, a single tank(5 men) is sufficient to take out 10000 thousand spear throwers or more, the only limitation is food, ammunition, fuel and engine failure.
200 tanks could take out savages until their tracks fail due to grinding too much bones.

That makes modern dictators so dangerous, if their military is obeying them and has no ethical problems to kill their countrymen, a modern dictator cannot be overthrown by the population, unless they get guns and anti tank weapons from somewhere.

And a nuke armed military cannot be overrun by savages unless the savages already reached their homeland, where nukes are not usefull.

The US have only so much problems controlling Irak, because they mind killing a few million iraqis and people of neighbouring conutries to cut of weapon supply for terrorists.

And for WW2 soviets were in war tech not far behind germany, just a few years and they got quite some indirect and direct help from brits and US. Germany alone against soviets could have won.

Since modern military tech, the concept that motivation and numbers make up for lack of weapons is no longer true against an enemy without ethical restrictions.

Carn

 

[Zombie69]

You said that America would be even worse off than Cuba, because at least Cuba had the USSR to back it. But Cuba no longer has the USSR to back them, and so that statement did not make your analogy any stronger.

No, but they still have good relationships with Russia, and Canada now is there for them too.

 

[zeeter]

<sigh> Can you please explain to me how the culture you have built up on the 230 years since your independance can possibly be anywhere near the total thatwill have been built up by the Greeks/Indians/Egyptians etc.

sigh...Greek would have been made to start over when the Romans came to town. There has been little greek culture since then. India's culture would have been restarted when they received their independence from Britain in the forties or fifties. For Egyptians, see: Greeks (or even, replace Romans with Greeks - it happened to them twice).

This is actually a brilliant feature in the game. When a city is captured, it's culture starts over again, whether recaptured or not. The same can be said for the Greeks and Egyptians in real life. Neither of those countries follows the culture that they're famous for. India does, but by Civ rules they had to start over again.

 

[ellie]

1000 men armed with machine guns could stop 500000 savages, if they do not run out of ammunition and their guns do not fail. And you cannot make a surprise attack with 10000 savages so that the machine guns cannot come to use.
Carn

A good example is kitcheners campaign in Sudan.

In the first big set piece battle his men where outnumbered but there were 11,000 Mahdist deaths to 48 anglo forces deaths.

Later His force of 26,000 men was attacked by 40,000 troops armed with simple firearms. The response was with machine guns causing massive casualties again.

 

[Reignking]

"Our culture is based off of other countries so much that if this was a game, we would be having all kinds of flip riots."

Of course, that requires Americans knowing about other countries and culture

 

[me_Barb]

Why are you chewing the savage example. You do know that every sane commander will order his "saveges" to surrender, be nice and either blow themselves up when you come closer, invite you to a poison food dinner or basicaly stuck his knife in your back in some way when you are not looking. . And you can't afford to kill everyone. Because if you do who is going to work for you. In fact you are slowly in the process of being overrun by said savages. Just think about it. We have America. It is full of people that in case of unprovoked war against their homeland will stub you in the back. The whites are still a majority but it is full of people from around the world. That is the big thing. America doesn't have a coherant nation. If we take China for example what is good for one chinese is probably good for 90% of the rest too. America on the other hand is so split because of so many different people with different interests that in a case of a full scale war in which every citizen will be needed you can bet that America will suddenly find itslef short of a lot of trustwordy citizens and the enemy with a lot of unexpectes allies. You are doomed face it. The only way you can keep a war is to keep the public away from actually doing anything. Most people are pretty satisfied with having food, shelter and security and doesn't really care who provides it all and how is the goverment called.

 

[Percinho]

sigh...Greek would have been made to start over when the Romans came to town. There has been little greek culture since then. India's culture would have been restarted when they received their independence from Britain in the forties or fifties. For Egyptians, see: Greeks (or even, replace Romans with Greeks - it happened to them twice).

This is actually a brilliant feature in the game. When a city is captured, it's culture starts over again, whether recaptured or not. The same can be said for the Greeks and Egyptians in real life. Neither of those countries follows the culture that they're famous for. India does, but by Civ rules they had to start over again.

Actually, I think the game rules need clarification, because I have had a city flip two turns after I dropped a culture bomb. When I invaded the city suddenly had 4000 culture points.

Anyhow, In that case, let's go for Italy, which will have had points building since the rennaisance. Japan who will have had points for a long time. England will have had culture points building for almost 1000 years, including the works of Shakespeare amongst other things, plus the legacy effects of wonders such as Stonehenge.

the fundamental point here is still that the culture that the US has spread around the world has not had anywhere near enough time to set in for a cultural victory. the golden age of Hollywood, when it really burst into the forefront was only around 80 years ago. MacDonalds really started to spread in the 60s? 70s? Starbucks is a 90s thing. England's cultural influence spread around the world for centuries, as did France's. Even if, for the sake of argument, we assume that no city has greater cultural points per turn than LA, it would still have a long way to go to catch, for example, London up. Or Paris for that matter.

 

[me_Barb]

The fact that the US doesn't have one decent ancient wonder in the game speaks for itself about culture. The only true wonders it has is the Apollo program(no argument there) and Statue of Liberty (with the collosus as a wonder why not even if it was actually a gift from the french so technicaly the americans didn't make that one). The rest are just well you can find similar stuff in other parts of the world and their is nothing wonderus about them. (except Internet I forgot that one). Fast food is convinience not culture. Material stuff may be the same but it is actually the wau people use it. Anime is culture for example. Burgers are just junk food. It is as crazy as to tell me that Swiss army knifes promote Switzerlands culture. If you have one tell me did it ever make you feel like going to Switzerland.

 

[Percinho]

The fact that the US doesn't have one decent ancient wonder in the game speaks for itself about culture. The only true wonders it has is the Apollo program(no argument there) and Statue of Liberty (with the collosus as a wonder why not even if it was actually a gift from the french so technicaly the americans didn't make that one). The rest are just well you can find similar stuff in other parts of the world and their is nothing wonderus about them. (except Internet I forgot that one). Fast food is convinience not culture. Material stuff may be the same but it is actually the wau people use it. Anime is culture for example. Burgers are just junk food. It is as crazy as to tell me that Swiss army knifes promote Switzerlands culture. If you have one tell me did it ever make you feel like going to Switzerland.

Well said.

Starbucks and MacD's etc. are more analagous to the religion model in civiv.

I've ignored this in previous posts because it distracted from the main thrust of my argument, that of the time factor in a cultural victory, but as you've said it I'll back you up all the way.

Although there's a lab in Switzerland that may argue on the Internet point...

 

[me_Barb]

You are right about that lab and if we think really good about it the Apollo happened because of a lot of Germans like von Brown but we don't have to get that picky now because then will end up with the fact that all great American disoveries were done by foreigners from somewhere else. I mean only native Indians count as true Americans if we get right down to the bottom. 400 years is nothing. My people were conqured for 500 at some point in history and still pushed the invader back. It takes thousands to form real nations that you can safely say have their own culture.

 

[jar2574]

China would have had a much better shot at cultural victory had it not been conqured by the Mongols, Europeans, and Japanese, respectively. I think it's cultural points would have taken a hit during those occupations.

As far as USA having no culture that a sophistacate would admire, well, that's just silly. The French were insired enough to try a Revolution, Eastern Europe was inspired enough to break away from the USSR.

The USA could not have won a cultural victory, because it hasn't been around long enough. But it's political and legal system have inspired millions. People shouldn't disregard America's cultural impact just because modern music, food, and movies don't entice them.

Lastly, regarding the knock on the USA, that it is an assimilation of other cultures. This shouldn't be considered a downside. That is the American ideal. It's part of America's culture.

 

[me_Barb]

China would have had a much better shot at cultural victory had it not been conqured by the Mongols, Europeans, and Japanese, respectively. I think it's cultural points would have taken a hit during those occupations.

As far as USA having no culture that a sophistacate would admire, well, that's just silly. The French were insired enough to try a Revolution, Eastern Europe was inspired enough to break away from the USSR.

The USA could not have won a cultural victory, because it hasn't been around long enough. But it's political and legal system have inspired millions. People shouldn't disregard America's cultural impact just because modern music, food, and movies don't entice them.

WEll the USA legal system is actually Roman all the way with some minor modifications over the years. Sharia is a culturaly based different legal system for example. You can tell very easy just by looking at basic principles that European, USA and Australia for that matter is all based on Rome, Sharia is based on Islam and used in ME and Asia is most probably based on Confucii although I admit I'm not that familiar with asian laws. And let me tell you we were not inspired to break away with the USSR. We were cold, hungry, very unsatisfied and wanted not to be. It has nothing to do with inspirations but with basic neads. At that time it was just a selfdestruct from within. Jeans, movies and burgers didn't do it. People even the ones at the top just stopped carring about Empires, communisam and ideals in general.

 

[jar2574]

We have America. It is full of people that in case of unprovoked war against their homeland will stub you in the back. The whites are still a majority but it is full of people from around the world. That is the big thing. America doesn't have a coherant nation.

Doesn't have a coherant nation? Have you ever been here? If anything, there is too much nationalist fervor in America, not too little.

Sounds like a Continental view of assimilation and immigration. Can't allow immigration! We'll lose our national identity! I disagree.

America on the other hand is so split because of so many different people with different interests that in a case of a full scale war in which every citizen will be needed you can bet that America will suddenly find itslef short of a lot of trustwordy citizens and the enemy with a lot of unexpectes allies. You are doomed face it.

Short of trustworthy citizens? This is ridiculous. Even under your twisted logic the USA could still count on its "white" citizens. And there are 200+ million of them.

Generally, it is very difficult to immigrate to America, and those that come identify strongly with their new country. The type of twisted logic you use is what lead to the Japanese internment camps, (when many Japanese were in fact signing up to fight against their "homeland".)

 

[me_Barb]

I've been to America. I didn't like it. I came back. There is nothing twisting and logical about what I said. It is just the state of facts. Immigrant communities continue to be separate and live the way they lived home just with more money now. Of course these people stay as invisible as possible. The black population is poor, disgrunteled and generaly feels like the whites owe them till the end of time for slavery and the mexicans well I liked the mexicans although I coudn't understand a word they said but drinking parties are universal and no talk was required. Same separation goes for most immigrant communities and I can assure you nobody I met there or knew actually went there because of any profound love for American values. It's all about the money.

Oh and the "it is very difficult to immigrate to America," is just a myth believe me. People do it all the time or at least used to 4 years ago. As a matter fact I know only one guy who actually went there legally.

 

[jar2574]

WEll the USA legal system is actually Roman all the way with some minor modifications over the years.

No. The USA system is based off of British laws, formed in England. And English laws were very different than the Roman inspired Continental ones. England had a completely different type of legal system. But I guess your definition of "minor" may be completely different than mine.

Even if your idea about the legal system was correct, the people I mentioned were inspired by the uniquely American system. It was different than any system that came before. Of course it took ideas from several great thinkers, any new system should.

My point is valid because the French and Eastern European's weren't thinking, "Let's follow the British (or Roman) legal and political system," They were inspired by America.

Futhermore, any great nation builds off ideas of previous thinkers. Your point is silly, because anyone can point to a civilization "stealing" ideas from another, unless you want to give all the credit to Adam, or the first maker of fire. The ability to innovate based off the ideas of previous thinkers is a strength, not a weakness.

 

[jar2574]

I've been to America. I didn't like it. I came back.

That's cool man, I'm not asking you to live here.

Your points re: America being unable to fight a war were just ridiculous, and seemed overworried about the affects of immigration and assimilation. Your worries have no historical basis, because America's immigrant communities have never been a threat to national stability during wartime.

America is very nationalistic, and that is not isolated within the white population. It's immigrant groups are in the front lines in every war. The black and Hispanic communities you hung out in no doubt have some soldiers in Iraq today. (unfortunately.)

I can assure you nobody I met there or knew actually went there because of any profound love for American values. It's all about the money.

Who said love of money isn't an American value?