QES said:
It shouldnt be a guarentee, there should be ways to DESTROY the viability of that victory path.
Why? None of the other victory conditions have such a glaring weak point, nor is ToM victory ridiculously easy to achieve already. There's no way to stop a cultural victory aside from razing a civ down to 2 cities or winning some other way beforehand. Victory denial has always been (and should always be) civ-to-civ, not civ-to-world. The only way to affect things on a global scale, IMO, should be through rituals like the armageddon spells, and you don't need rituals to raze 1 or 2 cities. The cause is too small for the effect.
QES said:
You're all acting as though im ripping your firstborns away, but how many of you actually win by mastery tower victories? Unless its a realatively easy case to accomplish now (and somehow differes from outright slaughter of enemies) I dont see the problems of city razing a major issue. Yes, if the City is razed, your strategy to victory has failed, you have to seek another method. SO???
Because if a victory condition is next-to-impossible
and vulnerable to catastrophic failure because of things entirely outside the player's control, it might as well not be there.
The reason nobody wins via the Tower of Mastery is
because it's so hard to build already. Making the other towers world wonders would only make things worse, not better. Besides, if you lose the city that has one of your towers in it, you're out of the running for the ToM victory as-it-is. There's no need to spread that victory denial to the other civs who had nothing to do with it.
EDIT: Anyway, QES, we're both getting way off-topic. Let's either stop arguing or make a new thread for this conversation. I'd still like to hear your other ideas to make the Towers better; I just don't like the world wonder idea.
EDIT2: Hmm, I just had a thought. Maybe the towers
could be set up as world wonders, but as a safety measure, they can be rebuilt by someone else if they get razed. In addition, the hammer requirement could be doubled and all the mana requirements become double-speeds instead. How does that sound?