The Panopticon Wonder Discussion Thread

[verybiased]

The wonder is a logically sound conclusion to the tourism system but not of the player actions. It just highlights the dissonance I see between the "meaning" of cultural victory and what the player does to achieve it.

To me it's about building a civilization that is impressive in terms of its architecture and art. To have the ideas of my philosophers discussed in universities of other civs. To create something that's meaningful and interesting to others. It's exactly about not wanting to simply stronghand and dominate everyone but to find power in something other than what's normally associated with it: technologic,economic or military supremacy.

But when Wu tells me her people forgot the ways of their ancestors because of me, the game tells me it sees things a bit different. In the game cultural victory assumes exclusivity, implying that if one culture is influential over another their cultural heritage gets lost. That I'm wiping out languages by focusing on wonders and art. That's VP wording though. The often ridiculed blue jeans and rock music message from the unmodded game had more of an economic connotation, much in line with late game tourism sources like hotels being about commerce and marketing rather than creation and creativity.

Maybe there is no sensible way to make cultural victory an optimistic one within the mechanics of Civ. But the idea people have brought up here about different wonders for different ideologies could at least offer different flavors of dystopia. With freedom pushing the economic angle for example.

 

[Deadstarre]

How about a Disneyland wonder

inb4 cease & desist

 

[Tantro]

I think autocracy wonder could possibly reflect the method of 'weaponizing culture'. Today US counter-insurgency protocols, manuals and other pentagon programs include human sciences to teach the military industrial complex on how to use cultural knowledge for soldiers to more easily 'maneuver' among foreign cultures, currently the middle east. A growing concern within western anthropology is that the current idea of winning 'hearts and mind' is going to end up in a place where cultural knowledge becomes just another weapon used to subvert the 'enemy'. Anyway. Not saying the US is a autocracy - just an example, but this is how I envision autocracy cultural victory over the world, actively weakening other cultures from within through military conquest, ruining cultural identity, laying waste to the cultural world while imposing theirs on others. Perhaps the nazi wonder suggested does fit this vision. The nazis did a quite a bit to destroy the cultural roots of occupied people that did not fit with the image of the aryan race.

 

[Noob Fanboy]

For my part I would go with the Palace of the people, which would give a magnificent symmetry to the 3 wonders:

• scrapped projects
• dated from 1938-1965
• visions of the future as seen by 3 very different men with very different aims
  • A capitalist who saw a city as a test-bed for consumer products
  • A blood-soaked despot who envisioned a monument to the ideals of equality
  • A maniac, who envisioned his capital city re-made into the capital of the entire world

Man, everyone doesn't see socialism / communism as bad systems (and i'm not going to discuss about that here).

Uthopia Project is a bad name to a culture victory, because, for some people (me included), globalization is not a good thing, it's the ultimate form of predatory capitalism. A excuse for international banks / companies to get cheaper taxes in foreign countries, forcing gobernments to put more taxes in the worker class / low / medium business.

Palace of the People is a good idea for a wonder, but i don't agree with you about your "visions of the future as seen by 3 very different men". If we get that wonder, i don't want a western view of the wonder in the description, just historically accurate facts.

 

[pineappledan]

are you.... defending Stalin?

I was actually in the middle of editing that little list when you commented. Didn't realize calling Stalin a murderous despot was controversial

 

[Noob Fanboy]

I am neither attacking or defending Stalin, everything about URSS is really controversial, because there are two different point of views in modern history. If we're going to talk about Palace of the People, i want in the description accurate facts about the wonder, no a western point of view about the Stalin government

 

[Infixo]

The Palace of the Soviets is used in Wonders Expanded mod (as one of alternative Order wonders actually).

The Palace of the Soviets was a project to construct an administrative center and a congress hall in Moscow, Russia, near the Kremlin, on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The architectural contest for the Palace of the Soviets (1931–1933) was won by Boris Iofan's neoclassical concept, subsequently revised by Iofan, Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Gelfreikh into a skyscraper. If built, it would have become the world''s tallest structure of its time. Construction started in 1937, and was terminated by the German invasion in 1941. In 1941–1942, its steel frame was disassembled for use in fortifications and bridges. Construction was never resumed. In 1958, the foundations of the Palace were converted into what would become the world's largest open-air swimming pool, the Moskva Pool.

 

[a1nosugar]

Slight subject change. If I'm building the wonder, and my influence drops, is building paused, cancelled or unaffected?

Ps. I'm In favour of A wonder, the utopia project, or three Wonders(one of which is the panopticon). It'd be nice if there was some subtle difference to building each, with hammers and something else used to build it.

Perhaps internal trade routes boost production for one, and a % of Culture or science is rolled over for the others.

Tricky to pick what the other Wonders would be, as irl a cv doesn't seem possible right now.

It'd be a missed opportunity to have 3 utopia projects which differ by name alone.

 

[theMisterRud]

Personally, I love the idea of the Panopticon Wonder, and if the community decides to opt for an Ideology-based wonder, I would like to see it there, maybe as Autocracy's one.

As for the other ideologies, I would propose a "Universal Social Media" for freedom, as your everyday Facebook is, in a sense, a sort of Panopticon.

On the same note, the poposed Chinese Social Credit System could be a similar concept for Order

 

[Moi Magnus]

A suggestion:
Remove tech requirement for the "Utopia project" (or whatever its name), and add a tenet requirement, so either:

1) Ask your tenet tree to be full
2) Ask you to have 3 level 3 tenets
3) Add a new tenet 3 to each ideology that allows to build the wonder "win by cultural victory"
4) In the unlickely case it is possible to have level 4 tenets, that could also be a level 4 tenet.
5) Have multiple techs and tenets unlocking multiple "part" of the victory (a little like the science victory)

 

[CppMaster]

A suggestion:
Remove tech requirement for the "Utopia project" (or whatever its name), and add a tenet requirement, so either:

1) Ask your tenet tree to be full
2) Ask you to have 3 level 3 tenets
3) Add a new tenet 3 to each ideology that allows to build the wonder "win by cultural victory"
4) In the unlickely case it is possible to have level 4 tenets, that could also be a level 4 tenet.
5) Have multiple techs and tenets unlocking multiple "part" of the victory (a little like the science victory)

I like 2) the most.

 

[Noob Fanboy]

About the tenet requirements, we need to do a lot of testing

 

[glider1]

I think the mistake people are making is that they are biasing their view of what a panopticon is.

It could be used for "good" or "evil" or "neither". As we all know, if a technology is useful, it cannot easily be stopped regardless of your biases.

A panopticon is a social control technology that has rapidly evolved and at present could be the most sophisticated social technology ever invented so far.

That is why Gazebo has linked it to the technology tree.

I agree Facebook could well be one kind of panopticon.

The utopia project is empty, childish and utterly meaningless there is nothing to learn from such a silly wonder name.

You are referring too much to Foucault's use of the concept of a panopticon.

He died long before the internet and other communication technologies went global.

 

[Bascule2000]

How about a Disneyland wonder (everybody loves Disneyland) and also they own Marvel comics.

inb4 cease & desist

Dinneyland.

We already have Giorgio Armier who might just be Giorgio Armani IRL.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

I'm actually pro-"Panopticon is fine" after reading the thread so I gave my vote. And don't even think about putting Marvel/Disney related things here, or Gazebo might accidentally disappear from existence after being last seen with evil furry lawyers, all wearing mouse outfits. I'm sure him never being seen after that would be a pure coincidence, but let's not risk it.

 

[ashendashin]

The panopticon was my preference if we were gonna stick to a single wonder, but since G gave the go ahead for a whole three separate wonders, let's see what our options are. Don't even have to be reasonable on how it takes over the world anymore since each one will be based on ideals.
@pineappledan has some good suggestions for Order and Autocracy. Particularly I like the Social Credit System and maybe we can go for a more abstract Germania concept. Freedom could be something more direct as you're still purposely assimilating the world into your culture. Funnily enough I still have trouble thinking of anything besides the whole surveillance thing.

I'm actually pro-"Panopticon is fine" after reading the thread so I gave my vote. And don't even think about putting Marvel/Disney related things here, or Gazebo might accidentally disappear from existence after being last seen with evil furry lawyers, all wearing mouse outfits. I'm sure him never being seen after that would be a pure coincidence, but let's not risk it.

Big Mouse is watching.

 

[Guynemer]

A suggestion:
Remove tech requirement for the "Utopia project" (or whatever its name), and add a tenet requirement, so either:

1) Ask your tenet tree to be full
2) Ask you to have 3 level 3 tenets
3) Add a new tenet 3 to each ideology that allows to build the wonder "win by cultural victory"
4) In the unlickely case it is possible to have level 4 tenets, that could also be a level 4 tenet.
5) Have multiple techs and tenets unlocking multiple "part" of the victory (a little like the science victory)

This is another good idea; the cultural victory should have cultural, rather than scientific, requirements. Choice 2 would be my preference.

The question I have is can a wonder have only cultural requirements, and no tech requirements?

 

[pza]

I'm actually pro-"Panopticon is fine" after reading the thread so I gave my vote. And don't even think about putting Marvel/Disney related things here, or Gazebo might accidentally disappear from existence after being last seen with evil furry lawyers, all wearing mouse outfits. I'm sure him never being seen after that would be a pure coincidence, but let's not risk it.

Nah.
Also, Disney is a company. We need a game ending worldwonder. And dont tell me disneyworld is that. Has america won RL CV? Don't think so. Germany still wearing Lederhosen (Source: Am german).

I have little knowledge about what a panopticon really means, since i didn't study it thoroughly. But one thing I can say is, that the broad masses would not identify as a vistory based on culture, but rather a dystopian loss... at least for any civ that picked freedom.

So... Instead, I'd vote for an Utopia Project as a CV World Wonder. It's ideologically independent and vague enough for players to use their imagination for something that doesn't yet exist.

 

[tu_79]

Being an utilitarian myself, I don't have moral problems with the name of the wonder, but I worry about gameplay.

As already said, main concern about cultural victory is that it came early, suddenly and unexpected. The problem, mainly, is that most tourism is applied passively. For domination, it's very clear and intentionated, to conquer another capital. For science, spaceship parts must be built and launched. For domination, a UN session must happen when the World leader enactment must be achieved, keeping all those delegates requires an effort. But for culture, it may happen without any direct input.
A strong culture is a good way to enhance economy, and it also leads to a high tourism yield, a few great works are needed for strengthening GWAM abilities, but they can be avoided, trade routes influence the civs we are trading by not very clear values, but at least we could modify trade route destinations to prevent influencing everyone. Harder to control are events like great people birthing, building wonders and winning wars, which give massive tourism without asking.

Well, tourism from those involuntary events could be removed, so a player must engage actively on archaeologists, great works and musicians, but I fear G is too attached to tourism from events. Besides, that wouldn't solve the older problem with timing victory conditions.
Tweaking tourism vs culture values is not enough, as they can only be fine tuned for one map size, and the proposal I made about scaling costs, which would allow to fine tune for just one map size, did not pass.

The concern I share the most is that now, there's no victory condition free of science. It seems that research labs are mandatory for any victory condition. Domination wants science for top notch units, Diplomacy wants science to open new enactments, Science wants science for the sake of it, and now Culture wants science to access the late wonder. Compare it with Tourism. Domination strikes harder against influenced civs but hardly uses it, Diplomacy doesn't really want it, Science could make a little use of it by the extra growth, so only Culture victory needs tourism.
What does this mean for gameplay? That I can skip tourism entirely, focus on economy and science, and if the stars align, I may push for cultural victory late game.

I like the option to build something for declaring that you are going for cultural victory, both to avoid unexpected victories and to alert AI. But I dislike it being linked to a specific tech. Maybe it could be linked to a number of policies, as many other wonders, but then Poland would be overpowered. Maybe it could be a project instead, as in vanilla, requiring partial control of the world congress, but if the project is a game finisher I doubt it could be passed without totally controlling the WC. But there are other enactments that other civs want to pass.

So what about this?:
- Utopia/whatever: (national wonder), requires this civ to follow World Ideology, unlocks cultural victory for this civ.
Maybe as side effects: gains 1 delegate per influenced civ and +25% tourism in this city.
This can be built even when not all civs are influenced, raising AI concern about this civ being influential.

 

[Noob Fanboy]

Utopia Project is not ideologically independent, Cultural Hegemony is not a Utopia, it's a big failure. Gazebo agrees with me from what i'm reading.

I don't like the idea of civs following World Ideology, since tradition struggle a lot in Diplomacy, in comparation to Progress / Authority guys. But requiring a certain number of tenets is not a bad idea. (A wonder unlocked in 3-tier tenets like someone said before).