The Panopticon Wonder Discussion Thread

[a1nosweat]

As for the US having won CV: I don't think countries with huge numbers of people such as India or China are overly influenced by the US; the US has the largest military in the world by a HUGE margin and still the largest economy; without these two things they wouldn't have anywhere near such diplomatic or cultural influence. While many European countries are influenced significantly by the US and its fashion and music / movie industry this is not the case with China or India. Furthermore, countries in which many people wear jeans are not even close to being under US control (like China or North Korea), which is what I meant when I talked about Greece in my earlier post: being talked about and known about doesn't constitute victory. If this was the case for CVs then it would an outlier with respect to the other options (diplomatic world hegemony, global military domination, massive science / engineering edge over other countries allowing the colonization of a new world without competition).

So next time, at this difficulty, the US should try a smaller map size and go for a more aggressive start perhaps? I think this game is going to be a time victory - time for the big players to try to grab a capital or two...Its all to play for.

back to VP I like the idea of keeping things abstract...although the idea of competing ideologies working against each other in something a bit like a world project sounds amazing and beyond hope.

 

[Bascule2000]

So next time, at this difficulty, the US should try a smaller map size and go for a more aggressive start perhaps?

If we're going to have a re-run, perhaps the US should start playing from the beginning, rather than coming in late?

 

[Omen of Peace]

Also, the way I've understood civ's cultural victory was not "global assimilation of every culture into one culture". [...]
(And I don't consider the culture of my country "assimilated" by the USA, just influenced. "We buy your jeans and listen your musics", as the loosing leader say when you influence them)

I very much agree with this. Why would Cultural Victory be a mono-culture assimilation?
It "only" requires the Influential level - note that there's another level above, Dominant - and you can have several cultures that are Influential almost worldwide (in case several civ compete for CV). Winning a CV does not mean eradicating all other cultures!

So I don't get all the dystopian propositions. I'm also in favour of something generic, and apolitical.
(I voted against the CV wonder, but I'm in the minority on this.)

 

[pineappledan]

I like how having a panopticon “reap” cultural influence you have sewn for hundreds of years retroactively casts the act of creating art as a sort of Machiavellian ploy to gain pentration and control over other cultures. As if the reason artists create wonderful works of art is motivated by the selfish desire to control minds. Real nice. That doesn’t sound edgy at all. /s

 

[ashendashin]

I very much agree with this. Why would Cultural Victory be a mono-culture assimilation?
It "only" requires the Influential level - note that there's another level above, Dominant - and you can have several cultures that are Influential almost worldwide (in case several civ compete for CV). Winning a CV does not mean eradicating all other cultures!

So I don't get all the dystopian propositions. I'm also in favour of something generic, and apolitical.
(I voted against the CV wonder, but I'm in the minority on this.)

What else would it mean?
Every other victory accounts for how your civilization prevents the rest from taking you down. Everything about a CV is based on influencing other civs and getting better deals in all things they don't have control over.
Ignore the culture assimilation part. Say that it's purely showing how much more refined your people are and the leaders of the world can't possibly claim to be similar regardless of any advances, weaponry, political savvy, or even similar policies and ideals. How does that work?
How does it make your civilization the unquestionable power? Have you achieved the ultimate policies that no amount of force or external politics can outmaneuver? Is that not a form of totalitarianism? There has to be something to address the rest of the world, otherwise I don't see how it claims victory as the only worthwhile civilization in existence.

I like how having a panopticon “reap” cultural influence you have sewn for hundreds of years retroactively casts the act of creating art as a sort of Machiavellian ploy to gain pentration and control over other cultures. As if the reason artists create wonderful works of art is motivated by the selfish desire to control minds. Real nice. That doesn’t sound edgy at all. /s

As I've said before, you reach the decision to pick your victory towards the end. For most civs tourism is only really relevant towards the end. It's not particularly hard to take advantage of what you have and apply it to something else. I guess this is subjective, but to me, deciding your victory entirely due to individual mechanics is quite boring.

 

[civplayer33]

*sigh*
Look all, I wanted to stop, but now he's calling me a racist.

i'm not saying "everyone voting for..." is racist. I was saying "some", and by the "some" i mean the ones i can see posting **** on online comments.

Being called anything by you is like noticing the smell when close to a dung pile...


And it continues...

Don't put words on me like that, i don't like straw man arguments

Oh you mean like calling me a racist? Also nice try how you cherry picked quotes from me ripping them out of context including the ones where I actually represented your views.

About the last sentence... no words, people are fighting because of oil in Middle East, technically i can say "how many millions of more corpses do you people need to understand that capitalism don't work?". Emotional arguments have no place in a real discussion.

Right, because the Soviets never invaded the Middle East...oh wait they did, didn't they? Huh, I guess someone should study history more closely before making BS arguments and accusing other people of fallacies and inaccuracies. I also find it absolutely pathological that you think referring to the Ukrainian Famine or the Chinese Cultural Revolution or the NKVD prisoner massakers as examples of socialist terror is an "Emotional argument"; what genocide are you going to try to justify next?

Let's leave like that.

Seriously? You call me a racist and then say "Lets leave like that"? Screw you

 

[ashendashin]

*sigh*
Look all, I wanted to stop, but now he's calling me a racist.

Being called anything by you is like noticing the smell when close to a dung pile...


And it continues...

Oh you mean like calling me a racist? Also nice try how you cherry picked quotes from me ripping them out of context including the ones where I actually represented your views.


Right, because the Soviets never invaded the Middle East...oh wait they did, didn't they? Huh, I guess someone should study history more closely before making BS arguments and accusing other people of fallacies and inaccuracies. I also find it absolutely pathological that you think referring to the Ukrainian Famine or the Chinese Cultural Revolution or the NKVD prisoner massakers as examples of socialist terror is an "Emotional argument"; what genocide are you going to try to justify next?


Seriously? You call me a racist and then say "Lets leave like that"? Screw you

Dude, what are you doing? Either read some posts and the topic of the thread again or stop your current argument. You're clearly going off the deep end.

 

[a1nosugar]

No he didn't .

 

[civplayer33]

So, it really wasn't my intention to call you racist, can you stop with the dung pile thing too?

Alright well then it seems I misinterpreted your statement and apologize for the "dung pile" and "screw you" comments.

About the other success, unless you're informed from multiple points of view, you don't have the right to say anything.

Actually I don't need to know everything (or anything, for that matter) to speak my mind and in fact it is often through speech (especially fallacious speech) that people will recognize their mistakes and learn from one another; that is why freedom of speech is so important. Of course the Western view is biased but even socialists will admit that the Soviet Union and China made some bad policy decisions that got people killed (though they will state lower numbers), so I don't think I'm giving an overly one-sided view here, but in order to hopefully put an end to this I'll state that I (obviously) strongly disagree but nevertheless respect your right to your own opinion.

 

[glider1]

I very much agree with this. Why would Cultural Victory be a mono-culture assimilation?
It "only" requires the Influential level - note that there's another level above, Dominant - and you can have several cultures that are Influential almost worldwide (in case several civ compete for CV). Winning a CV does not mean eradicating all other cultures!

So I don't get all the dystopian propositions. I'm also in favour of something generic, and apolitical.
(I voted against the CV wonder, but I'm in the minority on this.)

A monoculture assimilation is a process of political evolution.

Political power struggles dominate and being apolitical is not possible in a civilization.

The larger the population, the more political power is possible, the more concentrated it gets over time as power enables more power.

Power creates influence so that it can control.

This happens independent of the style of political system.

Culture is subject to the influence of concentrated power and therefore it will tend towards a monoculture else concentrated power looses control of it.

So in a climate of ignorance of power play, some kind of dystopian future is assured relative to theoretical ideals we care about.

Politics is about the technology of social control independent of the style of politics it is always a technological evolutionary process.

Things only changes when concentrated power becomes too concentrated which depends on the efficiency of the technologies of control it uses as well as tipping points (such as the trust horizon)..

The panopticon, disneyland, consumerism etc etc are political technologies of social control by concentrated power that has its own interest at stake.

None of the technologies are apolitical because they are always used by an interested party.

 

[CrazyG]

Guys can we focus on cultural victories, not economic and political ideologies?

As referenced earlier, things like Japanese Anime or American Films and what is going on when you win a cultural victory. I live in a country where American and Japanese culture have a significant influence. Its really not some grand battle of left vs right ideas. Marvel makes good movies and pizza is delicious, that is why the people here like those things

Ideological pressure is a related but separate concept. I think the best end projects would just be some kind of large monument. The earlier mentioned contruction concepts from Berlin or Moscow are fine examples. Its just some kind of architecture to show off our culture being impactful.

 

[Skidizzle]

I can’t lurk this forum any longer.

Go read the topic of the thread. To those of us that have remained on topic, we’ve progressed to where we’re discussing which of the three flavored wonders will be and maybe or maybe not tie them to tenets instead of a tech.

Are you contributing? No.

We’re all gamers here, how ‘bout we PTFO of this thread.

 

[Infixo]

This discussion is only a proof that noone actually knows how in RL a cultural victory could look like.
The other types have been somehow present in history or are very easy to imagine because we had a taste of it.
Domination - yeah, someone was trying to conquer the world like forever
Science - space race was a good example, it was a proof that somebody was no. 1 in science / tech.
Diplo - there’s UN, all we need is a world-wide election for a leader, just a scale-up from regions, countries.
And culture - we see the process, we give it various names, but noone knows where it would lead or how it could end. Thus an arbitrary condition or extrapolation is used. We cannot measure culture or its influence like GDP or alike in RL, but in a game we have yields for that.

 

[Gazebo]

Obviously the three wonders should be

Bears

Beets

Battlestar Galactica

G

 

[chicorbeef]

Guys can we focus on cultural victories, not economic and political ideologies?

As referenced earlier, things like Japanese Anime or American Films and what is going on when you win a cultural victory. I live in a country where American and Japanese culture have a significant influence. Its really not some grand battle of left vs right ideas. Marvel makes good movies and pizza is delicious, that is why the people here like those things

Ideological pressure is a related but separate concept. I think the best end projects would just be some kind of large monument. The earlier mentioned contruction concepts from Berlin or Moscow are fine examples. Its just some kind of architecture to show off our culture being impactful.

Well, I don't quite think Marvel/Pizza Places etc. is what culture victory is getting at, since those are corporations.

Honestly, if it would be the easiest, there could just be one wonder named the "Cultural Center" and boom, we're finished.

Why don't we tie the wonder to both policies/technology, like most wonders? That way humans can't do somewhat exploit-y things like bulb through a whole era to get to Telecom or something.

 

[Gazebo]

Y’all are welcome to continue to debate this, but please keep it civil and don’t make it personal.

I honestly didn’t expect such fervor over the name - I enjoy it, it got people talking

G

 

[pineappledan]

IDENTITY THEFT IS NOT A JOKE, G. MILLIONS OF PEOPLE SUFFER.

Naw, but seriously, a lot of apocalyptic talk here. I don’t think cultural victory was ever meant to be this “dark”.

And “pizza” is not a corporation. What?

 

[pineappledan]

Update for the poll:

EPCOT is ahead for freedom by a fair margin

Palace of the Soviets is ahead for Order by a slim margin

Germania and Panopticon are tied for Autocracy

 

[Erik_TheRed]

If the ideology-based CV wonders are too contentious, then I'll propose a Carl Sagan-esque alternative:

"Time capsule"/ "Cultural archive" wonder. Perhaps a more optimistic vision of a "cultural victory" (or whatever that means)... the idea is that the "time capsule" is the curated form of all Earth's history, art, knowledge, and culture. The capsule is intended to outlast many generations (or even species), so that the successes & failures of humankind are never forgotten.

Not sure if it should correspond to an actual building, or if the abstract concept works well-enough. Perhaps it's hidden deep underground, or sent into space, or uploaded to virtual reality...

In any case, I think it could mesh with the tourism/archaeology/great work aspects of a CV, while adding a fresh perspective of the "victory" concept in Civ. That being said, it's still open to a skeptical interpretation, i.e. history is written by the victors.

 

[CrazyG]

Well, I don't quite think Marvel/Pizza Places etc. is what culture victory is getting at, since those are corporations

Pizza is not a corporation. Most pizza places here in Beijing aren't foreign corporations, they are locally owned. It doesn't really matter if things like Marvel or Taylor Swift are owned by local corporations or not, they are very popular. The way the culture victory is set up to me is simple. If the foreign culture is more popular than local culture (tourism > culture), your culture "lost". As a real life example, if people ate American food more often than local food, watched American movies more than local ones, listened to American music more than local music, we could say that the USA is influential over that particular country. If it happened to every single country, the USA would have won. To celebrate the USA would probably build something red, white, and blue.

So lets just get a few nationalistic looking buildings. The suggestions so far from Dan are good.

I don't see where ideas like the apocalypse, mass surveillance, or a utopia are even coming from.