Why isn't there an economic victory?

[stinkubus]

Your post just gave me an idea. You can measure how much your culture is embraced by another civ by looking at how much of your art they wish to consume. Maybe a rework of culture victory could require X number of great works generated by your civ to be in the museums of other civs. Here's the kicker: only friends and allies will buy your art, so you have to try to maintain friendly relations with anyone who survives the ancient/classical scrum to get it done. Art stolen by spies would not count and these pieces must be recovered from the culprit's palace as they are stolen and not on public display.

Once your civ's paintings, sculpture, music, and cinema (we could add a new class of great person: great filmmaker) are on display in enough rival civs' museums you can then win culture victory.

 

[halfhalfharp]

Pardon for my English, I also agree that the measurement on the game is really impractical and I have been wanting to ask this to Firaxis. However as of now, I think that might be the only way the game able to present the quantitative measurement on how a culture embraced by other countries. I mean, how would you measure how people embrace a culture other than being a fan of something and do some touristy visits to the country ? IRL, would it be like the Grand Tour or England in Victorian era where people all over the world came to study and do businesses ? I don't know but is there any other measurements that could measure a culture victory than this? Language ? What do you think ?

I think, we'd better let people studying the field of culture or arthropology to answer your wonder.

I cant call myself well informed in this field but I will still try to contribute my opinions.

I supposed, cultural influence can be shown by similarities in the people's activities. It could be of a wide range. From worshipping the same religion, listening to songs from the same composers, down to the usage of common vocabularies, etc.

My emphasis is the "similarities" because there are always "differences", even if you are already under heavy influence by another culture.

Take the example of the roman languages. They all originated form the same latin root, but they have their local influence that eventually all themsevles to develop into numerous european languages.

Therefore I would propose cultural influence is the similarities towards foreign culture vs differences rised from local culture. Thats why I think the tourism against local culture theory is a measure on the right track. Just there are staffs better than tourism that can reflect this.

For example, vocabulary composition of a language: like English vocabularies contain 50% latin derivatives, Spanish vocabularies contain 90% derivatives, etc.

But it is not possible to do so in the game, as the whole culture is just a simplified measure. You cannot look at the language, people's dressing style, art, separately.
They do take in measure of the religion, policy and ideological differences. The deeper part of the culture is too hard to be made. Thus I suppose the simple tourism mechanism is good enough.

Or you have to revolutionize the game entirely.

 

[dunkleosteus]

Science, Culture/Tourism, and Faith are yields you can win with.

Food, Production, and Gold are yields that help you achieve those other victories.

I'd also argue that with massive, massive amounts of gold, you could purchase buildings in all your cities to the point that they had higher production, and/or purchase builders to improve all your tiles, get reasonably advanced in military and then use your apparent gold reserves to fund a massive, massive military. Domination is the only victory condition that directly costs gold in unit maintenance.

 

[Art Morte]

Science, Culture/Tourism, and Faith are yields you can win with.

Food, Production, and Gold are yields that help you achieve those other victories.

I'd also argue that with massive, massive amounts of gold, you could purchase buildings in all your cities to the point that they had higher production, and/or purchase builders to improve all your tiles, get reasonably advanced in military and then use your apparent gold reserves to fund a massive, massive military. Domination is the only victory condition that directly costs gold in unit maintenance.

It's not just about what you can do with gold as it is in the game. I think so much of our world today revolves around economy - much more than culture or faith, by the way - that having an economic victory would simply make sense in my book. The mechanism for an economic victory is already halfway there in the form of gold; build on it a bit and you could have another as-good-as-any victory condition to pursue.

My play style is such that I almost always go for either science or domination victory (or don't finish the game) and I think economy victory would be something similar that I could decide to go for mid-way through a game, unlike religious or culture victory.

 

[dunkleosteus]

It's not just about what you can do with gold as it is in the game. I think so much of our world today revolves around economy - much more than culture or faith, by the way - that having an economic victory would simply make sense in my book. The mechanism for an economic victory is already halfway there in the form of gold; build on it a bit and you could have another as-good-as-any victory condition to pursue.

My play style is such that I almost always go for either science or domination victory (or don't finish the game) and I think economy victory would be something similar that I could decide to go for mid-way through a game, unlike religious or culture victory.

I don't quite agree. Money is a means to an end. It has no intrinsic value beyond what you are able to purchase with it. Having the best economy in the world doesn't *mean* anything per se. Maybe your people have the highest standard of living, or maybe its your government that is wealthy, but what are you DOING with that wealth? If your goal is to get your bank balance as high as possible, that doesn't really mean anything because money that you don't intend to spend might as well be a pocket lint collection.

But are you asking for a more abstract victory condition? Like "Achieve an Economic victory when the gross product of your economy is a certain % of the global gross product"? Aside from that breaking down quickly on smaller maps, I'm not sure that an economic victory would be meaningful, at least from what I can see.

Maybe if Firaxis implemented a more complex economic system, with loans, debts, etc. you could become so wealthy that you are able to buy all of the debt for every other country and then bankrupt them all at once.

 

[Art Morte]

I don't quite agree. Money is a means to an end. It has no intrinsic value beyond what you are able to purchase with it. Having the best economy in the world doesn't *mean* anything per se. Maybe your people have the highest standard of living, or maybe its your government that is wealthy, but what are you DOING with that wealth? If your goal is to get your bank balance as high as possible, that doesn't really mean anything because money that you don't intend to spend might as well be a pocket lint collection.

Well, I don't quite agree with that one.

What is the most powerful currency in the world? The U.S. dollar. The biggest economy in the world, a country that can afford to run trillions into debt just because their currency is so strong that they know they can print more dollars and people will still take it as seriously as ever. Because they're so strong economically.

Then there's the influence of American companies around the world. They are major economic powers - in some cases major employers - around the world. If you're not able to meaningfully trade with the biggest economy in the world, because you got on their bad side, it's going to hurt you.

Thirdly, there's the investment. The biggest banks, hedge funds and what have you are a major force in the world.

Saying that "having the best economy in the world doesn't mean anything per se" is wrong, imo. It matters a lot, both in every day dealing and behind the scenes. When you have a totally vague victory condition in the game like culture victory, there's no reason to not have economic victory. After all, economy > culture.

 

[dunkleosteus]

I am not an economist, but the general impression I have about the US economy (as a non-resident) is that the US is not a very dominant world economy (also, there aren't any "very dominant" world economies). The US economy got to where it was by being in the right place at the right time when all of the existing major world economies were weakened by the second world war. The power vacuum allowed the American dollar to position itself as a global currency and while that helps strengthen America's economy, the American economy is not and has not been in a position to claim what might be considered an economic victory. In a globalized world, there will nearly always be a generalized currency that is used defacto around the world. Currently, it happens to be the American dollar. I would argue that having too-positive inflation and a growing deficit should preclude a country from an economic victory. The current economic system of America is not sustainable and if it continued as it currently is indefinitely, the American economy would absolutely default on its debt.