Should space race even be a victory condition?

[Jawa Jocky]

IRL if the world works together we may be able to send a small team of scientist to Mars by 2050. This accomplishment is unlikely to happen, but it is possible.

However the idea of one country sending an entire colony off to journey toward AC by 2050 is absurd. Therefore, shouldn't the space race victory be eliminated?

I know its just a game, and victory conditions can set before playing. But the space race victory never seems to statisfy me.
However the ship itself is beautiful. It is even more phallic than the car the Ambiguously Gay Duo drive.

[Jaguar]

hmm, don't have much support do you?

The game would suck otherwise. There would be no suspense, because the biggest civ would always win.

[Skanky Burns]

The space victory has always been in Civ, its a tradition. Besides, its the only satisfying victory that builders can achieve.

UN victory: You flip a coin to see if you've won.
Cultural: All of a sudden from nowhere, the game says that you've won.

Whereas with the spaceship victory, you actually have to work at building it, discovering the advances that allow it, and ensure you have the resources to build it. So what if its not exactly realistic to have a colony being sent to another star system before 2050. It could happen, much more possibility than a spearman versus a tank!!

[TheDarkCavalier]

Disagree..

This is where I'll disagree... look, could have any Civilization have won WITHOUT ANY combat? NO! But all of a sudden you can... you just expand, then discover advances, build parts, and win... I for one, always go for the Domination.

[Solomyr]

even in the most peaceful games i have played, i still can't aviod war. becasue eventually i get so powerful that everyone else, even old allies start to hate me.

and it would not be a problem for the US to send men to mars and back. not easy, it would require the country getting behind it like we did for the moon, but it could be done, i say...by 2020, and with time to spare.

that said, do i think it is going to happen? hell no it ain't going to happen we are to busy with a "war" :P going on, and too concerned about who wins the super bowl or what happens to ross and rachel to do cool things like actually explore space, or even our own planet.

alright, rant aside, the space race vicotry is cool. domination is only fun when i have a bad day.

[Jack_www]

I like winning by building a space ship. Some times I am playing on a large map. I play with culture win turned off. And sometimes there is so much stuff to conquer that I just dont feel like doing it, so I build a spaceship instead. Also it is the only victory condiction that comes with a movie.

[nato]

Jawa Jocky, the problem is comparing to RL ... in an alternate world technology and science could be far ahead of our own in the same amount of time.

Just imagine if somehow there was no Dark Age at either 1200 BC or 400 AD! All that lost time, and the cost of getting back to where we were before the Dark Age, could have been spent going forward!

In Civ there need never have been any Dark Age AND you have civs lead by people who are highly driven to race to the top of the tech tree. In our world, if a civ was born in 4000 BC, managed to survive to today, and had a huge focus on maximizing science the entire time (this describes the average human player) maybe AC wouldn't seem so far off today.

I could see not thinking FTL is feasible, but don't base things on our timeline or rate of progress. Its an alternate world.

[H Tower]

Civ isn't meant to be a representation of Earth. The goal of the game is to see if you can do better than we have in real life. That's why its so cool to end up having rifleman around 0 A.D. should firaxis make sure you can't do that? Heck, why not just make the entire game be from a watcher's stand point, watching earth's history unfold the same exact way everytime with the same history as real life.

[belchingjester]

Civ isn't meant to be a representation of Earth. The goal of the game is to see if you can do better than we have in real life. That's why its so cool to end up having rifleman around 0 A.D.

Well, that's one of many goals. As others have said, one of the beauties of Civ/Smac/Etc is that you can build your own goals, i.e. OCC or 5CC or the "early transcend" victories for SMAC.

As one of the columns said, some people play for role-playing, others make it a technical challenge to find the 'best' strategies, while others try to play a certain style or accept self-imposed constraints.

Jawa, If you don't like the spaceship victory, turn that option off I personally like it...
-belchingjester

[Velociryx]

I like the ship win....it's got a decent movie (which are rare as hen's teeth in civ3), and is actually kinna fun to do....beats the hell out of conquest, culture, un wins.... ::sigh::

-=Vel=-

[Brutus66]

It's all just a matter of opinion. Personally, I think the spaceship thing is silly and brings too much sci-fi into the game. I understand the idea behind it- the first nation to colonize another planet would perpetuate it's people and civilization beyond the life expectancy of earth, etc. To me it's still silly though, but to each their own.
As far as Mars goes, I think that we are ready to undertake that challenge right now. It's nothing more than another trip to the moon with a longer journey. Think about the state of medicine and technology when Neil Armstrong did his thing compared to now. It's the biggest tragedy of the human race that we have stagnated in this way. As George Carlin said, we could have been magnificent, but instead we settled, for stuff like sneakers with little lights on them...

[reefer addict]

i always turn off the space race a) it seems like your running away from your problems on earth(oops i ruined my planet, better go find a new one) b) its kinda boring c) i think they faked the moon landings , if they went to the moon 30+ years ago ,why did we stop going , why didnt the russians ever land there and why cant we do it today? i think the van allen belt wont let them very far past the planets atmosphere. its all a majik trick

[swt1]

Yes,

Keep it. After playing for 20+ hours I want to see "the win". I don't want to continue playing another 10 hours in which the outcome is obvious.

Could quit and declare myself the winner at some point, but doesn't seem right.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by reefer addict
i always turn off the space race a) it seems like your running away from your problems on earth(oops i ruined my planet, better go find a new one) b) its kinda boring c) i think they faked the moon landings , if they went to the moon 30+ years ago ,why did we stop going , why didnt the russians ever land there and why cant we do it today? i think the van allen belt wont let them very far past the planets atmosphere. its all a majik trick

It's all Galileo's fault. He actually tried to say the the earth moved. Get that! And some people actually believed him. Imagine that!

[Scooby_Doo]

You've gotta have the space race really, in my opinion, it's a civ tradition and allows scientific and industrial players to get a victory without conquering everyone.
I think the diplo victory is more silly, for starters it actually has no logical grounding-the secretary general of the UN isn't the All-Powerful ruler of the world and never will be. Secondly, the UN could have had so much more power in the game, like the planetary council thing in SMAC (from what i gather, I've never played it)
So, I think-scrutinise the diplo victory as it makes no sense, but leave the space race as its a good victory method.