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Originally posted by tinyp3nis
I for one don't want the AI to completely ignore victory conditions if I click military victory on. Le Vil it's cool that you can play civ role game style but don't try to push it on others, people who play for military victory aren't that bad ok?
I for one don't want the AI to completely ignore victory conditions if I click military victory on. Le Vil it's cool that you can play civ role game style but don't try to push it on others, people who play for military victory aren't that bad ok?
Fighting my neighbours throughout the game because of the living space ("lebensraum") is fine. Fighting them because of resources and luxuries is fine. Entering wars as a member of alliances or MPPs is fine. All of these are perfectly valid reasons to fight in the real world, too. But attacking someone just to prevent him from launching his spaceship is a total nonsense in the real world... it makes some sort of wicked sense only in game terms... but even then, only if you misunderstand the nature of the game and the nature of the victory conditions.
There is only one ultimate "natural" victory condition and it is currently known as "Conquest". By eliminating every single opponent, you win. No doubt. To save players from conquering every single enemy city, there is the "Domination" victory defined - based on the (apparently correct) assumption that once you have 2/3 of both land area and population, you would achieve the Conquest victory anyway.
Both these victory types imply extensive warfare and, let's be honest, Civ3 has never been a wargame. War has always been an integral part of it, but never the primary focus (if it was a wargame, it would be a pretty bad one). Pyrodrew almost posted a picture of the game box and a transcript of the manual trying to show us what the game of Civilization has always been about... as if we needed that. Everybody knows that Civ has always been about building great empires.
But how do you define a great empire? Well, if your empire is the very last one in the world, it must be great at least in the sense that there is no greater one... But it is rather obvious that there are other forms of "great" empires - their greatness being the economic, scientific, and/or cultural strength. Alas, these attributes are rather difficult to quantify. To help players that do not enjoy the Conquest/Domination victories, the designers of the game set certain conditions defining "an empire great enough". The first empire capable of launching the spaceship is defined as "great enough" (you gain a "victory" then). The first empire to accumulate 100,000 culture points or to have a 20,000 culture point city is defined as "great enough"... etc.
Note, please, that these criteria are purely artificial and do not - in any way - reflect anything in the real world. They serve only one purpose: being goals for players that do not enjoy destroying (almost) the whole world. By reaching one of these goals, these players (usually called "builders") can be sort of "sure" they succeeded in their quest for a great empire. Adds to their fun with the game.
Now, it's rather obvious that these artificial "builder" victories should only be understood as achievements to be reached before others do. As soon as you start perceiving them strictly from the "win-lose" perspective, the logical thing to do - to assure your own "victory" - would be destroying the most culturally developed cities of the world, destroying spaceships... destroying... and that's the problem: the "builders" are not keen on destroying things (if they were, they would happily go for the Conquest or Domination victory), they are keen on building, on building greater things than their rivals, possibly in a credible world that resembles the real world (that is the "immersion" factor).
Thus, when Pyrodrew complains of "Babs letting him finish his spaceship in peace", we (that is, me and Akka, not to speak for others that didn't express their stance) say: and what's wrong with that? It should be that way. Building a spaceship is - in our perception of the civ world - an achievement to reach, not an achievement others should be prevented from reaching.
When Akka and me say we enjoy "role-playing" Civ, we mean that we enjoy playing it as if it was a real world (with its own set of rules, some of them quite unrealistic, I admit). A real world, where our goal is to achieve, to build something. Sure, to get into the position to build something notable, we go bonk some heads along the way... make no mistake, we want to "win" just as much as Pyrodrew. We are just as competitive as he is. We want to be the first one to launch a spaceship. We just prefer following certain self-imposed restrictions that basically say: do nothing that would be a nonsense in this "real" world (even if it did make sense considering the win-lose game conditions). And we are happy when the AI players seem to do the same. And we would be seriously unhappy if the AI players started acting like bots, nuking us few turns before our SS launches, just because they knew we would otherwise achieve our goal. That would spoil the fun for us.
We fight our wars not to "win the game", to "destroy everybody else", to "prevent someone else from achieving the defined goals before us". We fight our wars because we feel that they are - at their time - necessary in order to make our empire better or safer. The Babs were threatening our northern possessions, so we carried out a preventive strike at them. The Persians signed a trade embargo against us with the evil Russians and wouldn't trade Silk with us... besides, they tried to blackmail us for our gold... so we declared war on them and quite rightfully took the luxury by force... These are things that add to our "immersion"... they could kinda happen in the Civ-world. But: The French were about to launch their spaceship, so we attacked them and destroyed their capital, destroying the craft in the process. Huh? Beg your pardon? Why did we do that? The French worked hard, researched hard, and (almost) succeeded to construct a spaceship... something no other civilization did before. So... why did we attack them? Just because we would "lose our game"? How pitiful... immersion gone.
So, please, don't listen to Pyrodrew, when he says Akka and me want to take the competition out of the game. That is completely incorrect. We just wish the competition is carried under sort of a gentlemen's agreement that guarantees the whole civ-world behaves credibly and not just like a silly computer game that is only about winning and losing...
You're silly. 
Are you trying to sell me this game? You figured I dont know this or
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