Once you get down to the last couple civs you're usually so powerful an influence victory is almost a given.

Keep yourself in wars if you want to avoid the influence victory.

I tend to like disabling influence victories, but they're generally a nice idea for people who don't like to have to mop up the map after they've virtually won.

That influence resource really is WAY overpowered. Grab just two of them and the other civs start dropping like flies.

Meanwhile, France has been so worried about the influence of outside cultures that they've been enacting laws which attempt to reinforce their own culture for 30 or 40 years. Ever wonder why there are dialectical differences in large countries, or in smaller countries with large populations at the borders? Cultural influence. Visit El Paso, Texas one day. It's practically more Mexican than American, at this point.

Sure, maybe a wholesale, overnight conversion is unrealistic, but it's a game. Unless you plan to play for 500 years, modeling the more typical real-world gradual conversion wouldn't be possible. And I suppose you could argue that since it does take tens or hundreds of years, the in-game feature is unrealistic, but the fact is, cultural subversion does exist, and does happen, and there are a hundreds of other far-less-realistic things happening in the game before you get to this level. For instance, colony ships carrying 500,000,000 people...

I'm not saying you shouldn't argue against it. Go ahead and pursue whatever point interests you -- I'm just saying it isn't valid to claim that this kind of thing is unseen in real life.

and i can tell you right now ive never seen another race that id trade being human for except maybe "Q" from ST TNG. and 'hes' not actualy a race.

Do you count the Jedi as a race? No?

Screw it, I'd be a Horta.

Hmmm, I think both sides in this argument have valid points. First off, while nations on Earth are not lining up to become the 53...54...55 etc states there is a notable exporting of North American culture to the world, and just the fact that other nations fight that export legislatively is a sign that its working...The Japanese say "Bussiness is War" and they are perhaps not too far off... But you are correct the couple of weeks that it usually takes for a planet to say "we want to be just like you mr. earthling" is highly unrealistic. But we would have to look at how culture seepage (kinda makes it sound like sewage doesn't it) affects each generation and how each successive generation is more "americanized" to determine cultural victory on earth...

And I do agree that in any large nation there are many (sub)cultures but they still see themselves as part of the overall national culture (unless they're radical revolutionaries -- and the game has a fundamentalist event to cover this). Canada (the real 51st state sorry Megalobob be we're honestly closer) has many distinct cultures and excluding the french in Quesbec we all still see ourselves as Canadians, us westerners are just better than everyone else

But lets just remember its a game, and I like conquest without troop loss it makes being good feel that much fuzzier...

I believe over the last 50 yrs the USA as culturally influenced, flipped individual nations into following its way of thinking, often without the majority of the population even realising. All the western nations have been flipped to some extent to follow the american way. Who do we view as the leader of the west? The Usa. We don't like to accept this fact, but its still true. Would Britain or Canada ever be on the exact opposite side of an argument with the Usa? No. Its also more than an alliance because the actual people of Britain and Canada have been culturally subverted with american ideas, films, fast food, globalisation etc....., try taking those away and THEN u would have a revolution. There is no need to overthrow our government to declare ourselves the 51st state because they will on our behalf always fall in line, support american policy (in the main). Hence a cultural victory by the USA. This is how i see a cultural victory in GC2.

Its also a good way to achieve global domination or galaxy wide domination, much better then blowing people up! Make them love your way of life and be like u.

Also think Star Trek the Federation, lots of alien races made it up, yes? But who was in charge, the humans of course, the aliens might think they were allies but the had been culturally subverted into joining the federation which was run by humans. U never saw the flagship enterprise with anyone other then a human captain did u? The humans soooo controlled the federation.

This is how i see the cultural victory.

It doesnt technically mean they overthrew their government and became Humans ect. It means they are so culturaly dominated by you that for all intents and purposes they are on the same side. It even says something like this in the victory screen.

The best example would be the way England had dominated the world from her expansion in the colonial eras. The culture was pushed out to india, america, africa, and many parts of Europe and Australia. The result being that most of these countries now speak english as a second language at the least and are allied with england or very friendly to her. English has been made the worlds language. They have not been conquered, and are still seperate places, but in the context of the game it would be a similar cultural victory of the colonial era. These countries are unlikely in the near future to ever fight each other.

Basically its a peacefull win, and if you imagine it as there still being the alien races but they are now so friendly to all intents and purposes they count as the same in game mechanics. Though they are still different races ect they are now trading freely and sharing much of what they get.

good points about the American 'subversion'. i susspect that this extends from the Marshall Plan, along with Americas rebuilding efforts in Europe post WWII came our culture in large doses. the 'strong' allways influence the 'weak'. (no slight intended im speaking in the most literal sense of things, not cultures)

its helpful to thing of the whole course of western culture though in this 'debate'. take a look at the Roman culture, large sections of it are still with us today, but are we roman? and at one time Rome ruled the 'world' and tryed to rule the world BECAUSE of their culture. they had a plan and a much better position to do it than the Americans do today. they set out with a specific plan to take controll of their enemys in the long term by subverting their children and making them "romans" by dint of education and a stick and carrot method, embrace Rome and become successful, defy and be killed. and it worked in the short term, but it was also the undoing in the long term, since it was a two way street. they subverted other cultures but in turn were subverted themselves and the end result wasnt what they had expected.

i could go on and list instiance after instiance of this to make my point, but human history has tought us very clearly that while given cultures may dominate for a given period of time , be it short (10-15 years like the 80s pop, or the 70s funk, or the 60s free love etc) or it long ( the roman culture that forms the back bone of so much of the western civilization) that dominance doesnt last. still today after literaly thousnads of years of of and on wars we are still in conflict with the islamic cultures and the asian cultures, and in Americas case we seem to have a love hate relation ship with the central and south American cultures that while the case can be made that we dominate them it certianly isnt due to culture but rather to proximity.

no mater how this is presented i cant get my head around the whole idea that enture civilizations would flip and become humanized or vice versa no matter what the 'culture' involved. i live in Upstate New York and have had occasion to spend alot of time in canada, i dont see any large differences between Americans and canadians, but i wouldnt want to BE canadian, any more than they would want to be American, ive allways admired the British as the 'father' of modern western culture, Churchill is one of the worlds greates heros to me, but i wouldnt want to BE british. i AM American i will BE American till i die, even if America should be beaten and conqured in a war today i will still BE American. but i can conceed that perhaps my great grandchildren 5 times removed wouldnt feel the same way, then again they might. i susspect that the italian culture still takes great pride in Rome, and wouldnt want to become , German or French.

the great mishmash that is Europe shows clearly what a waste of time any though to cultural subversion as a method of a 'win' would be. after countless centurys predating even the Greeks Europe has been once constiant struggle between compeating cultures to this very day. take a look at the state of the "European Union" and my point is made in spades. in todays world culture because of place is becomeing less importiant, (IE being American simply because you live IN America) but culture because of a choice to BE that culture ireguardless of place is becomeing more importiant.

i use Star Trek because of the fact that the show isnt confined to a specific place. thus the 'when in rome' basis for culture doesnt apply. and yes i know that the 'flag ship' of Star Trek is allways run by a human. but then again if it was run by a hoznian would you watch it? would it have the same meaning to you ? no, and why? it is because you can only really relate to your OWN culture , in this case human culture. the very things about the show that trigger emotions in you are the human spin on things. how our proxy (captian Kirk/Picard) responds to a given alien culture gives us our anchor. they react in a way that we would react (for the most part), they ask the questions we would ask, they see the universe from the same starting point we do. their frame of referance is the same. it is that connectedness, or culture if you will, that makes the show interesting. but if you take away humans and make a show about purly alien cultures (assuming it was even possable, since it would be hard for human writers to script a show from a true alien viewpoint), no one would watch it. their would be no cultural connection, to say nothing of anyone wanting to hand earth over to the Vulcans.

in any case i know its only a game feature, but it fits about as well with this genra as a eliphant does at a flea circus. its hugly out of place. this is more or less a war game. the civs are all at war withing 50 turns at most. and the dominant victory condition is conquest. everything in the game is built to support fleets of ships and troops. this 'feature' is tac'd on at best. an after thought, and it shows. in my mind there would have to be a whole long term chain of events, for example having to be allied with a civ for atleast 300 turns before you could even hope to subvert them culturaly, and it would have to be a two way street. you would have to stand as much chance of BEING subverted yourselves. after all 200 years agro Britian ruled the world but look at them today.

you can order a fleet into orbit at your enemys homeworld and start the landing, you cant order their people to eat your Big macs and watch your soap operas.

the whole cultural aspect needs mega reworking, or to be left out totaly imo. but since people dont agree, id settle for a way to shut it off totaly. i dont want anyones planets fliping mine OR theirs. my gripe really isnt so much that its a 'feature' of the game. maybe it works really well and is an actualy challangin part of the super hard AI setting. but at normal setting i can build a hand full of influence SB and grab 2 key super projects and never fire a shot, and i can do all this from ONE planet on a Huge galaxy with all the other AIs turned on. at this point i have to work at NOT fliping other civs with culture. and while i see to it that i dont 'win' with a cultural victory, i can shut off the victory itself. even if i uncheck the box i can still take whole empires from those projects and improvment starbases. and that is my gripe.

you were allready German. you may have been born in 'east' Germany but your grandparents and perhaps your parents recall being just German. despite the things you envy'd you were still the same people by dint of culture, same language same world view. still raised in the main the same as your 'west' German brothers. except for imposed political views


it is a good example of my point though, after all, DESPITE 60 years of communism, given the chance you still chose reunification with your other 'half' and rejoining your two cultures rather than stay under soviet domination.

That`s the point. That`s why we Germans call it "Reunion" and not "Assimilation". After removing the communist leaders, only kept to power by soviet tanks, what`s left? Germans... Like in the western part of the country.

But back to the game. I think the influence thing is a fun killer, too.

When getting to fight and conquer them, I want to fight to the bitter end! But what does the AI? After loosing some battles and two or three planets? They surrender! Honourless cowards they are, a klingon would say! A moment of big disappointment for me. "Why aren`t you be brave and fight on? Come on that s...! Stand up and fight!" I often shoutet out angry about the AI

I think the influence should be heavily tweaked, to have more fun playing the game.