Well there probably would be at least one race like that and you might have to beat them to death but it would be easier for you if you found a peaceful solution.

One way might be to drastically reduce the influence of culture when you are at war with a race.

What if the cultural rating of a civilization affected the morale of another civilization drastically? What if the higher your culture rating, the more morale would suffer with those who went to war against that civ and those who were allied against that civ. Then any civ would have to overcome their apparent popularity in order to destroy them.

just a thought........

Well one thing I was thinking is have it related to your overall cultural influence per sector.

That is, if you controlled 6/7ths of the sectors with a cultural influence of X in those sectors. Where X would be a much higher amount than the minimum necessary to control it.

Or have it 6/7ths again but your civilization must be producing X influence per turn (where X is dependent on the galaxy size).

The first one would be X divided by the number of planets/starbases you control in the sector, which would give you the base need planet/starbase to reach X. You could add more starbases to bring the number down, but that means a lot of starbases.

The second would allow you to have sectors without significant influence, but others would compensate heavily.

With the first choice, an enemy who concentrates his forces in any given sector could delay your winning the game indefinitely and may force you to have to destroy or control that civ to win.

However, if you go with the second one, I could have a set of core world's producing over half of my culture points with more culture dedicated starbases surrounded by heavily defended systems with more weapons oriented starbases. That's much harder to attack.

So the second is strategically better in terms of war and easier in terms of economy and production. But the first is definitely harder in every respect and would really require either total cooperation or a massive military to pull off.

How about not allowing military conquered planets to count towards cultural influence?

Would be a simple solution and could make sense. Other empires know which planets was taken by force and are never influenced by the culture from that planet, no matter what you build on it. Who wants to join an empire if the nearest planet was invaded???? That planet will not influence you to join.

Planets conquered by culture or traded do count. This was you could expand in a certain region by culture (against one race) while expanding in another by force (against an agressor).

Paul.

An interesting idea but I still forsee problems. Given time it should be possible to overcome the backlash against a system taken by military means and being "forced" to take some planets militarily should not preclude a cultural victory.

This may all be moot if the AI is acting in an intelligent fashion.

Just a head's up on this, beta 3 hasn't resolved this. I want to wait until you guys see it in action before deciding what the best route is.

wow what a debate - how many PHD's are testing GalCiv?

Cant add much beyond the well thought out comments made other than I get a strong vibe from what Richelieu's comments. Cultural victory should be possible without controlling sectors outright and strong cultural point scorers should match culture gained by the prescence of hi-tec hardware and armed forces.

That way, with the right balance (hard I would imagine and needing extensive playtesting) it would be a great balance to players adopting the military approach.

But it needs a 'foil' in other words a player needs to be able to a) identify the attempts of cutlural domination by an opponent and take steps to directly reduce it. This could be either military or non millitary culture point generating steps - again the balance needs to be fine as millitary invasion should not be the easy option to reduce an opponents culture points who uis set on a cultural victory.

Considering GalCiv's history, you'd think that everyone here would want Cultural Conquest to be a difficult victory to achieve. As long as a lone starbase in an otherwise empty sector of a gigantic starmap is still using ancient, unsupported software to run the bots in their loading bay, Cultural Conquest should be an impossibility. You'd either have to convince that starbase to "upgrade" its software (sell your culture), build a bigger starbase in that sector (assert your own culture), or blow the sucker away (eliminate the opposing culture).

I'd like the criteria for Cultural Conquest to involve a combination of conditions:

1) Possession of either a certain number or percentage of cultural wonders (Ultra Chocolate, et al). Other cultures must want your goods (in game terms), it isn't enough to flood the market with cardboard hamburgers and fries laced with opiates - that’s Commercial Conquest.

2) All other cultures must have at least "Warm" ties to your culture. This would mean that how you gained your influence in a sector wouldn't matter. Destroying an aggressive culture could still win you points from other cultures and pockets of resistance could still oppose the “Insidious Galactic Conspiracy (tm)”. Just like the real world.

3) A "bare majority" of influence in every sector. That is, having at least 1% more influence than any other culture in a sector, rather than having a "controlling majority" of influence, where your culture's influence is greater than the total of all other cultures' influence in that sector.
I think I'd rather have influence work this way anyway - if you don't have the "controlling majority" of influence in a sector, then that sector is still up for grabs and is displayed as “uncontrolled”.
This would also serve to conceal the slippery slope of cultural invasion. No single culture appears to have cultural dominance of a sector, but you can buy blue jeans on every planet and starbase, and every culture in the sector is trying to create its own boy band. For those of us who are sloppy micro-managers, you could provide a pre-game choice of being warned about covert forms of conquest.
Speaking of which: is there an option to win through espionage? There’s not much sense morphing a few of your own Drengins if they don’t look remarkably like the Drengin High Command.

I think Cultural Conquest should be significantly tougher to achieve than Commercial, Diplomatic, or Martial Conquest.

Finally, would it be possible or desirable to set the victory conditions at the (possible) end of the game?
Say that you've met the conditions to win the game by Cultural Conquest, but you've got your heart set on achieving Tech-Nirvana. At this point, a dialogue box pops up and you're asked whether you want to keep playing. Or, the United Planets could assemble to vote on crowning a Galactic Emperor and there are only two choices on the ballot - Terrans or “You can't become king just because some watery tart lobs a scimitar at you!” You could also do this for Commercial and Diplomatic victories (for those of us who just want to keep playing until all the pixels are Terran Blue). Does it matter when the victory conditions are set for the purposes of calculating your score?

End transmission.

interesting last para capitano bizzaro - i like it.