New Victory Condition: "World Peace"

[raingoon]

ATTENTION: Firaxis, I suggest that the Diplomatic Victory conditions be harder, so that once you win the U.N. vote, you still do not win the game until you have managed to achieve World Peace, by diplomatically ending all declared wars on the game map, and then maintain the peace for a set number of turns.

I think this should mean not just negotiating "cease fires" but actual peace treaties. Now THAT would show diplomatic skill. As it stands, simply getting everyone to vote for you is a bit tired, a feature leftover from the old Master of Orion game series, and not really up to Civ 3's level, IMO.

As Cyclotron7 says below, it might be good to tie the time required to maintain the peace into the number of turns you spent in war during the game. E.g., for every two turns you were at war during the game, you must maintain one turn of peace as the world leader in the end game...

Currently, all victory conditions are forgiving of those who wage war to greater or lesser degrees. On the Dove-Hawk Scale the conditions are, listed from most forgiving to least:

Traditional Military
This requires defeating all enemies. Scores a maximum Hawk rating.
Domination
Majority of world's land surface within your borders. Maximum Hawk rating.
Histograph
Highest "score" of all remaining civilizations. Depending on the scoring system, presumably no penalty for war. Slightly lower than maximum Hawk rating.
Diplomatic
Majority vote of the U.N. council. Maximum Hawk rating.
Cultural
Player achieves set number of cultural points. Does not preclude war, nor is the player affected if the rest of the world chooses to blow each other up. Scores equally on both Dove and Hawk.
Spaceship
In almost every game of Civ 1 and 2 where I have won a space victory I was also at war at the same time. Scores equally Dove and Hawk.

As you can see, there is no reward incentive for the player who succeeds in bringing the entire game map to a state of peace for X amount of turns.

Also, if one purports to be the leader of the world, they ought to be able to prove it.

Also, we need to reward peace.

[SerapisIV]

While I agree with your idea, then World Peace merely becomes an allied-conquest victory. I do think that for a UN Victory, if you are voted in, the chance that on Civ declares mortal war instead of subjecting to your rule should be included as a random chance occurance for such a victory condition.

[raingoon]

While I agree with your idea, then World Peace merely becomes an allied-conquest victory.

No, I was assuming that other civs would have to of course remain in play.

[Haphazard]

Nice idea. Is "you must cease hostilities with civ X" one of the diplomatic options? You'd need it to accomplise this.

[raingoon]

Is "you must cease hostilities with civ X" one of the diplomatic options?

Yes, well put. I would think that is all that would be required, along with an affirmative response from the civ. In some games, perhaps, you'd get lucky and win the UN vote when no wars were ongoing. In others, there might be a blood feud between two AI civs and you'd have to do some heavy negotiating.

As always, I'm no programmer and I don't know what it would take to implement this, but how hard could it really be?

[Haphazard]

It wouldn't be that hard to program, but it might allow some strange situations if not careful. ie:

Civ 1 is at war with civ 2
Civ 3 negeotiates with civ 1 in the usual way, and proposes ceasefire for civ 1 with civ 2.
War ends, however civ 2 has had no say in the matter.

I think this was a problem with SMAC, sometimes in 1 on 1 talks, the AI civ would cease the war, sometimes it'd say "if you can get the other faction to agree"

To get round this, you might have to get both factions to agree, in two 1 on 1's in the same turn. I dunno. It's probably a bit late now.

[KriFos]

Hmmm... "World Peace" ?

Whoooha.... Flashback to Ms. Congeniality.....

[Inverse Icarus]

World peace can only be attained by genocide of every other race on the planet.

im not being racist or cruel but im just saying, to be at peace with the whole world is impossible with all the differences between nations / ethnicities.

and even if someone pulled a Hitler and actually killed everyone but their own race, over time people from different areas would want different things, and break free all over again.

[TechWins]

im not being racist or cruel

You are not, it's just the facts. Whole peace can not be obtained. I'm saying whole instead of world because you can't have any large group be in peace. You could take a classroom of 30 kids as an example, there won't be peace in that room for sure. People have differences, therefore peace can't be obtained.

One of the definitions for peace:
Freedom from quarrels and disagreement; harmonious relations

[raingoon]

World peace can only be attained by genocide of every other race on the planet.

According to the World Almanac, in the history of civilization there have been something like only twenty-five years when no war existed between any states. That's pretty grim when you think about it. However, for sheer personality-shattering nihilism, it's got nothing on the above quoted little psycho-grandma pillow stitch.

On the other hand it also proves it false.

People have differences, therefore peace can't be obtained.

But without differences peace would never be occasioned.

It's interesting to note how readily some accept the possibility of colonizing Alpha Centauri with a spaceship full of Frenchman, but an end game without any declared wars is just too improbable to be imagined.

[Mongoloid Cow]

Thought of KriFos's comment...

Hmm, under a republic or democracy get the senate/council/house of reps/house of lords etc. to legislate harsher punishment for parole violaters, and obtain world peace to win.

[Cyclotron]

If world peace is used as a victory condition, the amount of turns of consecutive peace necessary to win should be a function of, throughout the game, how many turns you have been at war. For example, for every 2 turns that your civ has been at war you must keep the peace for 1 year. In addition, a civ that commits an atrocity like act (if those are used in any way shape or form in Civ3) or destroys a civilization after the UN is constructed (or any other reasonable milestone, like the discovery of global media so everyone can see what a bloodthirsty jerk you really are) should be automatically barred from achieving the world peace win.

[KoalaBear33]

Originally posted by UberKruX
im not being racist or cruel but im just saying, to be at peace with the whole world is impossible with all the differences between nations / ethnicities.

I disagree. World peace is actually quite possible. It all depends on what you mean by peace. I am basically limiting myself to two things: (i) PHYSICAL confrontations and (ii) COUNTRIES. That is, I am talking about peace between two countries that are engaging in physical confrontation. It is important to restrict the meaning because non-physical battles (eg. liberals vs conservatives; morality and right vs wrong; etc) will likely not be resolved for a long time (if ever). I also think it is only worth talking about conflicts between countries. Civil wars and other confrontations have nothing to do with WORLD peace for the most part (ie. world peace does not deal with things inside one country--not saying this is how it should be but rather we should really go one step at a time). I think my view that is held by most nowadays so people shouldn't have any problems with it.

Anyway, there has never been world peace for a sustained period of time but that doesn't mean it is impossible or unlikely. There have actually been some countries which have shown that different ethnic groups, religious groups, etc can get along. For example, India has a lot of different ethnic groups (completely different langauge, slightly different religions, way of life, etc) yet there have been very few problems (not saying that there aren't any but that it is very limited). Similarly, UK has had Scots, Welsh, Britons, etc for the last 50 years or so without any problems (again, I'm not saying that they are not problems just that there isn't as big of a problem). Other examples include some Europen countries like Sweden, Switzerland, etc (different cultures with many different languages (yeah I realize what happened with Nazism but I think that is an anamoly). You might be sceptical since these examples all refer to present day (or the near past) and are short term but they give hope.

I really think WORLD peace can be achieved within 75 years if countries try. There are two main reasons in favour of peace. First of all, more people are morally better off than before. In particular, countries are less racist. Yes, the vast majority of world (especially Africa and Asia) is still behind the West but there are reasons for that which I won't get into. In addition, certain econopolitical systems such as nationalism and fascism are losing support (dictatorships are another story though ).

The other reason why world peace as I defined is easier now is because of capitalism. As much as I hate capitalism, it does value capital above anything else, and in the process promotes world cooperation (this is required because commerce is not limited to one country). What this basically means is that economics will essentially be more powerful than military (even now entities like WTO have more power than you can imagine). So capitalism promotes peace indirectly.

KoalaBear33

[jsw363]

Koala- So civil wars don't count? What about coups, revolutions? I understand your definition of war, but sometimes there are physical wars fought between two non-countries. Would you limit it to actual declarations of war?

As an example, if the US goes to war in Afghanistan, it wouldn't be between two countries since the Taliban isn't the recognized gov't of Afghanistan. It wouldn't be declared war between two govt's.

Furhter I think it's commonly accepted that the US went to war in Vietnam, and yet I don't believe there was ever a formal decalration of war.

I wouldn't call Africa a peaceful continent by any means, but hte only countries actually at war there are Eritrea and Ethiopia. I still think that many of the situations in other African nations could be described as war.

[Urban Ranger]

I don't see why we can't have World Peace as a victory condition. We don't have a space ship to Alpha Centauri either.

[raingoon]

EDIT: Cyclotron, nice to see you again. Great suggestion, I put it in my original post above.

[Cyclotron]

Thanks, Raingoon. Was in Norway for a while...

I hope I make my point, however, that racking up turns at war should not begin very early in the game. For example, the Vikings were a much feared and hated group of warlike savages (or at least, were percieved as thus) in the Dark Ages, but nobody is reluctant to deal with the Norwegians nowadays because of their Viking past. It is a historical trend that war and death were simply more acceptable then than now, and any peace victory should take this into account.