Well in GalcivII, they have victory by influence, which could be considered a civilization victory. But personally I find it tedious. I can't really think of anything else at the moment, so I'll have a bit of a brainstorm later.

btw, I don't assume the worst when it comes to reading the tone of a comment on an internet forum.

Wouldn't having a city at a certain size do. It would obviously have to be huge. But once it got there then maybe you would have to build the 'wonder' to firmly establish it as the capital of the world. I would suggest it would have to have both a certain size area of influence, (probably a percentage of the map) without including the AOI ffom your other cities. It would also have to have a certain population.

I am pretty new to this game so i don't know how feasible it is, but i can imagine it would be great fun watching the remaining factions besieging the city to stop the wonder getting built. This would also encourage less city spamming if you went for this type of victory, as you would need as much food pumped into the city as possible (with the new rules for cities in 1.1 requiring food to start up)

I see your point and agree with you in principle, that if something more interesting than a Wonder can be thought up, it would be much better. However, I think the reasoning behind a Wonder winning you the game is that it is a declaration of cultural superiority. This doesn't flow very well with the lore of Elemental, but works if you think of it in terms of playing a Civ based game.

That's starting to sound a lot better now. I would also suggest that to achieve this victory condition, you need to have at least one ally or some blood ties to other nations, as it is difficult to believe that you can bring about a Golden Age if everyone is against you, or you don't at least have a friendly ear in the courts of the other factions.

Damn, I've gotta go, I'll get back to this later.

Hey hey, now we're getting somewhere...  Well, you guys are getting somewhere.  I've done nothing but pessimistically shoot down ideas, and I apologize for that...  This kind of thing just isn't my forte.

Making the Wonder not be the victory, but turning it into part of the requirement for the victory, is exactly the kind of thinking we, (Read: Everyone but me,) needs to sort this idea out.

Here's a thought though.  Drop the idea of culture, as a terminology.  Just tie it in with a system we already have in place.  Prestige.  Wouldn't require much re-working, most of what's in the game could easily stay the same, even the Palace, despite providing a non-Prestige bonus.  This also prevents adding yet another resource.  On top of that, most buildings, (If not all the buildings,) in the game that give Prestige are already researched in the Civilization Tree.  Meaning, no re-working of resources and systems.  Rather we'd just be building on what's already in place.

Edit:  This would also tie in very well with the idea of "N Population Required," that you mentioned as potentially being part of the condition Gwenio, thanks to how the Prestige mechanic already works.

A civilization victory is a good idea, but constructing a wonder feels too close to casting a Spell of Making. 

I say a cultural victory, like in Sins.  Have cultural influence originate from theaters and spread to other cities through caravans.  Either that or an influence victory where if enough of the land is restored (or corrupted), that's a win for the entire faction.

Or this: constructing a theater or wonder allows you to produce bards.  Bards can enter an enemy city and slowly reduce the loyalty of the city.  Once it reaches zero it is owned by the bard faction, though can be recovered through military means.  The production of bards, and their power, should be related to the overall pretige of the sovereign.  Enemy bards can be countered by bards on your own side, or maybe a civics talent called "thought police" where any bard has a risk of being expelled from the city of killed each turn.

My only gripe is the terminology.  The system you propose is, itself, sound.  My thinking here is it would be a Prestige Victory as opposed to a Cultural Victory, terminology-wise.  Not really an issue, of course, but that's what I'm thinking.

@Fearzone:  Sits way too close to things we already have in other games, IMO.  At least the bit about using Theatre's and Caravans to spread culture.  Part of why I should feel it ought'a be couched within the Prestige System.  Needing a N Population and/or X% Controlled Land isn't a problem, but seeing as how those functions are already tied into Prestige, it makes sense to me to make the victory an extension of that system, which is easily the most robust system contained within the Civilization tech's to make use of.  Not sure how I feel about the Bards...  Seems sound in theory, but I dunno how it would hold up in practice.

Closer to topic, any ideas on what a Prestige/Cultural Victory wonder would be?  I'm thinking Giant Momument of Awesomeness would be a little too bland here.  Again, has to be something relevant and sufficiently spectacular.  It should also probably be relevant to both Kingdoms and Empires, though it may be easier or even better to have different ones for each side.

Just thought of something. What if we mixed in something along the lines of a Global Election ala MoO? It would probably only really work in SP mode, but it might be something to consider. Once every N turns, the Sovereigns convene, friend and foe, and try to become candidates for election, and then actually get elected as ruler. I know it sounds tantamount to being a diplomatic victory, but if cultural achievements are the measure rather than suck-up points, then it could possibly work.

Still brainstorming...

No, doesn't have anything to do with it really...  Doesn't change how cool it sounds though.

You're right, does sound too closely related to Diplo...  Not that it wouldn't work of course.

I'm still thinking that something along the lines of Prestige is the way to go.  Like I've said before, the Tech Tree already gives you all the major Prestige buildings, so it'd make sense for a Prestige-related victory to be contained in that tree.  Unfortunately, I don't have any new ideas on how to go about setting up said victory...  Damnit, why are concepts so hard?

What if we tied this in with the dynasty system? Create a Sovereign trait called 'Promiscuous' that significantly increases the birthing rate of the Sovereign (or the Sovereign's spouse) and allows polygamy. Have the Sovereigns spread their seed across the land, and marry their children into other empires, such that a large percentage of the positions of power among rival factions are taken up by the Sovereign's progeny.

A new improvement called 'Grand Vizier's Tower' (or a more interesting name) should be created that is actually built by the Sovereign inside of a rival faction's zone of control. To be able to build this improvement, the Sovereign should have a trade agreement with that empire, and at least two descendants must be citizens of that empire. To keep the tower functioning, regular tributes must be made every N turns to each empire that allows your building in its territory. The tribute amount increases over time, making this a difficult strategy to sustain, so you have to move quickly. Each additional tower built costs significantly more than the previous one.

Once a Grand Vizier's Tower is built in the capital city of every surviving rival faction, the Sovereign wins with a civilization victory.

This strategy could be used in combination with military tactics by knocking out empires that you couldn't or haven't yet achieved the prerequisites with.

It's a bit arrogant to be calling this a civilization victory. Sort of like saying "Civilizations? Who needs your civilizations? I make my own!"

I don't know. Just trying to get out of that box.

Maybe an economic victory is a possibility?  For example if a faction has trade agreements with every other faction and controls a certain percentage of the world's  (gross) gildar income they win the game?  The only issue with this is that it might be difficult to measure the total amount of gildar in the world at any given time, not to mention that if you're going for a conquest victory you're probably going to end up controlling the vast majority of the world's resources anyway and it might get annoying to win a econ victory when you really were going for conquest. 

Perhaps a given volume or percentage of the map terrain converted?  Such as the area of influence that converts terrain.  I like the idea of tying it to the 'restoration of the world' thing.  maybe have to research all of the civic techs?