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.
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i have to agree that it would be some ship that could pack 500 million people into it, thats almost 2 and a half times the TOTAL population of present day America.
