Is this going to result in one of those scams where the enacting admin does theirs first, creating a moment where they have 1 and everyone else has none, thereby causing themselves to achieve victory?

I have a few concerns:

I worry a little bit that this will somewhat reduce the organic nature of how the dynasty evolves a win condition. A stated goal at the very beginning of the dynasty has a subtle (or perhaps not-so-subtle) influence on Proposals that would otherwise be free from having to worry about this thing called Victory Points.

It also might be hard to fit such a concept to a “last-person-standing” dynasty.

Finally, how would this work for Alliances? I know that the mantle can be passed to another player in the Alliance, but since victory must be achieved by having the sum of the VP of all other players, that would require the other members of the Alliance to deliberately keep their VP low if they want the leading member of their Alliance to win.

For the last point, even though Proposals can change that calculation, it might be worth thinking about whether or not something should be baked into the Alliance Special Case to take this into account by default.

[Josh] “When a Proposal is Enacted, its stated effects are immediately applied in full” seems to preclude that, to me.

[JD] I think the “organic nature” of how rules evolve toward victory is a bug, not a feature; your perspective may differ. The least contentious dynasties I can think of in recent memory have had wincons that were strongly implied by the Ascension Address, and this just offers a potential backbone to that mechanism. I’d be happy to amend Alliances, which is quite infrequently used, if this is passed.

Strongly implied is one thing, codified in a default-Active Special Case is another. I guess I’m just not yet convinced that the problem is bad enough to warrant this as a solution.

Definitely should not be default-active.

Agreed. If it were [Inactive] [Rare] I would be more agreeable to the idea.

Neoclassical take on an old structure that worked; well worth a look. Would happily see tweaks, including changing the tags up.

I’d agree with Jonathan that this would be overemphasising a particular style of gameplay. “Win instantly the moment you have more stuff than everyone combined” sets up a very distinct type of game - one that rewards a quick infinite resource scam, and where there’s an incentive to keep the bulk of players poor and/or inactive. I don’t think that’s the norm, nor should it be.

I’m also not convinced this would do anything to resolve “the timing of when and how to propose a victory mechanic”, in practice. Isn’t “hooked up when it’s ready” posing the same question? If we’d had VPs in place at the start of the metadynasty, would we have created the Cities rule saying that each City was worth one VP - or would we have instead struggled with the timing of exactly when and how to connect VPs to the dynastic game?

I agree with JonathanDark and Kevan.

But would prefer it to be rare.

Also agreeing with JohnathanDark and Kevan on this one. I think the premise, but I am afraid that is addresses a symptom and not the actual problem we have seen in the most recent dynasties. 

This has a pathological case where, if everyone’s VPs get zeroed somehow, the first player to realize it wins.