Comparative Economic Victory

Not only do I like this idea, but there could be all kinds of interesting mechanics that could play into it. Probably the most obvious being hiring privateers to block other players trade routes, but there could be entire interplays regarding crashing and exploiting the market, Offworld Trading Company-style.

I can't claim to know anything about Offworld Trading Company, but I do know that with a Comparative system players would really need to put in special effort to get an Economic Victory instead of it just sort of happening and snowballing out of control in the course of normal use of Trade Routes.

Some of my other ideas in this set figure into this as well; crash someones economy by cutting them off from their preferred Luxury Addiction using Economic Quadrant Privateers (instead of wasting precious Science investing in the Military quadrant), or use a combination of Raids and Economic Colonialism to use your military superiority as leverage for economic and luxury gain. All the ideas play together extremely well.

Extend the games and difficult to achieve the economic victory. Any empire would prefer to win in other ways.

Hum...