Gain 15 coins.

What are coins and what do they do? Well, coins appear on some squares on the map, some techs, and some great people and buildings. Each coin that you have access to gives you a base level of trade: when you reset your trade after buying a tech you don’t go below the number of coins you have. And if you get 15 of them, you win the game. That’s about it, really.

Except that a few culture cards and tech cards care about the number of coins you have. For instance, Military Science (a level 3 tech) gives every city extra hammers for every 3 coins you have. That’s really nice… if you can get it. And that’s the problem with the Economic victory: gaining coins is something that is by no means obvious and is quite difficult to do if you haven’t planned for it. When you’re working against the clock provided by the Military and Tech endgames, do you really have time to spend on your economy? Especially because you’d think the “trade” you use for technology is your economy…

You should gain the majority of your coins through technologies, but as there’s a limit for each type of gain – one requires the spending of resources, another trade, yet another culture and another requires you win battles – the economic victory touches on each of the other aspects of the game. As such, it is the least focused of the strategies: if you get it, it is something that you both need to plan for and then move into each of the other strategies a little bit…

As such, it is something that inexperienced players won’t stumble into, and I’m yet to be convinced of its validity as a strategy. Obviously, you need more games than I’ve yet played to see it in action!